Best customer experience software for small businesses

Most small businesses set out to create positive customer experiences. But without the right systems or software, that can be a challenging task. A great customer experience platform can make a world of difference. It helps you track feedback, follow through on solutions, and manage customer interactions at scale.

This article covers the 13 best customer experience software options — from phone solutions to CRMs to help desk tools — so you can choose the right platform for your business.

13 best customer experience software for 2025

We sifted through dozens of customer experience platforms to narrow down the best options for 2025. First, we sorted through user reviews on platforms like G2 and Trustpilot. Then, we ranked the remaining software based on the value it offered in terms of features. This included workflow automations, ease of use, and scalability for growing businesses.

Here’s a quick chart breaking down the best platforms:

CX software	Starting price	Free trial	Best for
Quo	$15 per user per month	✔️ 7-day free trial	Automating and collaborating on phone communication
Qualtrics	Custom pricing	Strategy & Research plan only	Analyzing customer data at scale
Zendesk	$19 per user per month	✔️ 14-day free trial	Adding AI tools across all help desk channels
Salesforce Agentforce	$25 per user per month	✔️ 30-day free trial	Automating customer support and integrating with Salesforce apps
HubSpot Service Hub	$9 per user per month	✔️ 14-day free trial	Integrating with other HubSpot Suites
Freshdesk	$15 per user per month	✔️ 14-day free trial	Simple and user-friendly ticketing
Survicate	$79 per month	✔️ 10-day free trial	Running customer surveys across multiple channels
Zoho Desk	$7 per user per month	✔️ 15-day free trial	Integrating with Zoho CRM or other Zoho apps
Birdeye	Custom pricing	✔️ 30-day free trial	Managing company reputation and requesting positive reviews
Intercom	$29 per user per month	✔️ 14-day free trial	In-app support and proactive engagement
HelpScout	$25 per user per month	✔️ 15-day free trial	Teams primarily supporting customers via email
LiveChat	$19 per user per month	✔️ 14-day free trial	Converting website visitors into leads
Hotjar	$40 per month	✔️ 30-day free trial	Customer behavior tracking

Keep reading for more details about each CX tool.

1. Quo: Best for automating and collaborating on phone communication

Pricing: Quo pricing starts at $15 per user per month, with 10 Sona-handled calls free 

Pros

• Unlimited calling and texting in the US and Canada
• Easy setup
• AI-powered call and text management

Cons

• No verification through two-factor authentication*

*Nearly all virtual phone numbers share this problem. Companies like Facebook, Uber, and Google rarely let you authenticate accounts through a virtual phone number.

Quo, formerly OpenPhone, is a VoIP phone system that helps you build better customer relationships. You can turn any Quo number into a shared number, which lets anyone with access easily review conversation histories. Everyone who’s a member can browse calls, texts, and call recordings. They can also make calls and send texts together from the same number.

Quo’s visual, drag-and-drop call flow builder automatically routes callers to where they need to go. Sona, Quo’s AI voice agent, can answer calls, take messages, qualify leads, and send text messages with helpful info. And it can connect calls to team members when needed. You can add Sona to any place within a call flow. 

On the Business plan, you can automatically record every call and generate transcriptions and summaries. No need to manually listen back to find key information. This also helps you follow up with customers faster, improving the customer experience.

Speaking of improvements, Quo helps you organize customer communications and look for CX gaps. You can set up:

• Smart call tagging. AI call tags automatically categorize calls based on the call’s content. They can help identify call drivers, like “Billing issue” or “Support request.” You can also look more closely at customer sentiment. For example, how many calls are marked as “Negative experience” versus “Positive interaction?”
• Analytics and reporting. This includes real-time insights into call and text volume metrics. You can also measure the time spent on calls and the number of unique conversations. That way, you keep an eye on team performance and offer coaching where necessary.
• Integrations: We offer native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Jobber, and Slack. Plus, our API, Make, and Zapier integrations let you connect 8,000+ tools. That way, you have a single source of truth for all your customer interactions.

You can try Quo for free with a seven-day free trial.

