Your technology selection approach is broken!

When it comes to choose and buy technology to enable business outcomes, far too many companies still use the same approach of consulting analyst reports, building and issuing RFx, going through long selection and purchasing cycles.

This approach is broken. It is a waste of people’s time and effort, as well as businesses’ money. And, more often than not, it doesn’t provide the desired outcome: the smooth implementation and adoption of a technology that is fit for purpose.

It worked well when technology pricing and licensing models were expensive, required a huge investment in infra-structure, and demanded implementation cycles of many months (sometimes even years). That is history!

Today’s technology platforms pricing and subscription model derisks decisions. Businesses can select a technology; subscribe to it for a very small amount of money and period of time; implement it in a matter of weeks; and prove or disprove its value and adoption.

G2 was created to help change the paradigm, and move the technology selection process to the 21st century – by allowing “real” people to review the technology platforms, rather than just leaving that to a select group of “biased” analysts.

I have said it more than once. What works for consumers must work for companies as well. Purchasing business technology should be as easy and effortless for company’s decision makers, as buying consumer products or services is for all of us.

That is also why G2 came to play a crucial role. It provides “unfiltered reviews” from people who actually use the technology solutions or platforms. More than that, G2 made it simple, clear and easy to navigate and understand, leaving behind jargon.

Furthermore, it innovated! And this post is also to praise them for the creation of the category that looks into Experience Management Software products – where we see Qualtrics (miles away from competition) and Medallia in the Leaders quadrant.

20200515 G2 Crowd - Grid - XM Q2 2020

Qualtrics, Medallia and Challenges for CX Pros

forrester_wave_customer_feedback_solutions

Forrester as just released their Q4 2018 Forrester Wave™ for Customer Feedback Management Platforms, identifying, analysing and scoring the most significant vendors in the market. The report “shows how each provider measures up and helps customer experience professionals choose the right Customer Feedback Management vendor for their organization“.

Forrester’s last evaluation in this space was back in Q2 2017, and since then significant changes and improvements were noticed in the technology platforms. However, challenges on the CX space are still there for CX professionals to face. They are struggling to improve CX due to…

  • Missing strategy and cooperation across the organisation
  • Ad-hoc and uncoordinated projects and initiatives
  • Shortage in customer experience measurement data
  • Disparate operational (O-data) and experience (X-data) data silos
  • Absence of a C-level or senior leadership sponsor
  • Lack of one single experience and feedback management platform

Qualtrics and Medallia are clearly leading the pack, not only in terms of offering but also market presence. And these are the ones I usually hear and talk about, when I’m discussing with my clients.

Forrester recognises that Qualtricshas made significant investments (…) strengthening its position” in particular in its “analytics capabilities by adding the ability to conduct complex conjoint analysis (…) and introducing Predict iQ, which lets clients move from being reactive to proactive by identifying at-risk customers“. But Qualtrics is much more than just a CX platform, as they have built a comprehensive XM platform that brings brand, product, and employee experience together with customer experience.

The other leader, Medallia, also “enables a culture of CX, democratizing insights by bringing the VoC to the frontlines and incorporating the voice of the employee”, and they also “updated its text analytics capabilities and introduced new features like Conversations, which lets customers provide real-time feedback across messaging platforms such as SMS and Facebook Messenger (…) and VoC Anywhere, which lets companies collect feedback natively through various internetconnected devices or platforms”.

One thing is for sure, a Customer Feedback Management platform is critical to CX transformation. Forrester says…

To transform customer experience, CX professionals rely on customer feedback management technologies and services (…) because it helps manage complexity, by centralizing and automating key VoC activities [Listen, Interpret, Act, and Monitor]“.