The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management ... · PDF fileThe Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017 Ten Providers That Matter And How They Stack

The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017Ten Providers That Matter And How They Stack Up

by Maxie Schmidt-SubramanianApril 10, 2017

For CuStoMer experienCe proFeSSionAlS

ForreSTer.CoM

Key takeawaysFour Providers Lead The Pack With Comprehensive offeringsForrester’s research uncovered a market in which inMoment, Medallia, Qualtrics, and Confirmit are leaders. Clarabridge, MaritzCx, and SMG are Strong performers. Satmetrix Systems, niCe, and Verint Systems are Contenders.

CX Pros Seek To Centralize And Automate essential VoC Activitiesthe CFM market is growing because more Cx professionals want a technology platform that automates and centralizes essential VoC activities. Cx pros are also looking for a steady and close relationship with a provider that acts as an extended part of their team and helps evolve their VoC program.

Survey Authoring, response rates, Feedback Types, And Analysis Are Key Differentiatorsproviders position themselves for success when they: support self-service scripting with high response rates and quality, collect and mine more types of feedback, create advanced analysis based on structured and unstructured data, and let clients self-serve while offering support for prioritizing Cx improvements that will fuel Cx transformation efforts.

Why read this reportin our 39-criteria evaluation of customer feedback management platform providers, we identified 10 vendors that matter — Clarabridge, Confirmit, inMoment, MaritzCx, Medallia, niCe, Qualtrics, Satmetrix Systems, SMG, and Verint Systems — and researched, analyzed, and scored them. this report shows how each provider measures up and helps Cx professionals make the right choice.

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© 2017 Forrester research, inc. opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, technographics®, Forrester Wave, roleView, techradar, and total economic impact are trademarks of Forrester research, inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

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table of Contents

CFM Platforms Fuel CX Transformation Efforts

the VoC Vendor landscape: CFM platforms And Specialists

CFM platforms Support Four VoC program tasks

the Mushrooming CFM platform Market Still Has room to Grow

Customer Feedback Management Platforms Evaluation Overview

evaluated providers And inclusion Criteria

Tech Provider Profiles

leaders

Strong performers

Contenders

Supplemental Material

related research Documents

the State of Voice of the Customer programs, 2014: it’s time to Act

Voice of the Customer Vendor landscape, 2014

What’s new With Customer Feedback Management Vendors

For CuStoMer experienCe proFeSSionAlS

The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017Ten Providers That Matter And How They Stack Up

by Maxie Schmidt-Subramanianwith Harley Manning, Boris evelson, Scott ross, robert Valdovinos, and laura Glazer

April 10, 2017

http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES115913





http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO5444



For Customer experienCe proFessionals

The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017april 10, 2017

© 2017 Forrester research, inc. unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

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Ten Providers That Matter And How They Stack Up

CFM platforms Fuel Cx transformation efforts

Voice of the customer (VoC) programs that support enterprisewide Cx efforts are inherently complex. that’s because the Cx professionals who lead these programs need to work across channels and organizational boundaries. these Cx pros have a wide range of responsibilities. they must capture customer feedback from a broad set of sources and work with stakeholders to interpret the data and prioritize findings. Additionally, VoC program leaders need to share insights in visually appealing ways that help rally employees around using the insights to drive Cx improvements; and they must close the loop with customers who provided feedback and have open issues.

The VoC Vendor Landscape: CFM Platforms And Specialists

VoC vendors differ by focus of the solution and by breadth of capabilities (see Figure 1).

› Customer feedback management platforms. Customer feedback management platform vendors serve the entire enterprise with solutions that offer a robust set of VoC capabilities including feedback collection, integration of feedback with other data in a centralized data hub, analysis, reporting, and closed-loop action management.

› VoC specialists. these firms offer a subset of VoC platform capabilities. their areas of expertise center on particular aspects of VoC like collecting data from specific channels, analyzing text, and conducting market research.

FIGUre 1 the VoC Vendor landscape Has CFM platforms And Specialists

Social listeningspecialists

Market researchspecialists

Text analyticsspecialists

VoC

cap

abili

ties

Focus EnterpriseChannel/touchpoint

Broad

Specialized

Customerfeedback

managementplatforms

Digital feedbackmanagement

specialists

InsightcommunityspecialistsDigital

measurementspecialists

Cross-channelmeasurement

specialists




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CFM Platforms Support Four VoC Program Tasks

Customer feedback management platforms can help Cx professionals manage complexity by centralizing and automating essential VoC activities (see Figure 2). Forrester defines CFM as:

A system of software and processes that supports a company’s VoC program by helping a company to solicit feedback from key customers across channels; centrally collect solicited and unsolicited feedback; analyze structured and unstructured feedback; distribute insights across the organization; close the loop with customers; act on the insights; and monitor progress continuously.