2. Qualtrics: Best for enterprise-level customer research 

Pricing: Contact sales for custom pricing 

Pros

• Location-specific performance dashboards
• Employee experience capabilities
• Compatible with 35+ customer channels

Cons

• No transparent pricing
• Could be overkill for small brands

Qualtrics is an experience management, or XM, platform that collects and analyzes large amounts of business data. To analyze the customer experience, you’ll need its Voice of Customer software. This sends out surveys, gathers feedback, and predicts when a customer might churn. You can even set up churn alerts to give you a shot at saving high-value relationships. And if you’re unsuccessful, you still collect insights that improve your customer experience program.

You can connect Qualtrics to more than 35 customer channels, such as WhatsApp, SMS, email, web, and in-app. Then, you can use tools like heatmaps and session replays to see where customers keep running into problems. Qualtrics’ analytics tools — Stats iQ and Text iQ — can help you do this easily. For example, you can find relationships between two numbers, like customer churn and time spent on hold. This helps clarify what’s driving poor experiences so you can fix them before they snowball.

Qualtrics has native integrations with Salesforce, Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, FullStory, and Quantum Metric. There’s also an extensive API for custom integrations.

3. Zendesk: Best for AI-powered omnichannel support

Pricing: Starts at $19 per agent per month

Pros

• Omnichannel ticketing system
• AI agents
• Analytics and reporting

Cons

• Limited features for call management

Zendesk is a customer service platform that brings help desk channels — like email, chat, voice, social media, and SMS — into a shared workspace. You can then automate FAQs to lighten your team’s load. This might be self-service tool portals for routine questions or AI agents for more involved tasks. Your human reps will still handle complex questions, but not without AI support. Zendesk’s Copilot suggests replies and actions. For example, writing an empathetic message or dispatching a technician.

Beyond speeding up workflows, you can use Zendesk to track customer behavior and team performance. You can instantly assess customer churn risk and look for patterns. Plus, you can track trends for both AI and human reps. Zendesk automatically provides coaching feedback and recommendations based on how a conversation goes. And you can also jump in to provide your own feedback, then mark conversations as “Spotlighted” so you can address recurring issues faster.

It has integrations with 2,000+ third-party apps, including major customer relationship management apps, ecommerce platforms, and business tools. There’s also an API for custom development.

4. Salesforce Agentforce Service: Best CRM for automating support workflows

Pricing: Starts at $25 per user per month

Pros

• Omnichannel routing across email, phone, chat, SMS, and social media
• Advanced analytics and AI insights
• Native integrations with Salesforce Cloud

Cons

• Doesn’t always make sense for brands not using the Salesforce ecosystem

Agentforce Service, formerly Salesforce Service Cloud, is a customer service platform built on top of Salesforce’s CRM. Your team can view all customer details — past purchases, conversations, tickets, and marketing history — in one place. No need to ask customers to repeat information or switch platforms to log updates in your CRM. You can also connect with other sources of business data. The AppExchange offers 5,000+ pre-built integrations and APIs so you can customize workflows to your liking.

Salesforce offers a conversational AI called Einstein Copilot, which is designed to help reps automate more work. It can instantly route cases, suggest knowledge articles, and recommend next steps. It works across all Salesforce tools and applications, so it easily completes tasks between your help desk and CRM.

5. HubSpot Service Hub: Best for companies already using HubSpot

Pricing: Starts at $9 per user per month; free plan for up to two users

Pros

• Create support response templates
• Full visibility into the customer journey
• Connects sales, support, and marketing

Cons

• Doesn’t always make sense for brands not using the HubSpot ecosystem

HubSpot Service Hub is a customer service platform built alongside the HubSpot CRM. It’s ideal if you already use HubSpot for sales or marketing and want your support team plugged into the same ecosystem. Everything lives in one CRM, so reps see the full lifecycle of every customer. You won’t need to ask them to repeat themselves multiple times when they call with issues. Plus, it’s easier to handle handoffs between departments.

You can track how response times impact retention and spot upsell opportunities. Plus, it’s easier to see which issues cause the most churn or revenue loss. If you want more customization for your team, there are 1,500+ third-party apps available in the HubSpot App Marketplace.

6. Freshdesk: Best user-friendly ticketing system

Pricing: Starts at $15 per agent per month; free plan is available for up to two agents

Pros

• SLA performance dashboards
• Easy to set up a knowledge base
• Easy to track team productivity metrics

Cons

• AI features require multiple upgrades

Freshdesk is collaborative help desk software known for its ease of use. With it, you can work together with your team on complex issues. You can also leave internal notes, or @mentions, and create sub-tasks that are easy to delegate. Most users say they get up and running within minutes, with minimal training required for their team.

