There’s no denying the importance of customer satisfaction in the highly competitive B2B manufacturing space. If a company’s customers aren’t satisfied, there’s a very good chance they’ll leave and never come back. 

According to Zendesk, after just one bad experience, 80% of customers will be on their way out the door. There isn’t much room for error. 

To succeed, B2B manufacturers must do everything possible to meet customers’ needs.

One great way manufacturers can overcome this challenge is by using customer feedback tools. By automating feedback collection, businesses can consistently transform data into actionable insights to drive improvements and smart decision-making.

This article explores nine of the best customer feedback platforms today. Armed with this information, B2B manufacturers can determine which one’s the right fit for them to begin improving their customer experience and growing their market share and profits.

What is a customer feedback platform?

Put simply, a customer feedback platform is a tool that enables businesses to collect feedback from their customers through various channels, including customer feedback surveys and in-product prompts. 

At a minimum, most of these platforms measure the following metrics:

• Net promoter score (NPS)
• Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
• Customer effort score (CES)

A business can obtain useful customer insights to improve its customer experience by utilizing a real-time feedback loop. This continuous improvement process ensures better products/services and fosters stronger customer relationships.

How important are customer feedback tools?

Customer feedback tools are integral to manufacturers establishing and maintaining a customer-centric approach, which is closely tied to a company’s success. The feedback and data these platforms collect help businesses do the following.

Measure customer satisfaction

Perhaps most importantly, relevant customer data allows companies to gauge customer sentiment (how customers feel about their brand) and determine whether product/service changes are warranted.

Create a better customer experience

An automated feedback loop can also identify what consumers like and dislike about a business and its products/services. Making adjustments based on this information can increase retention and improve the customer’s overall experience.

Improve products or services

Getting stuck in a rut and leaving a product as is for years is easy. The feedback gathered by these tools spurs companies of all kinds to continually refine their offerings. This is especially critical for SaaS companies so they stay competitive, meet fluctuating user needs, and continuously improve customer satisfaction.

Source testimonials and reviews

Customer feedback is also a great way to come by positive testimonials that can be used for promotional purposes. These reviews can also provide valuable insights into product/service satisfaction, areas for improvement, market trends, and ways to build consumer trust. 

How to choose the right customer feedback tool

There are lots of customer feedback software options on the market today. B2B manufacturers should focus on the following factors when deciding which feedback management tool will be best for them.

User-friendly interface

The right customer feedback tool’s interface should be easy to navigate, saving teams time versus previous attempts to gather customer feedback manually.

Features and functionality

Naturally, the tool should also offer many practical features. For example, it should enable companies to gather qualitative and quantitative user feedback, track multiple metrics, and analyze the data efficiently. 

Customization

It’s helpful to employ a customer feedback platform for customization so businesses can brand their CX surveys, online forms, email requests, in-app prompts, website widgets, and more during feedback collection. 

Integrations with existing systems

Manufacturers should also look for customer feedback tools that integrate with their existing tech stack and applications, including those systems and software already used for customer support.

Industry-specific needs

A B2B manufacturer, in particular, should look for a feedback tool that offers customizable surveys tailored to its industry-specific needs to obtain detailed product feedback. The platform should also provide insights specifically about product development and B2B relationships.

Data security and compliance

As with any other software, companies must ensure the customer feedback platform follows all applicable data security rules and regulations related to their industry and geographic locations. 

For example, the tool should adhere to the following:

• Data encryption
• User authentication
• Regular security audits
• GDPR, CCPA, and PCI-DSS
• Strict access controls

Pricing

Obviously, pricing matters too. In most cases, this is dictated by a company’s budget. It’s important to remember that the tool's price will impact the ROI the business can expect. Also, a higher price tag should always come with more features.

Best customer feedback tools and software for B2B manufacturing

There are multiple customer experience solutions and feedback tools on the market. To simplify the decision for B2B manufacturers, nine of the best customer feedback software options are listed below, and their pros and cons are highlighted for easy comparison.  

CustomerSure

The first on the list, CustomerSure, offers the following benefits:

• Heatmaps
• League table displays
• Strength and weakness identification
• KPI tracking (NPS, CSAT, CES)
• Satisfaction driver identification
• Choice question reporting
• Customer journey reports
• Segmenting
• Instant feedback and real-time alerts
• Smart trend labels
• Company and personal views
• Feedback response
• Customer feedback collection (surveys, emails, SMS)
• Survey customization
• GDPR compliance

“Great company and people to work with—and the platform is so easy to use and adapt to suit your company's needs. If you're looking to collect feedback from your clients and customers, speak to CustomerSure before you look anywhere else—it's the best decision we made.” —Rosina Michel, DART Tool Group

Although this customer feedback software offers many useful features and a robust security profile, reviewers say that the platform can run slow and some actions are too time-consuming and complicated.

Qualaroo

The next on the list, Qualaroo, does more than just collect customer feedback. It provides these additional functionalities:

• AI sentiment analysis
• Prototype testing
• Pre-built survey templates
• Confirmation page surveys
• Exit intent surveys
• Question branching
• A/B testing
• Multiple integrations
• Website feedback
• Survey software
• User experience feedback
• Product feedback
• iOS and Android app feedback
• Customer experience management
• NPS monitoring

“Using Qualaroo, we got to hear feedback from our visitors in their voice. We used the data to develop and completely redesign our branded landing page and validate our hypotheses. Qualaroo gave us a 16% lift in conversion at 98% statistical significance.” —Jaxon Lam, Senior Strategist at Web Growth, Hootesuite Media Inc.