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FIGUre 2 CFM platforms Support Four tasks of the VoC program

Act

InterpretMonitor

Listen

VoC activity What CFM solutions do to help

Listen

Interpret

Act

Monitor

• Directly solicit feedback across multiple channels, touchpoints, and levels of the customer relationship.

• Gather unsolicited feedback from social (e.g., Facebook) and nonsocial (e.g., email) sources.

• Provide tools to analyze feedback and create relevant dashboards and reports.

• Automatically tailor and distribute predefined analyses for different employees based on their assigned roles and permissions.

• Alert users when they need to respond to individual customers based on business rules and provide tools to manage cases through to closure.

• Provide analyses and decision tools to prioritize and prescribe systemic actions based on available customer data.

• Track changes in customer perception metrics over time (e.g., customer satisfaction or Net Promoter Score).

• Measure results of VoC-initiated activities, such as immediate responses to customers, and their affects on customer loyalty.




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The Mushrooming CFM Platform Market Still Has room To Grow

Since the last Forrester evaluation in 2011, the high end of the range for CFM provider revenue has gone up more than fivefold.1 But the CFM market is still tiny compared to the market for SaaS giants like Salesforce.com. in 2015, the combined revenue of all CFM providers in this evaluation amounted to roughly 13% of Salesforce’s annual revenue.2 today’s CFM vendors operate in an environment characterized by:

› Low market penetration. According to a recent Forrester survey, only 42% of companies use one or more technology solutions to support their VoC program, leaving well over half of the market untapped.3 What’s more, clients who buy CFM platform solutions are mostly buying a CFM platform for the first time.4

› Underutilization. Although CFM platforms have functionality to serve all VoC tasks, just 19% of companies use a CFM vendor to solicit feedback and only 5% of all companies use the same CFM provider for the majority of other VoC tasks.5 For data visualization, specialized business intelligence tools play a bigger role than CFM tools. And for social media listening, CFM providers play a very small role.6 that’s why in addition to maintaining a full set of CFM capabilities, providers integrate and partner with third-party technology solutions that clients already use in their VoC workflow.7

› Convergence around a core offering. Although the CFM vendors in this Forrester evaluation come to the CFM market from very different directions, in the past two to three years, their offerings have converged. For example, while former text analytics specialist Clarabridge added survey capabilities, former survey and measurement specialist Qualtrics started to offer VoC dashboards and text analytics.8 And while self-service vendor Qualtrics added managed services personnel, managed services vendors like Medallia and inMoment increased their self-service capabilities to give clients more flexibility.9

› A rush to push into new markets. to maintain growth, CFM vendors are entering new markets, sometimes with new products. For example, traditional niche providers SMG and inMoment are using their existing products to push into new industries beyond their traditional strongholds of multiunit businesses.10 other vendors are expanding into new client types. For example, with the addition of managed services, Qualtrics has started to serve companies that didn’t want to rely on self-service only. And Medallia is starting to target small to midsize clients, creating new product packages and price points for the midmarket.

› More packaged offerings. Vendors are creating more offerings to improve time to value for their clients. For example, Confirmit launched a Fasttrack package for contact centers and is planning another one for B2B clients. these packages are a combination of survey templates and dashboard widgets, wrapped into a service offering designed to set up listening posts for clients within weeks. Similarly, Clarabridge is creating out-of-the-box packages for industries — starting with healthcare. these packages include survey templates, category and sentiment models, reports, and services for a set price.




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Customer Feedback Management platforms evaluation overview

to assess the state of the customer feedback management platform market and see how the vendors stack up against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top CFM platform vendors. After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. Client references played a large role in our evaluation: We conducted three client reference calls per provider and fielded a survey among 60 client references. We then evaluated vendors against 39 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level buckets:

› Current offering. We evaluated each vendor’s existing solution to determine how well it meets the needs of Cx professionals. First, we looked at each platform’s ability to solicit feedback from across channels and touchpoints.11 We also evaluated how well platforms collect unsolicited feedback and integrate both unsolicited feedback and operational data from other systems. then we evaluated each platform’s text mining capabilities and text analysis integration into analysis, dashboards, and alerts. We also scored analysis capabilities, advanced analytics, and capabilities to mine multimedia feedback and speech.12 We then gauged how well the platform helps clients develop and distribute insights to drive action through reporting, as well as case and action management. Finally, we factored in on-demand support, thought leadership, benchmarking, and professional services; software access and usability; and the scale of the solution, its reliability, and its performance.

› Strategy. We examined each vendor’s overall strategy to determine how well it addresses the future of the market and advances the long-term success of the company. First, we reviewed the firm’s ability to engage its clients in its strategy, design, and development processes to ensure product enhancements are in line with client needs. We then examined how aligned each vendor’s product vision and road map are with Forrester’s CFM vision, and how well planned enhancements would allow a vendor to leap ahead of the market.13 We also evaluated the partner ecosystem and the strength and continuity of each vendor’s employee base.