You can also use Freshdesk’s AI tools to provide a unified customer experience. Freddy AI Copilot recommends responses, translates messages, and summarizes long conversations. Freddy AI Agents perform tasks for reps, like processing refunds or changing subscriptions. Supervisors and managers can also tap into Freddy AI Insights to monitor team productivity and CSAT scores, analyze root causes, and understand why those numbers fluctuate.

Freshdesk integrates with 150+ apps, including major CRMs, ecommerce platforms, collaboration tools, analytics software, and Zapier.

7. Survicate: Best for collecting multi-channel survey feedback

Pricing: Starts at $79 per month; free plan is available

Pros

• Real-time dashboards
• Pre-built templates for NPS®, CSAT, CES, and product feedback surveys
• Partial response survey capture

Cons

• More expensive than other platforms

Survicate is a customer feedback platform that lets you create surveys across multiple platforms. You can script and send surveys via email, website widgets, in-app prompts, mobile SDK, SMS, Intercom chat, or Braze messages.

Once you’ve collected these surveys, you can pull out insights by using Survicate’s AI Insights Hub and Research Assistant. These tools automatically categorize feedback, detect sentiment, and identify churn signals in customers. They can also help answer research questions — no need to manually read through thousands of responses.

With your data and insights in hand, you can set up workflows and automate tasks. Let’s say your AI spots a customer who answered a survey negatively. You might create a customer experience automation that updates their CRM records in HubSpot or Salesforce. This triggers a follow-up sequence advising your support team to reach out. Hopefully, you can catch them and turn things around before they leave your business.

Survicate also offers 40+ native integrations with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Intercom, Segment, Slack, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, and Zapier.

8. Zoho Desk: Best helpdesk that integrates with other Zoho apps

Pricing: Starts at $7 per user per month; free for up to three agents

Pros

• Global language support for knowledge bases
• Skills-based ticket routing
• 100+ Zoho app integrations

Cons

• Doesn’t always make sense for brands not using the Zoho ecosystem

Like Salesforce and HubSpot, Zoho Desk can connect directly to its own CRM. It also works natively with 100+ other Zoho applications for project management, finance, HR, and more. If you already use Zoho products, Desk is a great way to prevent data silos. Zoho Desk’s automations can help you move faster when serving customers, which is a great way to improve your CX process.

You can set up workflow automations with its no-code drag-and-drop builder. For example, you can set up workflows to add leads to your CRM, create tickets in your helpdesk, or start projects in Zoho People. Beyond basic workflows, Zoho offers the Zia AI assistant. This is an AI copilot that tracks CX in real time, like gauging a customer’s sentiment while they interact with your team. It can recommend knowledge base articles so your team doesn’t need to open multiple tabs. Plus, it generates response suggestions, delivering faster, more consistent support to customers.

9. Birdeye: Best for reputation management 

Pricing: Contact sales for custom pricing 

Pros

• Automated review requests
• Competitive benchmarking
• Local SEO optimization

Cons

• No transparent pricing

Birdeye is a customer experience management platform for businesses with multiple locations. It’s the only platform on this list that offers reputation management tools to monitor and manage conversations about your brand online. This starts by connecting with up to 200+ review sites, like Google, Facebook, Yelp, Healthgrades, Zillow, and TripAdvisor. 

Once you connect these sites, you can track and respond to customer comments in a unified, multi-channel inbox. You can also connect to platforms like SMS, email, Facebook, and Instagram so you never miss customer messages on specific channels.

Plus, Birdeye comes with AI agents that automatically monitor reviews for your team. There are five different categories, depending on your needs:

1. Listings AI optimizes where your business shows up.
2. Reviews AI automatically requests and responds to online reviews.
3. Social AI writes and publishes social media posts for your business.
4. Messaging AI segments customers and works to generate leads.
5. Reports AI assesses churn risk by customer and measures CX performance by location.

