Did you know that only 18% of companies focus on retention and more than 44% on acquisition? Unfortunately, acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.
However, retaining customers is a challenging task and we all know that churn is inevitable. But how can you make the most of your customer retention efforts? By using the right tool.
Discover the top 14 customer retention software solutions designed to enhance customer experience, reduce churn, and boost loyalty.
What is customer retention software?
Customer retention software includes a range of tools designed to help businesses reduce customer churn by boosting satisfaction and loyalty.
These tools can be used by sales, marketing, and customer success teams as they work to engage and retain existing customers. Retention software empowers these teams to deliver personalized experiences and create targeted strategies that build long-term relationships.
The importance of customer retention software
Top customer retention software can help you lower churn and retain your customers, of course. However, implementing this type of software can come with other benefits, including:
- Increased revenue
As you know, retaining existing customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Loyal customers are also more likely to spend more over time.
By Implementing loyalty programs and personalized marketing you can boost repeat sales and increase the customer lifetime value (CLV).
- Enhanced customer experience
Personalizing customer interactions and providing tailored experiences make customers feel valued, which leads to higher satisfaction and loyalty.
Tools like Zendesk offer omnichannel support which offers a unified brand experience across various touchpoints.
- Improves customer support and success
Customer retention tools can streamline support processes, enable quick and effective resolution of customer issues, and ensure customer success.
Custify helps CS teams track customer health scores and proactively address issues, reducing churn.
- Automates various tasks
This type of tool can automate repetitive tasks in marketing, customer success, and support, freeing up time for more strategic activities.
For instance, Optimove automates personalized marketing campaigns, while Whatfix automates user onboarding and training processes.
- Facilitates customer feedback and improvement
Some of the best customer retention software can collect and analyze customer feedback to identify areas for improvement.
ProProfs Qualaroo uses surveys to gather feedback and AI sentiment analysis to understand customer emotions. This can help you better understand the needs of your customers.
- Encourages loyalty and advocacy
By implementing loyalty programs you can foster long-term relationships and encourage customers to become brand advocates.
Open Loyalty allows businesses to create customized loyalty programs, which can lead to repeat purchases and referrals.
The 14 Best Customer Retention Software
1. Custify
Custify is a customer success software designed to help SaaS businesses reduce churn and increase customer retention. Our platform provides an intuitive interface that enables your CSMs to focus on what matters most: your customers. By integrating with your existing CRM, support, and billing systems, Custify offers a 360-degree view of each customer’s health and engagement.
The platform’s automated workflows allow your team to identify at-risk customers and proactively address their needs, ensuring they stay engaged and satisfied. Custify’s health scores are customizable, letting you track the metrics that matter most to your business.
Features:
- Customer health scores
- Automated workflows
- Task management
- Playbooks
- 360-degree customer view
Pricing: Contact Custify for a quote.
2. Userpilot
Userpilot is a product growth and user onboarding platform that helps SaaS companies improve user adoption and retention. This no-code solution allows you to create interactive in-app experiences tailored to each user segment, ensuring that your customers understand and utilize the full value of your product.
With Userpilot, you can design and implement onboarding flows, tooltips, modals, and checklists without any coding knowledge. This makes it easy to guide new users through your product’s features and encourage deeper engagement. The analytics tools provide insights into user behavior and engagement, allowing you to identify bottlenecks and optimize the user journey.
Features:
- No-code onboarding creation
- Interactive walkthroughs
- User segmentation
- Behavior analytics
- A/B testing
Pricing: starting from $249/month
3. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is a comprehensive customer relationship management platform designed to help businesses streamline their sales, marketing, and customer service efforts. This CRM provides a central hub for all customer interactions, allowing your team to manage relationships more effectively and close deals faster.
With HubSpot CRM, you can track customer interactions across multiple channels, including email, social media, and live chat. The platform’s automation features help you nurture leads and manage your sales pipeline efficiently. HubSpot’s customizable dashboards and reporting tools provide real-time insights into your sales performance and customer engagement.
