7 Best Customer Communication Management Software
Table of contents
Be it a in-app notification or a monthly newsletter, clear and effective communication with customers is very important.
But the challenge here is how do you communicate at scale and yet personalize the message? How do you ensure your brand’s tone is consistent across all channels – email, chat, knowledge base, and more?
Customer communication management (CCM) software can help with this.
In this guide, let’s take a look at what a customer communication management software is, its importance, and seven tools that you can choose from.
Table of Contents
- What is customer communication management?
- What is a customer communication management software?
- 7 best tools for customer communication management
- Why is customer communication management important?
- Difference between customer communication management vs. customer relationship management
- Conclusion
What is customer communication management?
Support teams handles different kinds of customer queries and concerns on a daily basis. They need a way to track these queries and also figure out which ones to prioritize. That’s where customer (or client) communication management comes in.
It’s a process by which companies organize and carry out their regular customer communications. For instance, a company might use its client communication platform to organize and prioritize support requests, ensuring that urgent issues get immediate attention.
What is a customer communication management software?
Businesses can manage their customer communications across many channels with the use of a communication management software. Sending customized messages via email, SMS, push notifications, web pages, and in-app notifications, are just a few of the activities that the software can assist with. In essence, the communication management system helps organize regular communication requirements, making sure that customer inquiries are not missed.
Hiver, a platform that can work in your inbox, is one example of a customer communication tool. It helps teams manage their customer support emails effectively and even automates the workflows, thus saving time.
7 best tools for customer communication management
A quick comparison of some of the best customer communication management software:
| Tool | Key Features | Starting Price | G2 Rating |
| Hiver | – Shared Inbox – Email Notes and Templates – Collision Detection – Automated Workflows – Analytics and Reports – AI Summarizer | $19/user/month | 4.6⭐ |
| Help Scout | – Customer Profiles – Saved Replies – Beacon (Chat and Messaging) | $25/user/month | 4.4⭐ |
| Front | – Multi-channel Support – Message Templates – Automation Rules | $19/user/month | 4.7⭐ |
| Intercom | – In-app Messaging – Custom Bots – Email Campaigns | $39/user/month | 4.5⭐ |
| Zendesk | – Ticketing System – Live Chat – Email Management | $19/user/month | 4.3⭐ |
| Quadient Inspire | – Omnichannel Communication – Template Management – Workflow Automation | Not available | 4.8⭐ |
| Podium | – Automated Responses – Feedback Collection – Analytics and Reporting | $399/month | 4.5⭐ |
1. Hiver
Hiver, a customer support tool, helps you seamlessly manage customer communication across different channels – email, live chat, voice, knowledge base, and even WhatsApp. It intuitively fits inside your inbox (Gmail or Outlook),making it very easy to setup and get started with – usually within an hour.
Another benefit of Hiver is that it integrates with a wide range of tools and applications, including Salesforce, Zapier, Asana, Jira, Slack, and Aircall. It functions as an all-in-one platform for managing consumer communications.
Key Features:
- Cross-Channel Collaboration: Team members can collaborate on customer queries regardless of the channel. You can write notes and have internal discussions on customer issues without sending more internal emails.
- Collision Detection: Hiver notifies team members in real-time if someone else is already replying to an customer query. This prevents duplicate responses and ensures clear, consistent communication.
- Tags and Categories: Organize customer communications by tagging emails with relevant labels. This helps in categorizing queries, feedback, or issues, making it easier to prioritize and address them.
- Automation: Hiver helps set up rules to automate repetitive tasks. For instance, emails from a particular client can be automatically labelled and assigned to a specific team member, ensuring swift action.
- AI Summarizer: This feature provides a concise summary of email threads in a single click. Team members no longer have to manually read through emails to understand what is being discussed.
Pricing:
Hiver offers three types of pricing.
- Lite plan: $19/user/month
- Pro plan: $49/user/month
- Elite plan: $79/user/month
Free Trial: 7 days
“I like that Hiver keeps everything organised for us in regards to communication across different departments. It is the sole reason that things do not fall through the cracks, and it enables our teams to provide our customers with the very best customer service experience.” – Hiver User | G2 Review
2. Help Scout
An effective platform for customer communication management, Help Scout, helps businesses build better relationships with customers by offering features like self-service and proactive messaging.
It empowers support teams manage communication across multiple channels like email and live chat. Additionally, it offers condition-based workflows to automate operations, such as assigning conversations, adding tags, and escalating queries.
Key Features:
- Shared Inboxes: Help Scout’s shared inboxes allow teams to collaboratively manage customer emails, ensuring every query is addressed in a timely manner.
- Knowledge Base Integration: Teams can quickly pull information from the knowledge base, ensuring that customers receive accurate and comprehensive answers to their queries.
- Beacon (Chat and Messaging): This feature allows businesses to engage with customers in real-time through chat
- Saved Replies: Create and use pre-written responses for frequently asked questions.
One drawback of Help Scout is that it doesn’t natively support communication channels like social media or SMS. For businesses looking to streamline client communication on these channels, this tool may not be suitable.
