Customer engagement platforms may be a replacement for customer relationship management (CRM). There’s a lot of obscurity regarding what customer engagement platforms are, how they’re replacing CRM, and why is it occurring. Read on to find out more
A Basic Definition of Customer Engagement Platforms
Customer engagement platforms allow businesses to manage multiple areas of customer relationships. Customers expect to engage with a brand in many different ways; whether it is by phone, email, live chat; through social media or messaging apps. So it’s an advantage for every business to take proper care of as many those touchpoints as possible. Customer engagement platforms aim to be a tool for that purpose. They hold a database of connected content and track your target audiences in every stage of the buying journey: from strangers to prospects; to customers and promoters.
How are customer engagement platforms replacing CRM?
It is said that customer engagement platforms are replacing CRM because of the focus of putting the customer first in company operations. This means that this tactic is the epicenter of digital transformation in recent years, leading to evolving CRM applications to customer engagement platforms. In 2018, this term (customer engagement platforms) was only beginning to be considered and few vendors referred to their applications like that. The replacement of CRM with customer engagement platforms has been to orchestrate the experience held by customers from beginning to end.
Why are They replacing CRM?
It’s been frequently argued that there’s limited, or no, difference between customer engagement platforms and CRM. The first CRM features are marketing and customer service and support. Thus, CRM is a fair representation of being able to store and use a set of customer-generated information, such as contact information, history, and purchases. However, customer engagement keeps the customer at the epicenter, starting from customer acquisition, to lead nurturing, customer retention, customer onboarding – a customer engagement platform takes care of engaging with customers at every single touchpoint..
Unlike CRMs, customer engagement platforms allow you to automate the processes to track and engage your audience. So for example, your lead management tools (that are also included in CRMs) can now be used to nurture leads that didn’t convert right away and turn them into conversions. Another important benefit is the capability of seeing how your campaigns are performing in real time. You can also use that data to customize your messages to different audiences based on place of origin, browsing history, app activity, and other useful analytics. Customer engagement platforms can also help improve customer retention and up sales by marketing products to your existing customers.
There are a lot of new technologies out there and the customer engagement platform is one of the hottest ones available today. To find out more about how Factoreal’s customer engagement platform can help your business grow, please contact us at your earliest convenience.
