If you’ve ever wondered what your customers really think about you, the best way to find out is to ask them. But not in a casual way. You need the right tools, and a plan to get something meaningful out of customer feedback. That’s where voice of customer tools can help.
Think about the last time you walked into your favourite coffee shop. As you sip your favourite brew, have you ever wondered what makes that particular café so inviting? Most likely, it’s not just the coffee. It’s the collective voice of the customers embedded into the experience, creating the most delightful moments.
This is the heart of what great voice of customer tools help you to achieve – effectively listening to your customers’ feedback, feelings, and expectations. These tools are not just for listening; they also analyze customer feedback to help businesses make more customer-centric, data-driven decisions.
VoC tools enable businesses to collect customer feedback from various channels such as surveys, social media, and product reviews, making it easier to gather comprehensive insights.
Overview of VoC Tools
Below we’ve put together a list of the top VoC tools that help elevate customer experiences. If you're curious to learn more about a specific tool, click into the list to go directly to the section that explores more about it.
Kapiche – Best for bottom-up feedback analysis for accurate VoC insights.
InMoment – Best for comprehensive multi-channel feedback management
Medallia – Best for large-scale enterprise feedback management
Qualtrics – Best for powerful survey and feedback management
Zendesk – Best for streamlining customer communication and issue resolution
UserTesting – Best for remote user experience testing and feedback
Brandwatch – Best for social listening and digital consumer intelligence
Refiner – Best for customizable survey templates and feedback collection
AskNicely – Best for NPS tracking and continuous feedback loops
Sprinklr – Best for enterprise-level customer experience management
What is the Voice of the Customer (VoC)?
Voice of the customer is the rich, nuanced experiences and sentiment that customers have from interacting with your services. Customer views on your brand are subtly woven in with each touchpoint they have.
Like a seasoned chef carefully tasting a dish to arrive at the best blend of flavours, voice of the customer data helps you discern what tweaks you need to make to your offers.
By understanding and meeting customer expectations, VoC insights enable businesses to enhance customer experience, align their strategies with what customers value, and secure a competitive advantage by not just meeting but exceeding these expectations.
Great VoC insights don’t just tell you what customers say, or how they score you – they provide a window into what customers feel, need, and expect. Your ability to do this well is largely dictated by the tool you select to support your efforts.
What Are Voice of Customer (VoC) Tools?
Voice of customer tools are software solutions designed to help businesses capture, analyze, and act on customer feedback effectively, serving as a comprehensive voice of the customer platform for feedback management. It’s like having a high-powered microscope and amplifier in your customer insights laboratory.
Imagine having a team of expert analysts at your fingertips, tirelessly sifting through vast amounts of customer data to extract actionable insights in real time. Voice of customer tools allow you to do this, performing advanced data analysis to uncover insights. So your team can move beyond surface-level feedback, and dive deep into customer sentiment, preferences, and behaviours across various touch points with your brand.
How to Choose a Voice of Customer Software Tool
If you haven’t used a voice of the customer tool before, there are some foundations you should be aware of when making your evaluation.
One of the first things you should keep in mind is the difference between all-in-one, and dedicated platforms. The key difference lies in their focus and capabilities.
What are all-in-one CX platforms?
All-in-one platforms provide a comprehensive suite of tools to manage the entire customer experience, including survey management, data collection, analysis, and more.
They might offer a wide range of features like omnichannel engagement, journey mapping, or predictive analytics. They aim to be a one-stop-shop for all CX needs, providing an integrated view of the customer.
Pros: Streamlined workflow, single vendor relationship, holistic view of CX.
Cons: May not have the most advanced or specialized capabilities in any one area, can be very expensive, may have a steeper learning curve, and more maintenance for system integration and upkeep.
Which tool type is best for me?
If your primary focus is on deriving meaningful insights from customer feedback data, especially unstructured text data, then a dedicated feedback analytics platform may be the better choice. If your goal is to stand up one tool to keep your tech stack as lean as possible, an all in one might be a better choice. For more on the anatomy of a best-in-class VoC program, check out our guide on the topic.
Whatever route you take, there are elements you want in either tool to ensure you can make the most of your insights.
