In 2013, we published a Forrester Wave™ evaluation on Social Relationship Platforms — the technologies that help marketers publish content to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as monitor and respond to customer posts on those sites.

We evaluated established SRPs like Spredfast, Sprinklr, Shoutlet, Adobe Social, and salesforce.com’s Buddy Media, and found that none of them were good enough to fall into our “Leaders” category. Why? For one thing, most had significant gaps in their offerings.

But we also found that many of their customers weren’t terribly satisfied. Even though all the clients we spoke with were referred to us by the vendors themselves — and so presumably were amongst each SRP’s happiest customers — most had some reservations about the features, functionality, and service the vendors provided. In several cases, we were shocked by how little the reference clients thought of their technology partners.

One year later, we decided to check in on whether marketers had grown any more satisfied with their social relationship platforms. For a new report out today, we asked 56 marketers who used a variety of SRPs whether they’d recommend their vendor to a colleague — and found that overall, social relationship platforms have a Net Promoter Score of -16. Yes, that’s negative sixteen.

 

As you can see, only 27% fell into the “promoters” category. That means that nearly three-quarters of social marketers would not recommend you choose the partner they did.

What about you? Would you recommend your social relationship platform to a friend or colleague? Why do you think SRPs aren’t better serving their clients?