Features:
- Centralized customer database
- Sales pipeline management
- Lead nurturing and automation
- Customizable dashboards
- Real-time analytics and reporting
Pricing: Free plan available. Price starting from €90/month/seat
4. Kissmetrics
This is a product analytics platform designed to help businesses track and analyze customer behavior to improve retention and drive growth. Kissmetrics provides detailed insights into how users interact with your product, enabling you to identify trends, optimize the user experience, and increase conversions.
With Kissmetrics, you can create custom reports and dashboards to monitor key metrics and track the success of your marketing campaigns. Its funnel analysis tools help you understand where users drop off in the customer journey, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to improve retention.
Features:
- Customer behavior tracking
- Custom reports and dashboards
- Funnel analysis
- User segmentation
- Real-time analytics
Pricing: starting from $25.99/month or $0.0025 per event
5. Mixpanel
This advanced product analytics tool helps businesses understand user behavior and optimize their product experience. Mixpanel’s platform provides in-depth insights into how users interact with your product, allowing you to track key metrics and make data-driven decisions to enhance retention and engagement.
With this tool, you can create detailed reports and visualizations to monitor user behavior, identify trends, and track the success of your marketing campaigns. Mixpanel’s segmentation capabilities allow you to target specific user groups with personalized messaging and offers.
Features:
- User behavior tracking
- Custom reports and dashboards
- Funnel analysis
- A/B testing
- User segmentation
Pricing: Free plan available. Price starting from $28 per month
6. Optimove
Optimove is a marketing automation platform that helps businesses improve customer retention and lifetime value through personalized, data-driven marketing. It uses AI and machine learning to analyze customer data, predict behavior, and automate targeted marketing campaigns.
Optimove enables customer segmentation based on various criteria and creates personalized marketing messages for each segment. The platform’s automation capabilities manage multi-channel campaigns, ensuring timely and relevant communication with customers.
Features:
- Customer segmentation
- Personalized marketing campaigns
- Multi-channel automation
- AI and machine learning
- Real-time analytics and reporting
Pricing: Contact Optimove for pricing
7.Whatfix
Whatfix is an onboarding and user training platform that helps businesses improve user adoption and retention with in-app guidance and support. This no-code solution creates interactive walkthroughs, tooltips, and pop-ups to guide users through a product’s features.
Whatfix allows user segmentation for personalized onboarding experiences. Its analytics tools provide insights into user behavior, helping to identify and fix bottlenecks. The platform supports A/B testing to find the best onboarding strategies and integrates seamlessly with existing CRM and analytics tools.
Features:
- No-code onboarding creation
- Interactive walkthroughs
- Tooltips and pop-ups
- User segmentation
- Behavior analytics
Pricing: Contact Whatfix for pricing
8. Hotjar
Hotjar is a tool that helps businesses understand how users interact with their website and find areas to improve. It provides insights through heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys to optimize the user experience and boost retention.
Hotjar lets you create surveys to gather customer feedback and analyze responses. Its heatmaps and session recordings show user interactions and highlight pain points.
Hotjar integrates easily with existing CRM, marketing, and analytics tools for a complete view of customer behavior and feedback.
Features:
- Heatmaps
- Session recordings
- Surveys and feedback collection
- Behavior analytics
- User segmentation
- Integration with CRM, marketing, and analytics tools
- Real-time data analysis
- Conversion funnels
- Feedback polls
- Customizable dashboards
Pricing: Free plan available. Price starting from $32/month.
9. Open Loyalty
Open Loyalty is a software that helps businesses create and manage customized loyalty programs. It engages customers and encourages repeat purchases with various modules and integration options, seamlessly connecting with existing systems.
Open Loyalty allows you to define program rules, rewards, and points systems. It segments customers for personalized offers and tracks engagement through detailed analytics. The platform supports gamification to make loyalty programs more engaging.
