Step up your game with the best customer retention tool in the industry, designed to elevate customer satisfaction and ensure long-lasting success.
The data is in, and customer retention runs the show. According to BND, a 5% increase in customer retention leads to a 25-95% increase in revenue, making companies explore effective ways to retain their existing customers.
Customer retention is essential for several reasons:
If your existing customers are happy, they’re more likely to refer your business to friends and colleagues and spend more money with you.
With that in mind, companies typically turn to specialized customer retention software that provides the tools needed to decrease churn and push those lifetime value numbers up.
But with so many flooding the market, how do you make the right decision?
Customer retention software enables businesses to keep track of their customers and connect with them on a more personal level.
By tracking customer behavior and preferences, companies are able to use that data to better understand how to keep their customers happy and engaged. Customer retention software improves Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) by reducing churn and increasing customer loyalty.
The best customer retention tools will differ depending on your business needs. Some essential features to look for include:
Contact management: The ability to keep track of customer contact information and interactions in one central place.
Audience segmentation: The ability to segment your customer base into groups based on shared characteristics.
Campaign builder tools: The ability to create and automate marketing campaigns through email, social media, and other channels.
Drip campaigns: The ability to send automated messages, reminders, and special offers to customers on a regular basis.
Reporting and analytics: The ability to track and measure the results of your customer retention efforts.
Integrations with third-party applications: The ability to integrate your customer retention software with other applications, such as Customer Relationship Management software or eCommerce platforms.
With comprehensive customer retention software, businesses can create personalized and effective strategies to keep customers engaged and loyal.
In the next section, we will explore the six best customer retention tools to use in 2023 and beyond.
TLDR: Here’s a quick rundown of our list of the best customer retention tools:
| Platform | Price Range | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patch | Free to access retention data and dashboards with useful insights. Paid plans based on the number of contacts and a full suite of retention and marketing tools. | Advanced automation and customer retention tools. Patch covers everything from customer journey mapping to loyalty programs – all combined with the best rates on Email and SMS! | While great for eCommerce companies, it may not be ideal for restaurants or brick-and-mortar shops. |
| Totango | Free plan to start. Scales to custom pricing to fit large enterprises. | Customer segmentation and health scoring help determine which accounts to target and which are doing well. Health scoring is able to be customized to fit a company’s goals and outcomes. | Users have noted the need to improve automatic reporting tools and task management. |
| Heap | Free plan scales to custom pricing. | Collecting data from what actions visitors and customers are doing on your site or app is helpful for teams to make improvements and build new features. | Some users have difficulty learning the system and onboarding. Their data reporting is tough to share and put together. |
| Gainsight | Fully custom pricing. | Get a holistic view of the customer with their customer health scorecards. Users also rave about how well it integrates with Salesforce. | Data reporting can be slow, depending on the amount of data you’re pulling. Many users report the overall speed of the tool has lagging issues. |
| MoEngage | Pricing isn’t listed – contact them for more information. | MoEngage has a great notification system and works well with integrations. | Users have reported that scalability is difficult when taking on high-growth usage. |
| ChurnZero | Pricing is not listed – schedule a demo to discuss. | ChurnZero encompasses the entire customer lifecycle from pre-purchase, onboarding, product adoption, renewal and expansion, and data analytics to back it all up. | Syncing with integrations is sometimes buggy and getting started proves to be a challenge for some users. |
Patch is an all-in-one customer retention platform that helps eCommerce stores in retaining customers and maximizing customer lifetime value.
The platform provides growing eCommerce brands with a full suite of customer retention tools, including a customizable customer loyalty program, advanced automations, as well as email and SMS/MMS so you can reach your customers on every channel. The platform allows you to segment your audience to send different messages based on the metrics you decide to boost your conversion rates.
With unparalleled hands-on support and comprehensive analytics & customer insights, Patch is the most well-rounded platform on the list.
The platform has an impressive feature set and it’s designed primarily for eCommerce stores built on Shopify.
It is a perfect fit for businesses that deal with high-volume or repeat customers, such as e-commerce or retail companies, while it may not be the best fit for categories like professional services, healthcare, or other smaller companies.
Also, collecting and acting upon customer feedback through the review request feature can help increase customer retention by improving the overall customer experience and addressing any issues that may be causing customers to leave.
With Patch’s free 14-day trial, you can get a real pulse on where your business is losing customers with Patch’s advanced retention dashboards and insights.
Once you are ready to get on board, pricing is scaled based on the number of contacts in your database, at just 1 cent per contact. Patch Pro includes unlimited email sends and access to every tool on the platform. Additional rates are added for SMS and MMS campaigns.
Totango’s state-of-the-art software platform helps businesses of all sizes optimize their customer engagement across every stage of the customer journey. Their software streamlines companies’ customer retention processes by monitoring customers’ health changes and driving proactive engagements.
With a focus on the customer journey, Totango helps businesses decide when and how to engage with existing customers. Totango’s software leaves some users wanting more notifications about insights and data changes and more interactivity with customer profiles.
Totango offers a Free Forever plan based on 100 customer accounts, which is great for individuals and startups. Their pricing model scales as your company grows, with the Enterprise plan being a custom price point.
Heap shows you all actions taken by your customers on your site or product. It then suggests how you can improve your business the most. Heap automatically collects data on your customers – what they click, where they go, what they do – all with minimal code.
The auto-reporting and integration tools are great for maximizing time. Sometimes onboarding and getting used to everything can be challenging, and their customization of data reporting charts could be improved.
Heap’s pricing begins with a free plan, with up to 10k sessions/month, one project, unlimited users, and more. From there, they offer a Growth plan ($3,600 annually), a Pro plan, and a custom premier plan that offers premier support, unlimited projects, and more.
Gainsight’s customer success management solution is a powerful way to proactively manage retention and unexpected churn. With data-driven tools like scorecards, teams have a centralized, holistic view of their customers, journey, and desired outcomes.
Gainsight’s automation flows and customer scorecards are popular features among users. Because Gainsight has so many tools and features, the program can be slow and buggy at times.
Gainsight structures their pricing the same way they offer solutions: customized. They do offer a free consultation to discuss your particular needs.
MoEngage uses AI-powered automation and optimization to allow brands to analyze audience behavior, segment the right audiences, and engage consumers with personalized communication at every touchpoint across their lifecycle.
MoEngage’s code-free solutions and customer re-engagement tools make learning the system and taking action easy. Mobile notification delivery rates are sometimes off, and their SMS marketing features could be improved.
MoEngage breaks down their packages, but you’ll have to create an account and chat with their team to get their price points. They also offer add-ons like advanced analytics, open analytics, cards, streams, data exports, and predictions.
ChurnZero’s primary mission is to help SaaS companies fight customer churn. Their platform helps businesses understand the complete customer lifecycle in real-time. Many user reviews boast about the real-time holistic view aggregated from multiple sources and integrations.
ChurnZero offers customers a team of support from the beginning to help businesses seamlessly integrate ChurnZero into their customer retention processes.
ChurnZero doesn’t offer pricing on their website, but they provide a free demo if you want to test the waters.
We hope you enjoyed our list that covers what we think are the 6 best customer retention tools and systems on the market.
Patch is the ultimate customer retention software solution that helps businesses get more out of their existing customers, dramatically boosting their lifetime value in the process. It will save you countless hours and thousands of dollars compared to trying dozens of tools.
Get up and running with world-class, hands-on support guiding you every step of the way!
Are you ready to give Patch a try? Get in touch with our team for a free demo.
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