› Market presence. lastly, we evaluated each vendor’s current position in the market. We looked at each vendor’s client base in terms of overall size, penetration into the employee base of their clients, and enterprise focus. then we examined each vendor’s CFM-specific revenues.

evaluated Providers And Inclusion Criteria

Forrester included 10 providers in the assessment: Clarabridge, Confirmit, inMoment, MaritzCx, Medallia, niCe, Qualtrics, Satmetrix, SMG, and Verint. each of these providers (see Figure 3):

› offers a comprehensive CFM technology offering. to align with Forrester’s definition of CFM, providers included in the Forrester Wave were screened to ensure that they support each key CFM activity with their own technology solution rather than by offering services on top of another firm’s software.




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› Has significant presence as defined by revenue and interest from Forrester clients. to focus on the largest players in the space, we limited this Forrester Wave to providers that reported 2015 revenues of at least $20 million from CFM technology and services. We only included providers who reported that more than 80% of that revenue came from north America.14 Additionally, Forrester clients often discuss these vendors and their products through inquiries. each vendor is consistently mentioned as a competitor by other vendors in the space, and these vendors compete for similar clients as per Forrester’s assessment of the competitive landscape. Finally, to ensure an enterprise focus, we limited the Forrester Wave to providers for which more than 20% of their client companies have more than $1 billion in revenue.




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FIGUre 3 evaluated providers: product information And Selection Criteria

Vendor

Clarabridge

Confirmit

InMoment

MaritzCX

Medallia

NICE

Qualtrics

Satmetrix Systems

SMG

Verint Systems

Productevaluated

Clarabridge CX Suite

Confirmit Horizons

InMoment Experience Hub

The MaritzCX Platform

Medallia Experience Cloud

NICE Total Voice of the Customer (NICE TVoC)

Insight Platform

NPX

omniCX

Enterprise Feedback Management

Productversionevaluated

Fall16

Version 21

Hub 2.0

Version 2.10

Version e618

Version 6.9

Version 2016.11

27.5

smg360

Version 15.1 Feature Pack 3

Versionrelease date

October 2016

October 2016

October 2016

October 2016

December 2016

September 2016

November 2016

November 2016

November 2016

October 2016

Product update cadence

• Major releases: every 3 months

• Updates: every two weeks

• Major releases: every 6 to 9 months

• Updates: twice weekly


• Updates: twice monthly

• Major releases: every 6 months• Updates: monthly

• Major releases: several times per year, as part of the regular biweekly release

• Updates: every 2 weeks


• Updates: as needed, typically not more than once for every major release






• Updates: monthly


• Updates: every 3 months




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FIGUre 3 evaluated providers: product information And Selection Criteria (Cont.)

• Offers a comprehensive CFM technology offering. To align with Forrester’s de�nition of CFM,providers included in the Forrester Wave were screened to ensure that they support each key CFM activity with their own technology solution rather than by offering services on top of another �rm’s soft-ware.

• Has significant presence as defined by revenue and interest from Forrester clients. To focus onthe largest players in the space, we have limited this Forrester Wave to providers that reported 2015 revenues of at least $20 million from CFM technology and services. We only included providers who reported that more than 80% of that revenue came from North America. Additionally, Forrester clients often discuss these vendors and their products through inquiries, each vendor is consistently men-tioned as a competitor by other vendors in the space, and these vendors compete for similar clients as per Forrester’s assessment of the competitive landscape. Finally, to ensure an enterprise focus, we limited the Forrester Wave to providers for which more than 20% of their client companies have more than $1 billion in revenue.

Vendor inclusion criteria

tech provider profiles

the evaluation uncovered a market in which four providers emerged as leaders — though their strengths differ (see Figure 4). this evaluation of the CFM platform market is intended to be a starting point only. it assumes a Cx professional with a foundational to advanced VoC program, and one who wants some self-service capabilities for survey authoring, analysis, and reporting but also requires professional services to take some load off the small VoC team.15 Cx professionals who are looking for a CFM platform provider should download the Forrester Wave graphic in this report as an excel sheet. in this excel sheet, they can view detailed product evaluations and adapt criteria weightings to fit their individual needs.




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FIGUre 4 Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management platforms, Q2 ’17

Challengers Contenders LeadersStrong

Performers

StrategyWeak Strong

Currentoffering

Weak

Strong

Go to Forrester.comto download the Forrester Wave tool for more detailed product evaluations, feature comparisons, and customizable rankings.

Market presence

Clarabridge

Con�rmit

InMoment

MaritzCX

Medallia

NICE

Qualtrics

Satmetrix SystemsSMG

Verint Systems




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FIGUre 4 Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management platforms, Q2 ’17 (Cont.)