Features:
- Customizable loyalty programs
- Customer segmentation
- Points and rewards system
- Gamification features
- Detailed analytics and reporting
- Comprehensive API
Pricing: Contact Open Loyalty for pricing.
10. Qualaroo by Proprofs
Qualaroo is a customer feedback tool that helps businesses gather insights to improve customer retention. It enables quick survey creation and deployment, capturing real-time customer feedback. AI-driven sentiment analysis provides insights into customer emotions and satisfaction levels.
With ProProfs’ Qualaroo, you can segment your audience for targeted surveys and analyze responses to identify trends and areas for improvement. It integrates with CRM, marketing, and analytics tools for a seamless feedback loop, allowing your team to act promptly on feedback and enhance the customer experience.
Features:
- Real-time customer feedback
- AI-driven sentiment analysis
- Audience segmentation
- Customizable survey templates
- A/B testing
- Integration with CRM, marketing, and analytics tools
Pricing: Free plan available. Price starting from $19.99/100 responses/month.
11. Salesforce
Salesforce is a top customer relationship management (CRM) platform that helps businesses manage customer interactions, streamline processes, and boost retention. It integrates sales, service, marketing, and analytics for a comprehensive customer view and personalized interactions.
Salesforce’s automation features manage sales pipelines, nurture leads, and deliver excellent customer service. AI-powered insights from Salesforce Einstein enable data-driven decisions and predict customer needs, improving the overall customer experience.
Features:
- Comprehensive CRM functionality
- Sales pipeline management
- Marketing automation
- Customer service and support
- AI-powered insights with Salesforce Einstein
Pricing: from €25/user/month.
12. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is a comprehensive customer relationship management solution for businesses of all sizes, managing sales, marketing, and customer support activities. It offers a 360-degree view of customer interactions, helping to build strong relationships and enhance retention.
Zoho CRM’s automation features streamline sales processes, from lead generation to closing deals. The AI-powered sales assistant, Zia, provides predictive analytics, lead scoring, and workflow automation to keep your team productive. Customizable dashboards and reports offer insights into sales performance for data-driven decisions.
Features:
- Lead and contact management
- Sales automation
- Marketing automation
- Customer support management
- AI-powered sales assistant (Zia)
Pricing: starting from €14/user/month billed annually
13. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM designed for small and medium-sized businesses to manage sales pipelines and improve customer retention. Its intuitive interface and visual pipeline help teams track deals and stay organized. Automation features streamline repetitive tasks, allowing sales teams to focus on closing deals and building relationships.
Pipedrive lets you customize sales stages and workflows to fit your processes. It provides detailed insights and analytics to understand sales performance and identify areas for improvement. The platform integrates with other business tools for seamless information flow across your organization.
Features:
- Visual sales pipeline
- Customizable sales stages and workflows
- Sales automation
- Email integration
- Activity reminders and goal tracking
Pricing: starting from €14/ seat/ month, billed annually
14. Zendesk
Zendesk is a powerful customer experience platform designed to boost customer retention. Its omnichannel agent workspace supports customers through their preferred channels. With over 1,500 apps and integrations, Zendesk connects seamlessly with your business ecosystem, providing agents with essential customer context for personalized interactions and opportunities to upsell and cross-sell.
Zendesk’s AI, trained on billions of customer interactions, is ready for immediate use. AI-powered bots offer 24/7 customer support, ensuring customers are never left waiting. These bots also detect customer sentiment and intent, providing agents with valuable insights to understand customer needs and emotions in advance.
Features:
- Omnichannel capabilities
- Customer segmentation
- Customer satisfaction surveys
- AI and automation
- Real-time analytics and reporting
- Dashboard sharing
Pricing: starting from $55/agent/month
How to select the right customer retention software?
The SaaS industry is extremely competitive and there are hundreds of options for every need you might have. How can you find the right tool for your business? Well, there are a few things you need to consider before selecting the right customer retention tool.