“Integration with some channels ((like Whatsapp) is not available on Help Scout. Also, round robins and more complex adjustments cannot be done. So, it’s not sufficient for larger, more complex operations.” – Help Scout User | G2 Review
Pricing:
Help Scout offers three types of pricing plans:
- Standard: $25 per user per month
- Plus: $50 per user per month
- Pro: $65 per user per month
Free Trial: 15 days
Top 10 Help Scout Alternatives
3. Front
Front is a feature-rich platform that unifies communication with customers across phone, text messages, social media, and emails. It also helps organizations measure customer satisfaction and team performance through relevant metrics that include response time and SLA breaches.
Key Features:
- Collaborative Inboxes: Front allows teams to share inboxes, which ensures that all members can view, manage, and respond to customer emails without overlaps.
- Automated Workflows: Set up rules to automate repetitive tasks, such as tagging, assigning, or archiving conversations based on specific criteria.
- Internal Comments: Team members can discuss customer queries internally within the same email thread. This helps ensure that all context on a customer query can be accessed right next to it, facilitating collaborative problem-solving.
- Integration with other Tools: Front seamlessly integrates with CRM systems, project management tools, and other software, ensuring that all relevant customer data is accessible without switching platforms.
While Front offers a range of features, smaller teams might find it challenging to use, due to its alien interface. This can lead to initial inefficiencies until the platform is fully mastered.
“If not everyone is using it, it can get confusing. Then there’s also the transition from Gmail to using Front, which is another learning curve. I don’t like how my emails don’t seem to start at the very top of my inbox. I always have to scroll to the top to get to the most current emails.” – Front User | G2 Review
Pricing:
Front offers four pricing plans.
- Starter: $19 per person per month
- Growth: $59 per person per month
- Scale: $99 per person per month
- Premier: $229 per person per month
Free Trial: 7 days
4. Intercom
Intercom is AI-powered customer communication software that takes helps companies take a conversational approach to helping customers. The tool stands out for its AI-powered bots, automation, and multi-channel features. However, it doesn’t yet offer 24/7 vendor support.
Key Features:
- Messenger and Omnichannel Support: Intercom’s messenger supports customers effectively when they need assistance within a product. Additionally, with integrations for email, SMS, and more, customers can choose their preferred communication channel.
- Proactive Support: Businesses can onboard, educate, and notify customers with automated, in-context messages, reducing support ticket volume and enhancing customer experience.
- AI Chatbot – Fin: Intercom’s AI chatbot, Fin, uses advanced AI technology to provide accurate answers to basic customer queries. This reduces resolution time and improves efficiency of your support team.
- Workflows: With Intercom Workflows, your team can easily set up and manage automations using bots, triggers, conditions, and rules. This will ensure the customer receives the right message at the right moment.
However, Intercom is expensive compared to other tools with similar features (like Hiver). Small businesses or startups won’t find it to be value for money.
“The only criticism I have is that it’s really designed for mid- to large-sized companies, it can be a bit expensive for a solo provider, independent brand, or small office. Even though the features are robust they should offer a simplified product which is more affordable for smaller companies.” – Intercom User | G2 Review
Pricing:
In a nutshell, Intercom offers four different tiers of pricing.
- Start: $39 per month per seat
- Grow: $99 per month (includes 5 seats)
- Accelerate: from $499 per month (includes 10 seats)
- Scale: from $999 per month (includes 10 seats)
Free Trial: 14 days
5. Zendesk
With AI-powered customer support, Zendesk is a popular platform for managing client communications via text, mobile, phone, email, live chat, and social media. It offers a suite of features that are majorly beneficial for enterprise companies.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel Support: Zendesk centralizes communications from email, chat, phone, and social media, allowing businesses to manage all customer interactions from a unified dashboard.
- Self-Service Options: By setting up a knowledge base for your company using Zendesk, your customers can find answers to common queries themselves. This reduces overall support ticket volume.
- AI-Powered Assistance: Zendesk incorporates AI capabilities to provide accurate and instant answers to basic customer queries, streamlining the support process.
- Advanced Reporting and Analytics: Zendesk offers detailed insights into support metrics, customer satisfaction scores, and agent performance, enabling businesses to refine their communication strategies.
However, one significant drawback of Zendesk is that the platform is too difficult and complex to get started with, and the training time can be quite high.
“Zendesk can get complicated. Lots of features, customizations, but not a ton of support on implementing (not without a high $$ at least). Basic/standard is pretty boring, their sales team is not technically saavy and usually just reaches out to get you to upgrade.” – Zendesk User | G2 Review
Pricing:
Zendesk’s Support plan has three pricing tiers.
- Team: $19/user/month
- Professional: $55/user/month
- Enterprise: $115/user/month
Zendesk also has a Suite plan that offers four pricing tiers.
- Team: $55/user/month
- Growth: $89/user/month
- Professional: $115/user/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing.
Free Trial: 14 days
6. Quadient Inspire
Quadient Inspire is a unified customer communications management platform that helps businesses quickly create, manage, and deliver timely, personalised, compliant communication across multiple channels.
