• The Customer Experience Vendor Landscape

    by  • September 20, 2011 • Customer Experience, Strategy

    Buyers, investors, and press are confused. When it comes to digital customer experience solutions, they can’t tell X from Y, and it’s only going to get worse. What they want is a single place to track all the vendors, and I’m going to take a stab, and get your help via submissions to keep it updated.

    There are new technologies and strategies that are impacting the customer experience. Technologies like customer analytics, customer experience management systems, and even HTML 5 all impact the customer experience. Additionally, how platforms like Facebook and Twitter will be a part of the customer experience landscape is still up in the air along with what role different vendors like Adobe, IBM, Molecular, RightNow, and others will play in this market.

    The problem is that it is difficult to keep track of all of the vendors and who does what. According to one vendor I had a briefing with, even the vendors themselves are confused (for example, while writing this it was announced that NICE would acquire Fizzback). The list that follows is a broad list of today’s primary customer experience vendors. It by no means covers every single agency or consultant who works on customer experience, but in my research and discussions I have tried to ferret out as many as possible. I have also tried to split them out according to a simple marketplace taxonomy. Like all markets, the customer experience market is not clear and clean-cut, so there is some overlap. My goal is to reduce the confusion. I won’t be able to eliminate it totally as it is an evolving market, but with your help we can reduce it as much as possible. Any mis-categorization or failure to include is simply a mistake that I would appreciate your help in correcting.

    What I would like to encourage you to do is either publicly in the comments or privately if necessary send me your thoughts on the list. Are the companies positioned correctly? Are their critical companies I should have included but missed? Is the categorization and taxonomy wrong?  I will use your responses as an input to keep an ongoing view of the customer experience market ecosystem.

    Note: All companies in each section are listed in alphabetical order.

    Customer Experience Analytics/Analysis. Customer experience analytics are those technologies that allow for the measurement and analysis of the customer experience. Often this overlaps with customer intelligence, customer data, and other similar technologies.

    Clarabridge
    ClickSquared
    Cognos (IBM)
    Coremetrics (IBM)
    Coveo
    Foresee Results
    Medallia
    NetBase
    NICE Systems
    Omniture (Adobe)
    Oracle
    Prediction Impact
    Radian 6
    SAS
    Unica (IBM)
    Vivisumo
    Webtrends

    Customer Experience Agencies. Customer experience agencies cover those consultants and agencies that have a practice or deep expertise in customer experience beyond the traditional communication/PR/marketing aspects of agencies.

    Acquity Group
    Adaptive Path
    Andrew Reise Consulting
    Blast Radius
    Concept Farm
    Edelman
    EffectiveUI
    iCrossing
    Isobar
    Juxt
    Ogilvy
    Peppers & Rogers
    Razorfish
    Rosetta
    Roundarch
    SapientNitro
    Siegel+Gale
    Siteworx
    Strativity
    Universal Mind

    Customer Experience Management. Customer experience management (CEM) are a collection of technologies, strategies, and processes that are used to manage the cross-channel interactions with a brand or a company. These often overlap with CRM and SCRM systems but are different in that the focus of a CRM system is the enterprise and the focus of a CEM system is the customer.

    Axicom
    Adobe
    Clearaction
    Consona
    Endeca
    Isobar
    Kana
    Medallia
    RightNow
    Satmetrix
    Sitecore
    Tea Leaf

    Voice of The Customer/Customer Feedback. VoC technologies are in-depth processes and strategies to capture an individual or class of customer’s expectations, preferences and dislikes.

    Allegiance
    Attensity
    Confirmit
    Fizzback
    Get Satisfaction
    iPerceptions
    Kampyle
    OpinionLab
    Overtone
    PeopleMetrics
    PowerReviews
    RightNow
    Satmetrix
    Strategex
    Vovici (Verint)

    Customer Loyalty. Those technologies used to measure and potentially increase a customer’s loyalty through a better customer experience and a communications cycle.

    BrandKeys
    Corsential
    Foresee Results
    Gallup
    Kampyle
    Strategex

    Bottom line: This is just the beginning of this effort and obviously needs your help, so I am hoping for your feedback. Again, any omission or mis-categorization is not intentional and I would appreciate your help in correcting. Thank you!

    Question: What do you think? What is missing, What should be taken out? What is wrong with it?

    If you are one of the vendors above or a vendor who should be on this list and would like to brief us, please send an email to alan (at) altimetergroup (dot) com. Thank you!

    Note: I will be constantly updating this post as I speak and get briefings from companies on this list and note it here.

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