Features and capabilities that your tool needs to have
Customer segmentation
Make sure the tool you select allows you to segment your customer base. Customer segmentation helps you to divide the customer base into distinct groups based on demographics, behavior, purchase history, etc.
You can tailor marketing messages and offers to specific groups, which increases engagement and conversion rates.
Automation
Automation streamlines repetitive tasks and processes, saving time and reducing the potential for human error. This ensures consistent and timely interactions with customers, which is crucial for maintaining engagement and satisfaction.
This feature can help your customer success team free up time to build relationships with customers, instead of spending time crafting emails or updating reports.
Integration with the existing tech stack
This ensures a seamless flow of information across different systems. It provides a unified view of the customer. If your new tool integrates with your current text stack you will be able to create a cohesive customer experience. Also, you’ll make sure that your teams don’t have to search for customer data in various tools.
Analytics and reporting
Analytics and reporting capabilities provide insights into customer behavior, campaign performance, and overall retention metrics. These insights are critical for making data-driven decisions and optimizing retention strategies.
You can track key metrics such as customer satisfaction, churn rates, and campaign effectiveness.
Other things to take into account
Apart from having those important features, there are a few other things you should consider before selecting a customer retention tool.
Cost
Sticking to the budget is an important thing when you are building a business case for your retention tool internally. Apart from the initial cost, keep an eye out for ongoing costs such as subscription fees, upgrades, and support services. Also, ensure the pricing model is scalable as your business grows.
User reviews
By reading user reviews you will find the real opinion of people who are already using the product you are interested in. Make sure to check websites like Capterra and G2 and read a few user reviews before making a purchase.
Case studies
Lastly, you should deep dive into the case studies that the tool has on its website. Case studies provide detailed examples of how the software has been implemented by other businesses. They can illustrate the practical benefits and ROI of the software.
Now that you know what to look for when selecting a tool to increase retention, let’s see the best software to choose from.
FAQ
Why is customer retention important?
Customer retention is crucial for any business, especially in the SaaS industry where competition is fierce. It’s more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. Also, it can help you boost revenue because loyal customers are more likely to make bigger purchases.
How does customer retention software work?
There are different types of customer retention tools and it depends on its features. For example, customer success tools like Custify help you better understand your customers and solve issues proactively. Other tools like Userpilot provide a better onboarding experience for your customers which leads to a higher retention. All in all, these customer retention software help you increase customer satisfaction and retain customers.
How can customer retention software improve my business?
Top customer retention software helps you increase satisfaction, lower customer churn, and boost loyalty. Also, it can have a positive impact on revenue.
How do I choose the right customer retention software for my business?
There are a few things you need to consider before choosing the right software. First off, take a look at the features and benefits of each tool. Also, take into account your budget and other limitations. Before you make a decision, check reviews on G2 or Capterra and book a few demos.
Can customer retention software integrate with my existing tools?
Yes, many customer retention tools integrate with your existing tool stack. For example, Custify integrates with various tools, including CRMs, analytics tools, and billing software. You should check this before choosing the right software.
What are the benefits of using customer retention software for my team?
The best customer retention software can help your team automate various tasks. Also, it can help them increase their productivity.
Are there any costs associated with customer retention software?
Yes, most customer retention tools have a monthly subscription. There are some tools that offer free demos or a free trial. However, the price of the subscription can vary and some businesses might offer personalized pricing.
What are some common challenges businesses face when implementing customer retention software?
While these tools are essential for churn prevention, there are also a few challenges that businesses might face when implementing these tools. For example, some tools might not integrate with your tech stack while others might not offer the right customization options. Scalability, user adoption, and quantifying the return on investment (ROI) are some other issues businesses can face.
Choose the right tool to retain customers
These are just a few tools that can help you increase customer retention and avoid unnecessary churn. As you can see, these tools are not retention tools per se. They are a mix of onboarding, CRM, and customer loyalty tools. Depending on your needs and budget, select the tool that best fits your business.