One of Qualaroo’s strengths is its predictive intelligence and analytics offerings. However, some reviewers mention an inability to add surveys to their mobile websites to collect feedback data and troublesome interactions with customer service when trying to work out issues and make feature requests. 

Qualtrics

Qualtrics, meanwhile, was founded in 2002 and offers these helpful features, among others:

• Text and sentiment analytics
• Linguistic categorization
• AI-driven insights
• Emotion and intent detection
• Pre-built survey templates
• Multiple survey types (NPS, CSAT, CES, exit-intent, etc.)
• EmployeeXM (employee experience management system)
• Survey question reviews
• Survey design recommendations
• Integration with Salesforce, Adobe, Marketo, etc.
• Visual feedback via various graph options
• Reporting in different formats

“If we didn’t have Qualtrics, we’d be flying blind.” —Stance

This comprehensive customer experience and feedback platform is known for its ease of use, survey customization, and impactful reporting. However, the service can be a bit pricey; some companies find its price increases over time too hefty.  

Feedier

Then there’s Feedier. Based in France, this customer intelligence platform advertises the following features:

• Feedback and business data centralization
• AI-enhanced adaptive text analysis
• Feedback management
• Real-time reporting
• Benchmark and geographic reporting
• The ability to automate and create surveys
• Segmentation
• NPS score updates
• Web in-app feedback widget  
• Data visualizations
• Integration with Salesforce

This B2B feedback management solution aims to improve the end-user experience. Reviewers say it does but with one caveat: its pricing can be expensive for small businesses. But it is easy to implement, has a user-friendly interface, and offers top-notch customer support.

Bazaarvoice

Another one of the user feedback tools on this list is Bazaarvoice, which strives to help companies leverage the voices of their customers. To do this, it provides:

• Innovative collection methods like sweepstakes
• eCommerce integrations
• Advanced data analytics
• In-depth reporting
• Content moderation and syndication
• Product catalog management
• Strategic guidance from technical account managers
• Implementation consulting services
• Direct consumer feedback loops
• Benchmarking

“Increased product reviews have driven up our sales. Moderation has removed a large chunk of staff time to maintain the user-generated content. Star ratings have assisted with site authenticity.” —G2 Reviewer, Mid-market business

One of Bazaarvoice's big advantages is that it helps companies collect customer reviews and feedback and publicly display them on their product pages to build trust. Potential drawbacks include a lack of technical support and a long onboarding period.

UserReport

UserReport, an online survey and feedback management system out of Denmark, cites these features on its website:

• Survey widget
• User satisfaction tracking
• NPS monitoring
• Demographics and reporting
• Google Analytics integration
• Customer feedback app
• Customization
• Feature-request prioritization

“UserReport gives us insights into the visitors’ digital brand experience and how well the website meets the users’ demands for quality.” —Stefan Asmussen, Toyota

This tool keeps its clients abreast of customer feature requests and bug reports via several easy-to-install widgets. Some users state that they think the user interface could be improved and noticed the pricing increase over time with additional widget usage.

Usersnap

A user feedback platform, Usersnap, advertises the following customer benefits:

• Bug tracking and reporting
• Micro-surveys by user event
• Segmentation
• Tracking feedback activities
• User screen captures
• Feedback widget
• Feature-request prioritization
• User sentiment tracking
• Lightweight code installation
• GDPR and CCPA compliance
• Personalized onboarding
• Live chat support

“Usersnap has shortened our customer support cycle. Visual feedback really helps us understand and iterate faster.” —Joscha Feth, Lead Engineer, Canva

This platform effectively captures, organizes, and scales user feedback for product testing and feature validation. Reviewers like that it’s easy to integrate and use. They are also happy that it allows data export to Excel but say that the service lacks some basic features that competitors offer. 

Feedbackify

English Feedbackify is a website feedback solution that tracks bugs and feature requests from customer emails, chats, and reviews. It gives its customers access to:

• Customizable feedback forms
• Survey creation and management
• An intuitive drag-and-drop interface
• Customizable website feedback tabs
• A lightweight code installation
• A real-time feedback dashboard
• Customer demographic information
• Feedback categorization
• Real-time analytics

Quick and simple, Feedbackify offers a lot of customization. While its features are arguably limited, they effectively capture and analyze user opinions. According to users, one place the tool could potentially improve is its dashboard.

Hotjar

Last but not least on the list is Hotjar. A leading heatmap tool that tracks user behavior and interactions, Hotjar also offers the following perks:

• Live playbacks of user website interactions
• Real-time website suggestion boxes
• Surveys
• One-on-one user interviews
• CX problem identification
• Feature-request prioritization
• Integrations with Google Analytics, Unbounce, Zapier, et al.
• GDPR, CCPA, and PCI compliance

"Hotjar is a critical tool for us to understand our users and identify any pain points where they might be getting stuck." —Mike Fiorillo, Growth Product Manager, Invision

Users appreciate seeing how their website visitors act and appreciate Hotjar’s fast loading speed, but some feel its pricing is too high and that customer support is lacking. Others aren’t clear about how to proceed after viewing the heatmaps and wish the service offered more actionable insights.

Customer feedback is key to B2B manufacturing success

In today’s competitive B2B marketplace, it’s critical that companies find ways to gather and interpret customer feedback so they can use it to improve their products, services, and overall customer experiences. 

By implementing the right customer feedback tool, B2B manufacturers can automate and streamline feedback collection to drive continuous product and website improvements. 

With so many customer feedback solutions on the market, businesses should consider the above factors as they evaluate their options. Requesting demos and taking advantage of trials can also help them find the best fit, enabling them to proactively boost customer satisfaction and retention, build loyalty, and ultimately gain a competitive advantage that leads to increased revenue and market share.

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