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

Clarab

ridge

Confir

mit

InMom

ent

Mar

itzCX

Med

allia

NICE

Qualtr

ics

Satm

etrix

Sys

tem

s

3.34

1.20

4.60

5.00

5.00

3.03

3.60

3.75

2.65

2.30

2.70

3.60

3.00

3.00

5.00

5.00

2.50

3.00

2.00

weight

ing

Forre

ster’s

50%

10%

5%

10%

10%

13%

13%

10%

17%

5%

7%

50%

35%

35%

5%

25%

0%

50%

50%

3.77

4.80

3.40

3.58

3.50

4.10

4.40

3.25

3.45

2.60

3.80

3.70

3.00

4.00

5.00

4.00

3.00

4.00

2.00

3.60

2.00

5.00

3.60

4.50

3.40

3.00

4.40

4.10

4.00

2.50

4.55

5.00

4.00

3.00

5.00

2.50

3.00

2.00

3.47

4.60

3.00

3.58

3.00

2.65

2.40

3.55

4.10

3.70

4.40

3.45

5.00

3.00

3.00

2.00

4.00

4.00

4.00

3.83

3.40

3.40

4.72

4.00

3.45

3.60

4.15

3.80

3.60

4.20

4.30

5.00

4.00

3.00

4.00

4.00

3.00

5.00

2.54

2.00

1.00

4.14

3.50

2.43

1.60

2.55

2.50

2.00

3.20

2.05

1.00

2.00

5.00

3.00

3.00

4.00

2.00

3.54

5.00

3.40

3.86

2.50

3.63

3.00

3.05

3.80

3.80

3.30

4.30

5.00

3.00

5.00

5.00

2.50

4.00

1.00

2.76

2.80

2.60

3.60

2.50

2.40

3.60

2.50

2.65

2.60

1.80

2.05

3.00

1.00

3.00

2.00

2.00

3.00

1.00

SMG

Verin

t Sys

tem

s

2.92

3.00

3.00

2.46

2.50

1.05

1.60

3.10

4.80

4.30

4.10

3.40

5.00

1.00

1.00

5.00

2.00

2.00

2.00

2.00

3.60

1.40

1.88

1.50

1.23

2.40

2.30

1.85

1.30

2.10

1.55

1.00

2.00

5.00

1.00

3.00

3.00

3.00

Current Offering

Capabilities to solicit feedback

Capabilities to collect unsolicited feedback

Data integration

Text mining and analytics

Analysis capabilities

Reporting

Case and action management

Support, professional services, benchmarking, and client success

Software access and usability

Technology

Strategy

Client understanding

Product vision and road map

Partner ecosystem

Employee experience and retention

Market Presence

Active CFM customers

CFM revenue and average deal size




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Leaders

inMoment, Medallia, Qualtrics, and Confirmit lead the field in this evaluation:

› InMoment mines feedback and guides actions, especially for retail and hospitality. inMoment supports advanced capabilities to collect feedback in digital channels, like an active listening feature that increases the level of detail in surveys through real-time text analytics.16 the vendor also excels at collecting feedback from social channels. What’s more, its significant capabilities to analyze text and capture and mine speech, images, and videos are highly integrated into the platform.17 the firm’s extensive bidirectional integration with CrM systems synchronizes cases to maintain accuracy of interaction records. Clients will also appreciate inMoment’s extensive case and action management functionality, like the ability to surface focus areas and display improvement recommendations. reference clients positively mention the responsiveness of their inMoment counterparts, inMoment’s professional services organization, and the vendor’s commitment to client success.

Despite these strengths, clients can only script surveys in self-service after undergoing training and certification, a limitation that inMoment plans to remove in the near term. to retain its position as the market evolves, inMoment should also increase its functionality to collect feedback in digital and mobile apps, and add self-service features for response rate and quality management. Finally, potential buyers should note that almost 80% of inMoment’s clients are in travel, hospitality, and retail, where the vendor has most of its expertise. the firm has been pushing aggressively into new client segments where it isn’t yet as authoritative as it is in its core industries.

› Medallia appeals to clients wanting a programmatic approach to CFM at scale. Medallia added substantial capabilities to collect feedback across digital channels and mobile apps through the acquisition of Kampyle in 2016. the vendor excels at collecting feedback from employees about the customer and employee experience. its significant text analytics capabilities are very well integrated into analyses, dashboards, and alerts. For example, clients can access out-of-the-box charts that show insights about employee weaknesses and strengths on key drivers of Cx.18 the platform has a well-integrated interface that stands out from the disjointed look of some competitors. extensive bidirectional integration with CrM systems synchronizes cases to maintain accuracy of interaction records.19 What’s more, apps for frontline employees and execs help distribute data widely, and its health module brings together survey response rates, case management, and user engagement monitoring.

While the acquisition of Kampyle has given Medallia a digital self-service platform, clients who use their legacy platform still have limited access to self-service functionality.20 For example, they can only add questions to existing surveys, not build new surveys, and cannot configure alerts in self-service. Medallia also offers limited self-service functionality to build and edit dashboards (an item on their near-term road map). Client references say they’d like more self-service and also more options for customizing the look, feel, and branding of their surveys. looking ahead, to stay competitive as the market evolves, Medallia should add the capability to mine spoken feedback.




