The 5 Best Digital Customer Experience Tools for Growing SMBs

Without the right tools, even the best carpenter will have a hard time making anything of quality. It would help if you looked at your customer experience efforts the same way: Even with the most capable customer service team, you’ll be hard-pressed to deliver an incredible customer experience without the right tools.

Once upon a time, a great customer experience was all about in-person, on-site support. Developments in technology, mixed with environmental factors (like the recent pandemic), have shifted these efforts into the digital space. But how can you prevent technology and remote support from turning your customer experience into a series of impersonal, asynchronous interactions that make your customers feel like a number? Implementing the best digital customer experience tools. 

Let’s review some of the best digital customer experience tools you should be exploring for your tech stack. We’ll cover the benefits and uses of each tool, giving you all the information you need to build out an incredible digital customer experience. 

Trends in Digital Customer Experience Tools 

If there is one thing every customer experience professional knows, customer expectations are constantly changing. The best customer experience tools ten—or even five—years ago may be irrelevant today.

Before we discuss our top picks for digital customer experience tools for your growing SMB, let’s go over some of the current trends in customer experience and how those trends might impact the tools you choose to implement. A few of the biggest trends in customer experience for 2022 are: 

• Immersive, Omnichannel Support: Today’s customers are looking for more than just a customer service phone line. Offering a consistent customer experience across multiple communication channels is no longer a differentiator: It’s expected. 

Related Read: The Best Remote Tech Support Software for Call Centers

• Customer Experience as a Differentiator: One major trend for the current year is that many brands are competing primarily in terms of their customer experience offerings. Rather than focusing on delivering the next latest and most outstanding product, brands are doubling down on the customer experience—in other words, if you aren’t, you will fall behind. 
  
  
• Automation: As much as we hear that customers want to speak to a human for their customer service experience, this isn’t always the case. For simple, easy-to-answer questions, most customers would prefer an automated solution. SMBs that can automate some elements of their customer experience will see the benefits. 

Blitzz has been in the digital customer experience space for years, and we’ve seen how the industry changes and shifts. We have seen the tools that work for our customers… and those that don’t. Let’s go over our top five best digital customer experience tools for your growing SMB. 

1. Social Media Integration Tools 

Social media has been a vital part of brand management for many years now, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. To manage your small business’s social media effectively, you’ll need a social media integration tool. 

What is a social media integration tool? A social media integration tool provides software that allows you to manage all your brand’s social media in one dashboard or application. The benefit of using a tool like this is that it enables you to control and schedule all your social media posts to ensure consistent posting in the most optimum windows for your customer base. Additionally, you can handle all your social media messages and inquiries in one place, rather than logging in and out of several different applications.

Another benefit of using a social media integration tool is access to analytics. Many tools offer tracking and reporting features that allow you to gauge your content’s performance.

A social media management tool you may want to consider is HootSuite. HootSuite includes features like automatic scheduling, team collaboration, an asset library, reporting, and more. 

2. Remote Video Support Tools 

Every growing business needs to knock customer support out of the park. Investing in a great remote video support tool is the best way to set your small business up for success in customer support. 

What is a remote video support tool? At its most basic level, a remote video support tool is a tool that allows your support agents and technicians to connect with customers face-to-face. However, a great remote online support tool is more than just a video chat application. 

Remote video support tools allow your support agents to get their eyes on customer issues, helping to solve problems remotely. Some tools, like Blitzz, also include augmented reality features, enabling technicians to walk a customer through a complicated fix without ever setting foot on the customer site. 

Some benefits you’ll enjoy when using remote support software include:

• Fewer truck rolls, resulting in cost-savings and a lower carbon footprint
• Increased first-call resolution

• Increased customer satisfaction

• More efficient utilization of technician and support agent time
• And more!

The best remote video support tool on the market is Blitzz. Our tool is user-friendly, offering top-notch remote support with a single click. In addition to its simplicity, Blitzz also provides a host of features, including text extraction capabilities, advanced reporting, on-screen text, and more. 

3. Customer Relationship Management Tools 

To offer an incredible customer experience, you’ll need to be able to manage your customer data effectively. Your customer relationship management tool, or CRM, will help in those efforts.

What is a customer relationship management tool? Your CRM is a central repository for all your customer data. You can use your CRM to track customer interactions, purchase history, demographics, buyer personas, etc. 

Using a CRM enables you to segment your prospects and customers effectively. This segmentation allows you to produce targeted communication campaigns, providing your contacts with the information and offers most relevant to their needs. Once you implement the right CRM, you can say goodbye to manually managing customer data and interactions. 

One of the most popular CRM tools available is HubSpot. HubSpot is chock-full of tools and features, but a few features you’ll definitely want to explore are the workflows, forms, and email automation. 

4. Live Chat & ChatBot Tools 

We’ve all heard of “omnichannel support” by now: Customers want to be able to reach your brand in a variety of different ways. To offer an amazing customer experience, you’ll need to provide live chat or a chatbot.

This item is a bit of a cheat because it’s really two tools. Live chat requires a customer service agent to engage directly in the conversation with your customer, while a chatbot operates based on a program. We’ve put these two tools together because, whether you choose to pursue live chat or a chatbot, you’re able to offer customers immediate assistance directly from your website. 

Not only will customers appreciate the immediacy of live chat or a chatbot, but your small business can also see benefits. Chatbots, for instance, will help you keep customer service calls to a minimum. Programming a chatbot to answer simple, often-repeated questions like login issues or other FAQs will keep your phone lines clear and your support agents free to handle more complex issues. 

One tool you can use to create and manage your chat efforts is Chatfuel. Chatfuel enables you to build a chatbot without needing to code. Chatfuel integrates with social media like Facebook, allowing you to offer automated responses to direct messages your brand receives on social media platforms. 

5. Augmented Reality-Based Tools 

The last tool on our list of the best digital customer experience tools for SMBs is an augmented reality-based tool. 

What is an augmented reality-based tool? This is tricky to answer because the sky is the limit when it comes to augmented reality. An augmented reality-based tool is any tool that uses AR to enhance a customer’s experience with your brand. 

For example, some stores use AR tools to allow customers to see how furniture or clothing looks in their homes or on their bodies. A customer can load a photo of themself or their room into an application and experience features of the product that are typically difficult to experience when shopping online.

Related Read: Benefits of Augmented Reality for Customer Support

Another example of how augmented reality can enhance customer experience is through support. As we touched on briefly above, augmented reality-based tools are a fantastic way to provide in-depth support remotely. Technicians and support agents can walk a customer through complicated solutions by pointing out areas on the customer’s camera viewfinder, displaying text or pointers on-screen, and more.

Blitzz offers an unbeatable augmented reality-based customer support tool that is effective and simple to use.

How Digital Customer Experience Tools Help Your SMB Grow 

To grow your business, you will need to acquire new customers and hang onto the customers you already have. To accomplish this, you’ll need to foster trust in your brand. Offering a consistent, incredible customer experience across multiple channels is the best way to establish that sense of trust. 

Social media integration and live chat/chatbots let you reach your customers where they are, providing a holistic customer experience. Your CRM will ensure that you can make that experience seamless. 

Augmented reality and remote video support tools can ensure that you can offer incredible customer support without requiring your customer to jump through hoops and wait on hold to get it. 

Blitzz offers an incredible remote video support tool with built-in AR features. Schedule a test drive today to see how adding Blitzz to your tech stack can help grow your SMB and provide your customers with a wow-worthy experience!