10. Intercom: Best for in-app product support and proactive engagement

Pricing: Starts at $29 per user per month

Pros

• In-app messenger to support customers
• Integrations with major CRMs, analytics platforms, Stripe, and more
• Lead generation capabilities

Cons

• Not ideal for service-led, non-product-based teams

Intercom is an AI customer service platform for businesses selling products. For example, if you’re an ecommerce brand or a SaaS startup, it can help improve resolutions and eliminate downtime for your team. There are two ways to access Intercom’s CX features:

1. Fin, an AI agent that works on top of any existing help desk
2. The Intercom Suite, which combines Fin AI with Intercom’s dedicated helpdesk

With the Intercom Suite, you can connect with existing tools like CRMs, analytics, and data warehouses. Then reps can personalize every conversation by checking the history of each contact. This may include the customer’s purchase history, product usage, subscription tier, and behavioral insights. 

You can also use Fin to automatically resolve simple customer questions. This AI agent uses a combination of your knowledge base, product data, and conversation history to answer simple inquiries. You can determine how Fin answers questions with custom workflow automations. 

For example, you might create a triage system so Fin knows which queries to answer and which ones to escalate. Then, it decides which team member to route to and when. Just set up a qualification flow so it automatically sends customers to the right rep.

11. Help Scout: Best for email-based support

Pricing: Starts at $25 per user per month

Pros

• Template responses for common questions
• Automated workflows
• Customer profiles with context

Cons

• Doesn’t connect with channels outside of email, chat, and social media

Help Scout is a customer conversation platform that combines email, chat, and social media in a single shared inbox. Its interface was designed to look like your email. This makes it easier to manage incoming conversations, assign ownership, and track statuses with your team. Worried about doubling up on work? Help Scout has you covered. It fires off automatic alerts when someone else views or replies to a conversation you’re currently in.

Help Scout also offers tools that go beyond its shared inbox. Its Beacon Messaging widget, for example, creates self-service workflows for customers. You can embed the tool on your website or directly in an app. That way, users can search your knowledge base, submit contact forms, or live chat on a single interface. Just keep in mind that Help Scout doesn’t natively support phone calls. If you want to make and receive calls, you’ll need to connect with a third-party phone system like Quo. 

Help Scout integrates with 50+ apps, including Salesforce, HubSpot,  Slack, Jira, Shopify, Stripe, and Zapier.

12. LiveChat: Best for converting website visitors into leads

Pricing: Starts at $19 per user per month

Pros

• Chat transcripts and analytics
• Canned responses for chat
• Hybrid AI and AI-assisted chat workflows

Cons

• Not designed for teams that don’t have multiple communication channels

As the name suggests, LiveChat is an AI-powered chat tool for customer success and sales teams. You can customize each chatbot to your specific use case. For example, one for visitor tracking, one for lead generation, and one for customer support. You can integrate LiveChat with your website or email, along with apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Salesforce, and Zapier. Then, you decide what role it should fill. Should it solve problems for customers? Qualify leads with pre-chat surveys? Or route interested parties to your sales team?

You can create LiveChat bots that are 100% AI-powered or set up hybrid live chat solutions that escalate queries to your team. Since reps work from a multi-channel messaging hub, they don’t need to switch platforms to answer escalated messages. Plus, hybrid live chat solutions proactively reach out to leads and customers. This lets you trigger automated chats based on specific conditions or critical decision moments. That way, you can get ‌ahead of negative CX issues like churn or start positive experiences before leads turn into customers.

13. Hotjar: Best for understanding customer behavior

Pricing: Starts at $40 per month; free plan is available

Pros

• On-page feedback widgets
• Form analytics
• Heatmaps and sessions

Cons

• Less applicable to teams that don’t rely heavily on website conversions

Hotjar is a product experience insights platform that tracks how customers behave on your website. Its biggest claim to fame is visual heatmaps. With these, you can see exactly where users click, move their mouse, and scroll on every page with color-coded overlays. Reds highlight areas that attract interest, while blues mark those that go unnoticed. You can also watch customers navigate your website in real time with session recordings.

Beyond heatmaps and sessions, you can tap into Funnels to measure conversions. That way, you can identify which issues cause visitors to leave or customers or to churn. You’ll be able to calculate drop-off rates at each step of critical user journeys, like signup, checkout, or onboarding. Then, you can use surveys, interviews, and user tests to confirm your suspicions and start working on solutions.

Hotjar connects with Google Analytics, Segment, Optimizely, Slack, Zapier, and other  tools. There’s also an API available for custom integrations.

What is customer experience software?

Customer experience management software, or CXM, is a tool that helps businesses manage customer interactions. These interactions, or touchpoints, are places where buyers interact with your team across their customer journey. They could be organic and paid social media posts, interactions with sales and support teams, or experiences using your product or service.