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› Qualtrics is for clients who want a flexible, self-service platform. Qualtrics excels at offering wide-ranging self-service capabilities for designing and fielding surveys and collecting feedback in digital channels and mobile apps. originally known for its survey-only product, the vendor has been growing rapidly and moving upmarket, fueled by venture capital. For example, with the acquisition of Statwing in early 2016, Qualtrics boosted its statistical analysis capabilities significantly. Qualtrics also has substantial alert routing and action planning capabilities. reference clients praise the firm for being client-centric and eager to accommodate them. they also compliment Qualtrics for its usability. As part of its evolution, Qualtrics has been building out its managed and professional services offering. Client references appreciate the speed of innovation, find being involved in the innovation process refreshing, and appreciate that Qualtrics is quick to fix any problems that occur.

Qualtrics isn’t a great fit for clients who don’t like rapid change and would rather not to be a testing ground for new, unproven features. to provide full value for VoC programs, Qualtrics needs to beef up its text analytics capabilities and its ability to engage client users on the go with a fully-featured mobile app. What’s more, the capabilities of Statwing need to be more firmly integrated into analysis widgets.

› Confirmit’s strengths lie in surveys, analysis, and guidance, especially for B2B firms. Confirmit has powerful self-service survey capabilities to collect feedback, including extensive functionality to solicit feedback on websites and advanced functionality to solicit feedback in mobile apps.21 the vendor’s statistical data analysis functionality and its dashboard capabilities stand out. What’s more, the firm’s text analytics capabilities are very well integrated into analyses, dashboards, and alerts. Cx pros will also appreciate Confirmit’s features for driving action, like its widget that helps define targets for Cx metrics. the firm is doubling down on this capability in its road map with a strategic planner capability. What’s more, Confirmit has made strides in improving usability and providing guidance to its users. its reference clients, who are often in B2B industries where the vendor has deep expertise, praise the flexibility and reliability of Confirmit’s execution.22

Some clients have criticized Confirmit for weak usability and slow speed to value for Cx pros who don’t have market research or programming expertise. the firm must continue to involve clients in designing new functionality that’s easy to use, and making more clients aware of usability improvements to current functionality. And although Confirmit offers the full platform functionality through mobile web access, it doesn’t offer the same functionality through a mobile phone app, an item that is on the vendor’s road map.23

Strong Performers

Clarabridge, MaritzCx, and SMG are strong performers in this evaluation:

› Clarabridge shines in data integration, text analytics, and case management. though best known for its market-leading capabilities in text analytics, Clarabridge also excels at integrating both structured and unstructured data.24 the vendor’s deep expertise in collecting and mining




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social media, spoken customer feedback, images, and videos broadens client access to more types of feedback. its robust text analytics capabilities are highly integrated into analyses, dashboards, and alerts. Clarabridge built on these strengths with capabilities for driving increased understanding of pre-defined journeys: templates make it easy to tag volume and sentiment of unstructured data from any source and display it in the respective journey phase. the firm also excels at alert and case management, for example, with advanced features to ensure the quality of responses.25 reference clients appreciate the firm’s continuous innovation and praise its responsiveness and approach to partnership.

Currently, Clarabridge has self-service survey authoring capabilities on its road map. the firm should also improve response rate and sampling features as well as offer more options to collect feedback in digital channels and mobile apps. reference clients acknowledge that Clarabridge has improved its analysis and visualization capabilities but want the vendor to further improve its dashboards by making them easier to navigate and more flexible, a move that would help Clarabridge increase its relationship footprint.26 reference clients also indicated that Clarabridge has room to improve its professional services offering.

› MaritzCX has strong survey capabilities, performance, and reliability. MaritzCx has very flexible survey authoring capabilities, coupled with extensive response rate quality and sampling functionality. it provides advanced capabilities to collect feedback in digital channels and mobile apps. the vendor’s text analytics capabilities are well integrated into analyses, dashboards, and alerts.27 potential buyers will appreciate the Spotlight tool, which helps find patterns in large data sets to identify focus areas, and the platform’s solid action planning capabilities. Advanced bidirectional integration with CrM systems lets client users interact with feedback in either system. reference clients praised the perceived reliability, performance, flexibility, and usability of the platform, and appreciate the sense of partnership the vendor provides.28 MaritzCx has an especially deep knowledge of the automotive industry, where it offers access to large-scale benchmarking data.

reference clients say they want more options to visualize data in dashboards. MaritzCx should support this request and also add more collaboration and annotation functionality to its dashboards, which would make them more engaging. And even though the vendor allows survey takers to upload images and videos, it should consider adding capabilities to mine this data in order to add value for its clients. the same goes for social media data: Although MaritzCx can currently collect this data, the platform doesn’t have extensive functionality for mining it. Finally, MaritzCx should increase its user engagement reporting functionality which is only available as a managed service.

