Best Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM): The 2019 CRM Service Leaders Awards

THE MARKET

Enterprise feedback management software allows companies to solicit and centrally manage feedback and other data from their customers and then convert it into actionable information that can be distributed throughout the organization. Systems have changed dramatically in the past few years, going beyond just customers to also include data from employees and market researchers. And increasingly, systems are being designed to be used by multiple users in an organization, with varying roles and permissions.

Powerful analytics are another differentiating factor for the players in this category, analysts agreed. As enterprise feedback management vendors enhance their solutions to connect disparate information and draw insights from a variety of sources, including not only traditional survey data but also CRM and human resources data, their ability to leverage predictive analytics and other types of artificial intelligence to help inform customer service teams’ future decisions remains critically important.

THE LEADERS

MaritzCX continues to improve its customer satisfaction score, jumping from last year’s 3.6 to a robust 3.8 in 2019, but there continues to be room for growth, says Ray Wang, Constellation Research’s founder and principal analyst. It can be “hard to work with the product” sometimes, Wang says about its implementation and configuration processes. Still, MaritzCX’s depth of functionality score remained consistent at 3.9.

Last year, analysts praised Medallia for doubling down on user experience and making its tools easier to use, and that trend continued this year. The vendor earned a 4.2 for depth of functionality and a healthy 3.7 for customer satisfaction. Its biggest weakness, however? “Medallia has emerged as the company you love to hate. They have a strong product offering but a wonky professional services team,” Wang says.

Though SurveyMonkey isn’t necessarily a voice-of-the-customer specialist, its platform is “highly intuitive” and effective, says John Ragsdale, vice president of service technology research at the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA). In fact, it’s the survey tool preferred by the TSIA, he points out. Where the company really shines, though, is cost; it earned a whopping 4.7 in that area from the judges. “High usability is also key for SurveyMonkey,” adds Rebecca Wettemann, vice president at Nucleus Research, applauding the intuitiveness of SurveyMonkey’s product.

After struggling for a few years, Verint Systems is back on our leaderboard for the second year straight. The vendor earned a 4.0 in depth of functionality and solid scores of 3.6 in both customer satisfaction and cost. “Verint’s solution is sophisticated, customers are highly satisfied, and the company continues to invest and innovate,” Ragsdale says.

THE WINNER

Qualtrics retains the crown in this category for the third year in a row, thanks largely to its unmatched score of 4.3 in depth of functionality. Strong embedded analytics is a key strength for Qualtrics, according to Wettemann, but the solution as a whole is “incredibly comprehensive and highly rated” as well, according to Ragsdale. Analysts are also optimistic about SAP’s acquisition of Qualtrics earlier this year, which translated into a 4.3 for Qualtrics’s overall direction. With SAP’s extensive analytics tools at its backbone, Qualtrics’s enterprise feedback management capabilities can only get better, analysts agreed.

ONE TO WATCH

NICE just missed the leaderboard once more this year, but it remains an important player in this category, and it scored reasonably well with the judges in depth of functionality (3.7). Its customer satisfaction score of 3.1 shows that it has some work ahead of it, however; that disappointing mark could be the result of “some integration pain following the Satmetrix acquisition,” Ragsdale says. Still, analysts say NICE’s solution is sophisticated and offers good end-to-end capabilities.