Clicktools vs Qualtrics: Choosing the Right CX Software

Clicktools and Qualtrics are established customer experience (CX) platforms that let you collect customer feedback and conduct market research. Both platforms support multiple languages, leverage different question types, and use sentiment analysis to capture your customers’ feelings.

While both solutions are relied upon by many businesses, they have different strengths.

For example, Qualtrics has robust features in its platform for managing your whole customer experience program. On the other hand, Clicktools relies on deep integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) software to leverage CX insights across the customer journey.

Similarly, some CX tools are better suited for B2B business models, while others excel for B2C needs. For example, CustomerGauge was ranked by Gartner as #1 for B2B because of its focus on B2B needs and sales enablement.

So, which software is best for your business, Clicktools, Qualtrics, or CustomerGauge? We’ll explore each platform’s capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, and how customers feel about each

A Closer Look at Clicktools, Qualtrics, and CustomerGauge

CallidusCloud Clicktools

Clicktools is an enterprise survey software that helps businesses conduct market research and collect customer feedback at scale. The platform was acquired by SAP in 2018 and is now part of SAP’s SuccessFactor portfolio, which is a suite of enterprise experience software.

Clicktools integrates with your CRM (such as Salesforce) to help push customer experience data at key stages in the customer journey. Feeding CX data to your CRM helps team members follow up with customers who leave feedback and take action to improve their experiences.

• Price: You’ll need to contact SAP for a custom quote.

• Best for: Medium-to-large-sized organizations that need to collect feedback and use CX to improve each stage of the customer journey.

• Top 3 industries: Computer software, Information Technology and Services, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing.

• Customer service G2 rating: 9.0 for Quality of Support.

• G2 score: 4.3

Qualtrics

Qualtrics is one of the most established experience management platforms, with solutions for managing brand, customer, product, and employee experiences respectively.

The vendor’s customer experience management software is Qualtrics CustomerXM.

Qualtrics CustomerXM is a mature platform that lets you collect customer feedback from multiple channels, interpret it using analytics and sentiment analysis, and take action based on the insights. It’s a great tool for a wide variety of use cases and works for both B2C and B2B needs.

Qualtrics is also one of the only 14 Voice of Customer (VoC) vendors featured in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities Report. The report vetted products’ for core VoC capabilities, including customer journey orchestration, case management features, and advanced predictive and prescriptive analytics.

• Price: Qualtrics CustomerXM’s pricing starts at $1500 annually.

• Best for: All types of businesses, with its largest market share among enterprises.

• Top 3 industries: Financial Services, Retail, B2B.

• Customer service G2 rating: 8.7 for Quality of Support.

• G2 score: 4.3

CustomerGauge

B2B companies must manage more complex customer interactions. As a result, they need software that specifically caters to their complex needs — that’s where CustomerGauge comes in.

CustomerGauge is a B2B CX platform that offers omnichannel data collection, customer journey orchestration, and sales enablement.

The solution prioritizes Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys for collecting feedback. The platform combines NPS insights with other metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Customer Effort Score (CES) to give you a more holistic overview.

CustomerGauge helps B2B and B2B2C businesses leverage customer feedback to fight customer churn and drive revenue through personalized upsells, cross-sells, and referral marketing.

It was ranked #1 for B2B experience in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities report.

• Price: Contact our team for details.

• Best for: B2B and B2B2C businesses looking to grow account sizes and reduce churn in the midmarket and enterprise segments.

• Top 3 industries: Technology, Manufacturing, and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Business Services.

• Customer service G2 rating: 9.6 for Quality of Support.

• G2 score: 4.6

Gartner’s Perspective: Qualtrics vs CustomerGauge

Gartner’s 2020 Critical Capabilities Report assessed the top 14 CX vendors for their B2B enterprise capabilities. CustomerGauge and Qualtrics ranked 1st and 3rd place for enterprise B2B & B2B2C needs, respectively.

However, Clicktools was not featured in the report, indicating that it did not meet the table stakes for B2B needs.

CustomerGauge was also recognized as the best platform for B2B sales enablement, while Qualtrics scored higher for B2C needs, making it the more all-rounded solution.