› SMG excels at services and benchmarking, especially for retail and restaurant clients. SMG is a great fit for clients who prefer managed service for survey authoring or dashboard creation. the vendor offers survey scripting as a managed service with advanced capabilities to collect feedback in digital channels and mobile apps. its in-depth research on survey layout, questions, and survey




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incentives helps clients boost response rates. prospective buyers should note that nearly all of SMG’s clients are from the retail, restaurant, and other service-based industries. For companies in those industries, SMG provides benchmarking data about shopping behavior and satisfaction, using its proprietary research panel app with location analytics.29 Advanced bidirectional integration with CrM systems lets clients interact with feedback in either system and a reporting and case management app helps distribute feedback. reference clients feel very positive about their experience.

Cx professionals who want self-service will find that SMG isn’t the best fit for them. And even though SMG is expanding into other industries, most of its existing assets (like analysis skills, professional services team skills, and benchmarking data) are still focused on the retail and restaurant industries. the vendor is enhancing its data integration functionality based on client needs, but currently offers less of it than most vendors in the evaluation. reference clients also remarked that SMG should do more to provide value with text analytics. Additionally, most advanced statistical analyses are available only as managed service and SMG does not offer journey analysis and predictive analytics in its platform.

Contenders

Satmetrix, niCe, and Verint are contenders in this evaluation.

› Satmetrix provides integrated access to NPS benchmarks. the great strength of the Satmetrix npx platform lies in its integration with the net promoter System.30 the platform provides access to npS benchmarks and has built-in statistical significance testing for changes in npS. Beyond these features, the platform has self-service survey authoring capabilities for use with any type of metric (not just npS) and advanced capabilities to collect feedback on websites. platform reporting centers on a journey-style dashboard; clients say that the platform performs routine tasks like dashboard loads and analysis very quickly. extensive bidirectional integration with CrM systems synchronizes cases to maintain accuracy of interaction records. What’s more, the npx platform has strong user engagement monitoring capabilities.

Satmetrix doesn’t support feedback collection for mobile apps — a near-term item on its road map. And even though clients can use the platform to collect feedback from employees about their experience, Satmetrix doesn’t offer functionality that’s specifically tailored for that task. What’s more, Satmetrix has an opportunity to drive more value for clients by offering stronger case management and action planning functionality. Client references see room for improvement in Satmetrix’ professional services offering, thought leadership, and usability. Some reference clients also wish for more flexibility in the platform.

› NICe integrates with a large portfolio of customer service technologies. niCe’s biggest selling point is the wider niCe customer experience analytics and workforce optimization portfolio that clients can tap into outside the CFM platform. the portfolio includes a cross-channel journey and predictive analytics offering, and a quality management and monitoring offering for contact centers.31 Because of this portfolio, niCe is especially relevant for firms with a customer service




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focus. Beyond these strengths, niCe offers self-service survey authoring capabilities to its clients and has advanced functionality to collect customer feedback on websites. Clients looking to field SMS surveys will find the platform’s nlp-based conversational SMS survey capabilities interesting. text analytics capabilities are well integrated into analyses, dashboards, and alerts. What’s more, speech-to-text transcriptions are highly integrated into the platform and analysis is available in near-real time.32

to move up in our rankings, niCe should add more productivity shortcuts to survey authoring like easier testing of surveys and more response rate quality features. Advanced analytics are only available via a Cognos integration, which has an interface that uses non-standard, inadequate visualization techniques. Fortunately, replacing Cognos with tableau is a near-term road map item. With regards to social media, niCe currently only collects social feedback from twitter and has only basic capabilities to encourage clients to share their feedback. What’s more, the platform doesn’t let clients mine image or video feedback, has limited availability on mobile devices, and clients perceive its performance as low. overall, reference clients indicated that they would like improvements to the client experience, the professional services offering, and client understanding practices. Some reference clients also expressed a desire for faster road map delivery.

› Verint builds on its self-service strength with the acquisition of opinionLab. Verint offers a wide portfolio of products focused on cross-channel customer service that clients can tap into outside its CFM platform. this portfolio includes tools for self-service, agent desktop, knowledge management, and chat. the platform itself offers self-service survey authoring with useful productivity shortcuts like the ability to create a survey by uploading a Word document.33 Clients positively mention these survey capabilities and the platform’s responsiveness. the platform already has advanced capabilities to collect feedback in digital channels. Going forward, the integration of Verint’s recent opinionlab acquisition will improve the platform’s ability to collect feedback from websites and apps. Additionally, Verint’s CFM platform provides integrated speech-to-text transcriptions and analysis in near-real time. it also helps close the loop with significant alert routing and tracking functionality.