Here are the top five elements to consider:
Data Centralization: VoC tools consolidate customer feedback from different sources like surveys, social media, emails, and support tickets. This lets you gather your data into one centralized platform for analysis.
Advanced Analytics: the tools leverage advanced analytics techniques like sentiment analysis, text analytics, and machine learning, to extract meaningful patterns and trends from unstructured customer data. So your team can minimize a lot of heavy lifting and get significant time back.
Actionable Insights: by translating raw data into actionable insights, VoC tools spotlight findings that help you make more informed decisions. You can use this feedback to select your feature improvements, and think up new ways to enhance overall customer experience. This process is crucial for businesses aiming to gain valuable customer insights, which in turn helps in understanding and serving their customers better.
Real-Time Monitoring: voice of the customer tools provide real-time monitoring capabilities, allowing you to stay on the pulse of customer feedback, and be agile in responding to it. As trends, issues, or opportunities emerge, you can see them, and jump on them. This is essential for improving customer satisfaction, as it enables timely responses and adjustments based on customer feedback.
Performance Tracking: whether you track KPIs like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), voice of the customer tools offer comprehensive dashboards and reports for track specific performance metrics over time.
10 Best Voice of Customer Tools
In this section, we’ve created a list of the 10 best voice of customer tools and software to help your VoC goals.
The best voice of the customer tools not only integrate with customer relationship management systems to enhance customer data analysis but also excel in analyzing feedback from customer service interactions for a holistic view of customer sentiment. Below you’ll find a brief description of each tool, and signature features of note.
1. Kapiche
Kapiche is a dedicated feedback analytics platform that specializes in bottom-up analysis for the most accurate VoC insights. It leverages advanced AI to extract sentiment, themes, and trends from unstructured data sources, empowering businesses to understand customer feedback at scale. Thanks to natural language processing, the platform rapidly analyzes thousands of customer feedback responses, enabling users to uncover insights in minutes rather than weeks or months.
The platform’s approach to analyzing customer feedback is customer-led rather than KPI or theme-led, giving teams a truer view on how to actually improve customer satisfaction. As a data agnostic platform, you can connect data from any source for a comprehensive, 360 degree view of your customer’s experiences. The agile data slicing and precise customer metrics tracking capabilities enable teams to dive deep into customer sentiments, preferences, and pain points, facilitating data-driven decision-making and customer-centric strategies.
Best for: Best for doing bottom-up analysis for the most accurate VoC data
Top features:
Storyboard view for agile data slicing
Bottom-up feedback analysis
Precise KPI tracking with rich data context
2. InMoment
InMoment provides comprehensive multi-channel feedback management and advanced analytics for customer feedback programs. It enables businesses to collect feedback across various touch points such as web, mobile, email, and SMS, providing a holistic view of customer experiences.
InMoment's AI-driven insights, sentiment analysis, and predictive modelling capabilities help organizations uncover actionable insights from customer feedback data, driving improvements in customer satisfaction, loyalty, and overall business performance.
Best for: Comprehensive multi-channel feedback management and analytics
Top features:
AI-driven insights and sentiment analysis
Predictive modelling for actionable insights
Closed-loop feedback management for continuous improvements
3. Medallia
Medallia is designed for large-scale enterprise feedback management and omnichannel insights, offering robust solutions for collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback.
It empowers organizations with advanced analytics, AI-driven insights, and closed-loop feedback management capabilities to drive continuous improvements in customer experiences and business outcomes.
Best for: Large-scale enterprise feedback management and omnichannel insights
Top features:
Robust solutions for collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback
Analytics and AI-driven insights
Closed-loop feedback management for continuous improvements
4. Qualtrics
Qualtrics stands out for its powerful survey and feedback management capabilities across diverse customer touch points. It offers advanced features such as customizable surveys, real-time analytics, and sentiment analysis to capture valuable insights into customer sentiments, preferences, and behaviors.
Qualtrics' interface and comprehensive reporting tools make it a preferred choice for organizations seeking to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty through data-driven strategies.
Best for: Powerful survey and feedback management capabilities across diverse touchpoints
Top features:
Customizable surveys and real-time analytics
Sentiment analysis for valuable insights
User-friendly interface and comprehensive reporting tools
5. Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service and engagement platform offering a comprehensive suite of tools for managing customer interactions across multiple channels. It provides solutions for customer support, sales, and customer feedback management, allowing businesses to streamline communication and resolve issues efficiently.
