At the risk of dating myself, I’m a proud member of Gen X. So, perhaps I can be forgiven for channeling Jerry Maguire and George Constanza when I think about the key takeaways from the latest Forrester Wave™ evaluation of customer feedback management (CFM) solutions.

My conversations with the customer references for the nine vendors included in this Forrester Wave reinforced my evaluation and what I have been hearing from our clients: The “how” is often more important than the “what” when buying CFM solutions. In a market where vendors’ technical offerings are incredibly similar, CFM buyers need to consider the wise words of some 1990s icons:

  1. “Help me help you.” CFM vendors offer a range of services, but buyers often focus on the tech and don’t budget for adequate services. The need for services does not necessarily decrease with organizational maturity. For example, some reference customers for this research use strategic vendor services for advanced predictive and what-if analyses as well as for simpler survey design and deployments — freeing up their team for higher-value work. Buyers should assess their own maturity, resources, and speed requirements when considering the role of services.
  2. “It’s not you, its me.” Nearly half of the customer references I spoke with cited internal reasons for not using some of the features offered by their CFM solution. For example, most reference customers underuse the analytics tools offered by their CFM. For some organizations, internal policies limit their ability to bring data into the CFM to perform these analyses. Other organizations prefer to pull data out of the CFM because they do analysis in other tools. Either way, CX leaders need to understand their organization’s policies and processes when selecting a CFM to ensure contextual fit.

And because no blog in 2024 is complete with requisite mention of generative AI (genAI), CFM buyers are still looking for vendors to “Show me the money!” GenAI-enabled features, like natural language interfaces to query data, are top of mind for buyers. Many vendors are rushing to respond, but expectations still exceed reality. As we’ve written recently, CX teams should keep expectations in check and focus on employee-facing use cases for genAI first.

Forrester clients: Check out the latest new report for more insights, and book a session with me if you’d like to go deeper.