Why every marketer loves to hate their Customer Engagement Platform

Have you ever talked to a marketer who loves their customer engagement platform (CEP)?

It does happen: but it’s a mythical experience.

More likely, you’ve heard or uttered the refrain "it’s a great platform but…" many, many times.

This all comes back to a sense that you can’t achieve your goals as a marketer. You can’t get the great ideas in your head out into the world.

And, here’s the thing, it’s not your fault.

We’ve all experienced the following cycle:

• Vendor shows amazing possibilities during the sales cycle.
• You sign on the dotted line.
• Vendor reveals the implementation required to achieve amazing possibilities you saw.
• Years later you’ve only just gotten the fundamentals implemented, let alone your more advanced ideas.

We’ve also all worked in teams where rip-and-replace happens every few years, with each new vendor shaping up to be the "holy grail", only to change tools again a couple of years down the track.

It’s not usually your CEP that’s holding you back. It’s rarely lack of features that’s the problem.

Instead, there are three core reasons marketers don’t achieve their engagement targets:

1. Vendors show you the sexiest 5% of features. Vendors will sell you the coolest stuff you can do with their product. And the cool stuff is most definitely really cool. But it’s also only used by the top few percent of their customers. The big boys. The companies with 10s or 100s of marketers. The thing is: these features usually add incremental value. They don’t drive 80% or 90% or even 98% of revenue. They drive a final small percentage but they look the coolest. Vendors know this. They’ll put a lot of time into showing you these 5% of features: the real question is how well they solve your fundamental problems. If it’s too hard to get the fundamentals covered it doesn’t matter how many fancy features the vendor has.

2. Translating data requirements for the engineering team. Understanding what data you need for specific campaigns and how you’ll get that data is key. Most vendors like to skim over the details here. And, when it comes time for implemention, the details often involve an approach your engineering team don’t actually buy into. Getting buy-in from the engineering team early is a key part of a successful CEP implementation.

3. Buying what’s politically safe rather than what’s effective. Sometimes the biggest barrier to a successful CEP implementation isn’t technical: it’s political. Choosing a platform is rarely a neutral decision. There are stakeholders. There’s budget. There’s fear of getting it wrong. And in that context, picking the "safe" option can feel like the smartest move. But politically safe doesn’t always mean practically effective. The safest choice on paper can be the riskiest in practice, especially if it slows your team down, doesn’t match your use cases, or requires enterprise-scale resources to see value. The best CEP is the one your team can actually implement, use, and succeed with. Real results are what really protect your budget, your team’s morale, your momentum and, ultimately, your reputation.

The key is to filter the signal from the noise. That’s what I’m here to help you achieve. Here’s some advice on choosing the right CEP for your business and ensuring a successful CEP implementation.

Ask how it works

Dig into the how!

When evaluating tools and doing demos during the sales cycle, it’s really valuable to have a team member in the room who has deep practical experience operating CEP tools themselves.

As we say in Australia, this person is your "bullsh*it detector". Their job isn’t to kill the vibe, it’s to help make sure the platform you’re buying will actually work for your organisation.

When you’re buying a customer engagement platform it is of course critical to understand the big picture: the outcomes needed across the organisation, the key metrics that need to move up-and-to-the-right.

After all, this is the "what" you want to achieve. A lot of early sales conversations focus on the "what" and it’s important CEP vendors understand these strategic aspects of your business.

Having these top-level discussions between senior stakeholders is fundamental but when it comes to the "how’, it’s very easy to rely on the idea "if big brand X uses it, it must work" and not dig too deeply. But what if "brand X" is 10x is your size? How they got it to work may not be fit-for-purpose for your team.

When a vendor shows you a slick feature or use case, make sure you stop and ask:

• "How exactly does this work?"
• "Can you show me the data inputs, trigger logic, and message setup?"
• "How long does it take your average customer to set this up?"

These questions surface reality and will help you assess what is actually needed to get the tool implemented in your business.

You want to zoom in on the plumbing—not just the finishings. If you don’t understand the data flow, the operational cost of ownership and who on your team is going to be needed to get campaigns running, it’s easy to end up buying the wrong tool for your team and get stuck in implementation purgatory.

The 80:20 rule strikes again

Let’s face it: most customer engagement value comes from nailing the fundamentals.

For most businesses, 80–90% of messaging revenue comes from a core set of well-timed, highly-polished, high-value campaigns: onboarding emails, cart abandonment, basic segmentation and regular offer announcements or product updates.

Yet all too often, buying decisions get swayed by niche feature comparisons:

"We can’t go with Tool X—Tool Y lets you trigger a push notification based on humidity data!"

This leads to platforms being chosen for edge-case capabilities that never actually get used. Meanwhile, the team struggles to use the basic features in a clunky interface.

It’s akin to having 10,000 horsepower but no means to get traction. If you can’t get the 10,000 horsepower on the road then there’s no use having it!

This goes hand-in-hand with the first point: you’ve got to understand how the core 80% of features work that drive most of your revenue. Make sure these features work for you. The truth is: you’re better off with a platform that does less, but enables you to actually ship.

Choose tools that help you execute the critical 80% well and quickly. That’s where your revenue—and your sanity—lies.

Remember perfect doesn’t exist

Every platform has tradeoffs.

Some platforms are powerful but clunky. Others are simple but inflexible. Some have better APIs but worse dashboards. Some are fantastic for mobile apps, but painful for web-based B2B SaaS.

You will never find a customer engagement platform that is perfect. There will always be tradeoffs.

The risk of the "hunt for perfect" is that it can lead to changing or purchasing tools when you don’t need to.

What you need is the platform that’s fit-for-purpose for your team, your data, your velocity, your constraints.

Instead of chasing the dream tool, focus on:

• What can we implement now, not in two years?
• What plays well with our current stack?
• What will our team actually be able to use?

The perfect CEP is the one that helps you execute today and get to that next stage.

So…can anyone actually love their CEP?

Let’s go back to where we started: have you ever met a marketer who truly loves their customer engagement platform?

If you haven’t, it’s not because it’s impossible. It’s because most teams end up with tools that don’t match how they work and/or what they can realistically implement.

The goal is to feel empowered by what you can do with your CEP. To feel momentum. To get campaigns out the door, data flowing smoothly, and results you can point to. When your platform fits your team, your goals, and your constraints, you don’t just tolerate it. You trust it. You rely on it.

You might even like it. And that’s a whole lot closer to love than many marketers ever get!