Zendesk's key features include ticketing systems, live chat support, and knowledge base management, empowering organizations to deliver exceptional customer experiences. With robust analytics and reporting capabilities, Zendesk helps businesses gather insights from customer interactions, enhance customer satisfaction, and optimize customer support processes for improved efficiency and effectiveness.
Best for: Streamlining customer communication and issue resolution
Top features:
Ticketing systems for efficient issue tracking
Live chat support for real-time customer assistance
Knowledge base management for self-service customer support
6. UserTesting
UserTesting specializes in remote user experience testing and feedback collection through real-time customer interactions. It allows businesses to conduct usability tests, surveys, and interviews to gather qualitative insights into user behaviours, preferences, and pain points.
UserTesting's platform offers video recordings, detailed analytics, and AI-driven insights to help organizations optimize digital experiences, iterate product designs, and drive customer-centric innovation.
Best for: Remote user experience testing and feedback collection
Top features:
Usability tests, surveys, and interviews for qualitative insights
Video recordings and detailed analytics
AI-driven insights for product design optimization
7. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a leading social listening and digital consumer intelligence platform that helps businesses monitor, analyze, and act on conversations across social media and online platforms. It offers powerful analytics, sentiment analysis, and trend tracking tools to understand customer perceptions, market trends, and brand health in real time.
Brandwatch's customizable dashboards, competitive benchmarking, and AI-driven insights enable organizations to make data-driven decisions, engage with audiences effectively, and optimize marketing strategies for maximum impact.
Best for: Social listening and digital consumer intelligence
Top features:
Analytics and sentiment analysis for customer perceptions
Trend tracking and competitive benchmarking
AI-driven insights for data-driven decisions
8. Refiner
Refiner is a customer feedback and survey platform designed to help businesses collect actionable insights from customers at various touch points. It offers customizable survey templates, targeting options, and analytics to gather qualitative and quantitative feedback on product experiences, customer satisfaction, and user journeys.
Refiner's integrations with CRM and marketing tools, along with its robust reporting features, empower teams to measure customer sentiment, track NPS scores, and drive improvements in product offerings and customer experiences.
Best for: Customer feedback and survey platform with actionable insights
Top features:
Customizable survey templates and targeting options
Integration with CRM and marketing tools
NPS tracking and sentiment analysis for customer experiences
9. AskNicely
AskNicely is a customer experience and feedback platform that focuses on measuring and improving Net Promoter Score (NPS) through continuous feedback loops. It enables businesses to collect real-time feedback from customers via surveys, emails, and SMS, helping to identify promoters, detractors, and areas for improvement.
AskNicely's NPS tracking, sentiment analysis, and trend monitoring tools provide actionable insights to drive customer retention, loyalty, and advocacy strategies for sustainable business growth.
Best for: Measuring and improving Net Promoter Score (NPS) through continuous feedback
Top features:
Real-time feedback collection via surveys, emails, and SMS
NPS tracking, sentiment analysis, and trend monitoring
Actionable insights for customer retention and loyalty strategies
10. Sprinklr
Sprinklr is an enterprise-level customer experience management platform that offers a comprehensive suite of solutions for social media management, marketing, advertising, research, and customer care. It helps businesses unify customer data, engage with audiences across multiple channels, and deliver personalized experiences at scale.
Sprinklr's AI-powered analytics, social listening capabilities, and workflow automation empower organizations to optimize customer interactions, enhance brand reputation, and drive meaningful business outcomes across the customer journey.
Best for: Enterprise-level customer experience management across multiple channels
Top features:
Social media management, marketing, advertising, and customer care solutions
AI-powered analytics and workflow automation
Personalized experiences and brand reputation enhancement
In Summary
There are a range of tools to explore – from survey software, to multi-channel feedback aggregators, to bottoms-up voice of the customer tools.
If you want to see some examples of great Voice of Customer programs in action, check out this breakdown of how leading brands are using VoC data to drive their business goals.
Looking for a reliable partner to decipher customer sentiment and get to actionable insights? Check out a freeKapiche demo on this page to see if it's a fit for your needs.