The software uses artificial intelligence (AI),machine learning (ML),and natural language processing (NLP) models to retire legacy CCM systems and reduce time spent on manual tasks.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel Support: Quadient Inspire’s centralized platform facilitates the creation and delivery of personalized, compliant customer communications across diverse channels, ensuring a consistent message regardless of the medium.
- Personalized Digital Communications: With Quadient Inspire Evolve, businesses can design and deliver digital communication that is tailored to and resonates with individual customer preferences and needs.
- Journey Mapping: Quadient Inspire Journey provides an integrated approach to customer journey mapping, allowing businesses to design and implement customer-first omnichannel experiences.
- Automated Document Preparation: Quadient Impress Automate centralizes and automates the creation, distribution, and output of essential documents, reducing manual errors and streamlining workflows.
“Quadient is easy and platform independent where we can produce any type of output just through module settings, and also we can integrate it with any other software. Like they have Scaler and Interactive for producing the output as per client requirements.” – Quadient User | G2 Review
Pricing:
Not provided by the vendor.
7. Podium
Podium is an AI-powered platform that helps your business manage leads and customer interactions efficiently. With Podium, your team can streamline conversations from chats, texts, calls, and social messages in one place. The software also enhances your online presence by helping you automatically respond to customer reviews, in a personalized manner.
Key Features:
- Review Management: Podium simplifies the process of managing online reviews. Businesses can solicit, monitor, and respond to reviews from platforms like Google and Facebook directly within Podium. Internal notes can also be added to ensure team-wide awareness when addressing customer feedback.
- AI Review Replies: With this feature, you can quickly create accurate and personalized responses to customer reviews, saving you time and effort. It helps you respond to reviews in seconds, ensuring each reply feels unique and thoughtful.
- Live Chat Widget: Businesses can embed a live chat feature on their websites to capture leads and address customer queries in real time.
- Payment Processing: The platform offers convenient text-to-pay and eCard reader features, making transactions smoother for both businesses and customers.
“Podium helped bring our small business processes into the modern day. The ability to text with our customers has been hugely helpful. Communication is quick and easy for us AND the customer, which enables both parties to keep the other informed.” – Podium User | G2 Review
Pricing:
Podium offers three types of pricing plans.
- Core: $399 per month
- Pro: $599 per month
- Signature: Custom pricing
Free Trial: 14 days
Why is customer communication management important?
Here are some reasons why a communication management system is important:
- Consistency across channels: CCM ensures that the messaging and branding remain consistent regardless of the communication channel, be it email, SMS, web, or print.
For example, a retail company sends out promotional emails and SMS. By using a tool for CCM, both the email and SMS will have the same promotional content, with consistency in tone and branding.
- Operational efficiency: Automating the communication process reduces manual effort, minimizes errors, and speeds up delivery.
- Personalization: ACCM software can tailor communications based on individual customer data, preferences, and behavior, making messages more relevant and engaging.
Let’s say a credit card company sends out monthly statements. Using a CCM tool, the statement can also include personalized offers based on the user’s spending habits, such as discounts at their frequently visited restaurants.
- Compliance and risk management: CCM solutions can ensure that communications adhere to regulatory standards and guidelines, reducing the risk of non-compliance.
- Analytics and feedback: Many CCM tools offer analytical capabilities, allowing businesses to track the effectiveness of their communications and gather feedback for continuous improvement.
For example, an e-commerce store sends out a newsletter. Using the analytics from their CCM software, they can track open rates, click-through rates, and customer feedback to refine future communications.
- Cost savings: By streamlining and automating communication processes, businesses can reduce operational costs associated with manual efforts and inefficiencies.
72% of customers switch brands after one negative experience. With an effective communications platform, you can prevent customer dissatisfaction and churn.
Difference between customer communication management vs. customer relationship management
Both Customer Communications Management (CCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are essential tools for businesses, but they serve distinct purposes. Here’s a detailed comparison:
| Criteria | Customer Communication Management (CCM) | Customer Relationship Management (CRM) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | Creation, distribution, and management of customer communications. | Managing interactions with current and potential customers. |
| Key Features | – Template Design – Content Management – Multi-channel Distribution – Analytics | – Contact Management – Sales Automation – Customer Support and Service – Marketing Automation – Analytics and Reporting |
| Use Cases | – Sending monthly statements or bills. – Distributing promotional materials. – Automating regulatory communications. | – Tracking and managing sales leads and opportunities. – Offering customer support. – Segmenting customers for marketing campaigns. |
| Benefits | – Consistent and personalized communication. – Operational efficiency. – Reduced compliance risks. | – 360-degree view of customers. – Streamlined sales and marketing processes. – Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. |
Conclusion
Good communication is more than just responding to customers; it’s about earning their trust and understanding what they need. We’ve looked at many tools, and Hiver really stands out. It helps businesses not only manage messages but also respond in a way that makes customers feel valued.
In today’s world, every chat or email a business sends out shapes how people see a brand. So, having tools like Hiver is super helpful.
To end, it’s good to remember: even with the best tools, it’s genuine care and understanding that make the biggest difference in communication.
Get started with Hiver today. Free for 7 days.