You may also have heard customer experience software referred to as:

• User experience software
• CX platforms
• Customer journey mapping

Benefits of CXM software

Here are several more ways CXM software can help build better relationships with customers:

• Reduce churn. When customers feel valued through fast, personalized interactions, they’re less likely to leave you for a competitor. Salesforce found that 65% of customers stay loyal to brands that offer personalized experiences.
• Boost revenue. Higher customer loyalty means higher retention, which boosts your customers’ lifetime value. Preventing even 5% of customers from switching to a competitor can add thousands in revenue.
• Improve operational efficiency. Free up time for higher-impact work by automating repetitive tasks. Instead of manually logging calls in your CRM system, for example, you can spend time building customer connections.
• Increase data-driven decisions. Rather than assuming what your customers need, you can pull data from a platform that collects it automatically. This makes it easy to identify service gaps and improve your CSAT based on proven patterns.

Key features to look for in CX software platforms

The best CX software platforms offer features like:

• Multi-channel support. You’ll want native support for your most-used channels, whether that’s phone, email, live chat, social media, or SMS. Bringing these touchpoints together into one platform lets your team handle conversations easily.
• Integrations. You probably won’t find a single platform that covers every channel. That’s where integrations and APIs come in. For example, you can easily connect Quo and Salesforce to automatically sync phone conversations in your CRM. No more data silos. 
• Automation and workflow capabilities. These reduce manual work and free your team to focus on complex customer issues. Look for software with drag-and-drop tools so you don’t need developers to build workflows. 
• Analytics and reporting. Look for easy-to-read dashboards that offer metrics that matter to your business, like predictive analytics, help desk statistics, or NPS scores.
• Feedback collection. Speaking of automation, let your CX software collect customer insights in real time. Surveys that trigger at key moments automatically gather customer data. For example, they can capture customer sentiment right after a call.
• AI capabilities: AI-powered chatbots and voice agents help manage incoming queries. For example, AI agents like Sona can answer routine questions, then escalate to a human when needed.

Beyond these specific features, you’ll need software that’s easy to use. The best CX platforms offer intuitive interfaces that don’t require weeks of onboarding to get up and running.

How to choose the right CX software for your business

Here are some pointers for picking CX software for your business:

1. Define your goals. Start by clarifying what you want your CX software to accomplish. Are you trying to reduce response times? Improve customer satisfaction scores? Consolidate multiple tools into one platform? Optimize customer engagement?
2. Understand the customer journey. Map out how customers currently interact with your business, as well as friction points. Maybe calls go unanswered during peak hours, or customers have to repeat themselves when they switch channels.
3. Assess your current tech stack. First, list every tool your team currently uses for CX. Then, check whether potential platforms offer native integrations with your existing tools. Without integrations, you’ll need to rely on IT resources or workarounds. This can lead to lost context and limit your team’s effectiveness.
4. Prioritize key features. Look for features that solve real pain points for your team and customers. For example, if you’re not capturing actionable feedback, prioritize real-time surveys and sentiment tracking. If your team needs to work more efficiently, opt for platforms with AI-driven automation and routing.
5. Test and demo. Have multiple team members test the software during a trial. Notice how long setup takes and whether they can easily navigate core features. If there’s a steep learning curve, you may want to reevaluate.
6. Evaluate cost and ROI. Look beyond the monthly subscription fee to calculate the total cost of ownership. Factor in training time, integration expenses, and premium support tiers. Then estimate your return on investment based on time saved through automation and potential revenue from reduced churn.
7. Read reviews. Before committing to a platform, check G2, Capterra, and similar review sites. Pay attention to common complaints and how well the platform supports businesses of your size.

Elevate your customer experience with Quo

There’s no such thing as the “best” customer experience platform — only the one that fits your specific needs. And if phone support is central to your business, your CX platform needs strong communication capabilities. 

A phone system like Quo helps you scale support without losing the personal touch. AI-powered call transcripts, summaries, and tagging help you sort through insights efficiently. That way, you can identify issues before they escalate. With 8,000+ integrations available, you can connect Quo with your existing CX stack and maintain a complete view of every customer interaction.

The best part is, you can get started in 15 minutes.

Join 90,000+ companies improving their CX by signing up for a seven-day trial of Quo.

Customer experience software FAQs