Verint provides less data integration functionality and a less advanced integration with CrM systems than most platforms in this evaluation. Verint’s platform isn’t set up to collect data from social media but to ingest data collected by other platforms.34 What’s more, its foundational text analytics capabilities are based on a version of Clarabridge from 2014, and are only moderately integrated into the platform.35 Advanced statistical analyses capabilities are basic and clients have to export data into SpSS to do driver analysis — alternatively they can ask professional services for help. Similarly, Verint’s advanced reporting interface is based on SAp Businessobjects and produces charts that lack polish.36 Many clients have a relatively low relationship footprint. this may explain why Verint only provides basic user engagement monitoring capabilities. the functionality of the mobile app is limited to viewing reports. Client’s rate Verint’s usability low but usability improvements are on its road map.




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Supplemental Material

online resource

the online version of Figure 4 is an excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed product evaluations and customizable rankings.

Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave

Forrester used a combination of four data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each solution. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave, in part, using materials that they provided to us by December 1, 2016.

› Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation criteria.

https://go.forrester.com/apps/

http://forr.com/1einFan

http://www.forrester.com/Analyst-Advisory/-/E-MPL172

https://www.forrester.com/events?N=10006+5025




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› Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their products’ functionality. We used findings from these product demos to validate details of each vendor’s product capabilities.

› Client reference calls. to validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted reference calls with three of each vendor’s current clients.

› Client reference survey. to validate the point of view from the reference calls, Forrester conducted a survey among five to eight reference clients.

The Forrester Wave Methodology

We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria for evaluation in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) client success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have limited client references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation.

After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop the initial evaluation criteria. to evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires, demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.

We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave evaluation — and then score the vendors based on a clearly defined scale. We intend these default weightings to serve only as a starting point and encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the excel-based tool. the final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and vendor strategies evolve. For more information on the methodology that every Forrester Wave follows, go to http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/forrester-wave-methodology.html.

Integrity Policy

We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with our integrity policy. For more information, go to http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/integrity-policy.html.

endnotes1 For the last Forrester Wave evaluation of the CFM space in 2011, CFM revenue for 2010 ranged from $10 million to

$30 million or more. in this Forrester evaluation, revenues for 2015 range from $20 million to $180 million.

2 Comparing 2015 revenue, the sum of the revenue of all CFM vendors in this evaluation is only about 13% of the revenue of Salesforce.com.




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3 Among companies who use a CFM provider as a survey vendor, the following numbers show the share of companies that do not use a technology for each task. Digital feedback (e.g., intercept or opt in): 73%. Social media feedback collection and analysis: 62%. text analytics: 58%. Dashboards/data visualization: 47%. Case management/alerts: 67%.

4 For example, of the 60 reference clients for this Forrester Wave evaluation who answered the question whether their current provider had replaced an incumbent provider, just over half had not replaced an incumbent provider. And among the ones that said their CFM vendor did replace an incumbent provider, only 20% replaced an incumbent CFM provider. Most replaced an incumbent market research or consulting vendor, trying to bring the competencies in house.

Among Cx pros who are involved in their companies’ VoC program, 77 companies use a CFM provider as survey vendor but only 30 use that same provider for the maturity of other VoC tasks. Source: Forrester’s Q4 2016 State of Customer experience programs online Survey.

5 Among the 237 Cx pros involved in VoC programs, 100 use a technology provider for one or more of the following tasks: surveys (e.g., relationship, journey, interaction), digital feedback (e.g., intercept or opt in), social media feedback collection and analysis, text analytics, dashboards/data visualization, case management/alerts, reach out to customers to close the loop, and collect employee feedback on the customer or employee experience.

Among the 100 Cx professionals involved in a VoC program who use one or several technology vendors, only 25 use the same vendor across VoC tasks. Most use a variety of vendors. Forty-five of 237 companies use a CFM provider as a survey vendor. twelve of 237 companies who use a CFM provider as a survey vendor use a CFM provider for the majority of their VoC tasks. Source: Forrester’s Q4 2016 State of Customer experience programs online Survey.

6 Among companies who use a CFM provider as a survey vendor and who use a technology tool for each of the following tasks, the following numbers show the share of companies who use a CFM provider as their technology. Digital feedback (e.g., intercept or opt in): 67%. Social media feedback collection and analysis: 12%. text analytics: 58%. Dashboards/Data visualization: 42%. Case management/alerts: 67%.

7 Most Cx professionals have technology providers for surveys in place, followed by dashboards/ visualization and case managements and alerts. And of the 89 respondents who use a survey vendor, 29 use a business intelligence tool to visualize data. Source: Forrester’s Q4 2016 State of Customer experience programs online Survey.

8 While surveys are still the mainstay of VoC programs, nearly nine of ten Cx pros who quantify unstructured and unsolicited feedback find that it drives high value: of the Cx pros in the survey who say they quantify all unstructured feedback in their VoC program, 87% find high value in unstructured and unsolicited data (excluding social). Source: Forrester’s Q4 2016 State of Customer experience programs online Survey.

“traditional” CFM vendors beefed up their text analytics offering. For example, MaritzCx uses Megaputer for its text analysis offering (replacing its partnership with Clarabridge). inMoment has been developing its own text analytics capabilities on top of iBM Watson.

9 providing managed services offerings is important because Cx or VoC teams are typically small. of the 59 client references who answered this question in the client reference survey for this Forrester evaluation, the average size of teams that work to manage and administrate the use of their CFM platform is just over three people (this excludes three outliers). And a majority of reference companies who already used a vendor for their VoC program had opted for a market research or consulting firm to outsource some workload and competences. there are many examples for vendors who are managed service vendors but increased the amount of self service available. For example, Medallia introduced Asknow, a way to add survey questions to existing surveys in self-service. Medallia also added functionality for individual users to create their own custom dashboards while piloting reportBuilder, a self-service functionality for administrative users to create and publish dashboards. inMoment added explore, a tool that allows exploration of unstructured data.

Flexibility is important because Cx pros need to be able to update surveys over time to allow measuring against new customer expectations, get feedback on new products and services, or track the success of new Cx improvement initiatives. And they must have the flexibility to work with stakeholders in an agile manner to create and update dashboards that engage stakeholders.




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10 Multiunit businesses like restaurant, retail, hospitality.

11 Because most Cx pros tell us that the ability to solicit surveys and the flexibility to do so in self-service is important, we optimized the criteria and weights for this.

12 these criteria are new, compared to the last Forrester Wave of this space in 2011.

13 Forrester believes that CFM buyers will want the ability to track Cx through large-scale survey programs as basic minimal capability and will also want to better collect feedback from the growing share of digital and mobile interactions their customers engage in. they’ll expect vendors to help them keep survey response rates high and go beyond surveys by exploring ways to solicit feedback in a more conversational way and by anticipating how customers feel about experiences. CFM buyers will look for opportunities to be more self-sufficient to enable their Cx and VoC programs to be nimbler. CFM buyers will crave more capabilities to mine unstructured feedback not only from surveys but from unsolicited sources, and to bring that data together with operational data about experiences as well as employee insights so they can use it to surface and prioritize Cx issues. Buyers will ask for more tactical help for helping employees define action plans, for setting Cx targets, and they want functionality to help them rally frontline employees, middle managers and executives around Cx on-the-go.

14 this requirement excluded otherwise relevant vendors such as Questback and responsetek. See the Forrester report “What’s new With Customer Feedback Management Vendors.”

15 Fifty-three percent of Cx pros say their firm has a Cx team of fewer than 10 people and 25% say their Cx team has two to four people. Source: Forrester’s Q2 2016 State of Customer experience programs online Survey.

in our experience, the majority of VoC programs falls in the foundational and advanced category, few programs are state of the art. See the Forrester report “the top 10 Voice of the Customer (VoC) program Questions Answered.”

16 And the firm even has a support hotline for survey takers who run into issues taking a survey.

17 For example, inMoment can field follow-up questions for text and spoken comments in real time, based on instant transcription and text analysis of those transcriptions. And clients can assemble video reels of customer feedback in self-service by highlighting the desired parts of a video transcription.

18 this allows clients to identify behaviors that create great Cx.

19 And Medallia’s customer timeline feature helps plot all contacts — including feedback and other contacts — in one timeline, as a precursor to understanding the customer journey.

20 For Medallia’s digital surveys for websites and apps, both self-service scripting and alert configuration are already available in self-service.

21 Confirmit also helps Cx pros mine new forms of feedback, like images or videos.

22 About 70% of Confirmit’s clients are B2B firms, the largest percentage of any provider in this evaluation.

23 Confirmit currently offers mobile apps for respondents, panelists, and computer-assisted personal interviewing.

24 See the Forrester report “the Forrester Wave™: Big Data text Analytics platforms, Q2 2016.”

25 the firm will double down on this capability with bots that make it easier and faster to respond to clients.

26 the relationship footprint is the number of client users that interact with the platform.

27 non-social unsolicited feedback data like call center recordings, emails.

28 Client scores from Forrester’s conversations with and a survey among client references; client references provided by the tech provider.

29 these benchmarks include not only the benchmarking data but also the name of the benchmarked brands.







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30 net promoter and npS are registered service marks, and net promoter Score is a service mark, of Bain & Company, Satmetrix Systems, and Fred reichheld.

31 the journey analytics portfolio helps clients identify journeys from data.

32 For example, the clients can play iVr verbatim recordings and link to call recordings from within the feedback record.

33 Verint eFM uses responsive design elements to automatically format surveys for deployment on mobile phones and tablets. And the firm provides an offline mobile app that enables surveys to be deployed to mobile devices for offline data collection.

34 they can use Verint’s separate social engagement platform to scrape social data and engage with customers on social media.

35 replacing this partnership with a native solution is an item on Verint’s near-term road map, though.

36 For more information on SAp’s Businessobjects, see the Forrester report “the Forrester Wave™: enterprise insight platform Suites, Q4 2016.”



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