Clicktools, Qualtrics, & CustomerGauge According to G2

G2 gives insights into how different CX platforms fare versus one another.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how Clicktools, Qualtrics, and CustomerGauge check out. The comparison table shows that Qualtrics scored the highest for “Meets Requirements”, whereas CustomerGauge had the top score for all remaining categories.

Meanwhile, Clicktools did not score the highest in any category and scored particularly low in the “product direction” field.

Clicktools vs Qualtrics vs CustomerGauge: How Customers Feel

How do customers feel about Clicktools, Qualtrics, and CustomerGauge? Let’s see what they have to say.

Clicktools Customers Say…

Strengths

Clicktools is praised for its ease of use and ability to help businesses improve their customer experience programs. Users on G2 have said:

• "I like the ability to integrate with CRMs such as Salesforce. The ability to sync survey results to the CRM made Clicktools a sophisticated tool compared to other platforms designed to be used on their own.” (Administrator in Management Consulting, Small Business)

• “Clicktools is a great software for syncing surveys with Salesforce. It has great features of capturing field information as hidden questions, and then sync it to Salesforce. Reports are awesome, and running through individual questions are great features. Best part I like is if there is an error, it details out all the information. Absolutely, the best tool to use!” (Senior Business Analyst, Enterprise)

Cautions

Although Clicktools has received a lot of praise for its ease of use and reliability, some users have found the software to have some limitations:

• “Nothing that I dislike about Clicktools. However, it would be great if the storage limit can be exceeded so that we don’t have to delete surveys on a frequent basis. Also, if the UI can be enhanced, with new additional features, such as filtering out specific fields during scheduling reports which would allow not to export a whole list of fields that might be unnecessary.” (Senior Business Analyst, Enterprise)

• “Limited in many ways. Cannot fully customize the look and feel of the survey. I would like if you could fully customize the background, add full-screen pictures, and generally more advanced GUI options.” (Process Consultant, Enterprise)

Qualtrics Customers Say…

Strengths

Qualtrics is praised for its excellent feature-set and user-friendly platform.

• “Partnering with Qualtrics has provided us with the right tools to define, measure, and prioritize different member experience journeys throughout our credit union. Since we started utilizing the tools available with Qualtrics, we have been able to make impactful organizational changes based on the feedback received from our members, as well as it has helped strengthen and optimize the daily member experience. If you are ready to be a leader in your industry and offer world-class experiences, I highly recommend partnering with Qualtrics!” (Member Experience Specialist, Mid-Market)

• “That is a very friendly-user platform. You don't need to be an expert in statistics or technology insights to use the software. For example, I am from the Research & Development category, and for me it is very practical when I want to have insights fast and analyze data from consumers. Predictive tools and correlations are very useful for R&D.” (Scientist, Personal Care Products)

Cautions

Some customers have highlighted certain limitations for customizing your surveys, and others have pointed out that the platform is expensive:

• “Customization is very difficult in this tool. Generally, grid type of questions where you need to show multiple columns with different look and feel is complex.” (Team Lead, Small Business)

• “It is a little expensive, but based on what functionalities Qualtrics provides it looks like it is worth it for the organization, which needs frequent Surveys and Polls.” (Administrator in Non-Profit Organization Management)

CustomerGauge Customers Say…

Strengths

Customers of CustomerGauge praise its advanced NPS capabilities and sophisticated customer feedback management tools:

• “Implementing CustomerGauge has allowed us to develop a sophisticated customer feedback program that is easy to manage and report on. The best part of our experience with CustomerGauge has been the ongoing support and collaboration they have provided for helping us to continually improve our program.
  
  Easy integration with our CRM and a variety of reporting tools within the platform have also allowed us to customize our process and get important data to the right people within our organization.” (Administrator in Industrial Automation)

• “Great tool for NPS. I enjoy the ability to be able to mark an NPS score in someone else’s name and the ability to mark a case as closed so you can easily monitor where your efforts need to lie when following up during an NPS ask. Reporting was also very good via CustomerGauge, though it takes a while to set up…

It was a very powerful tool for quickly analyzing any themes and patterns found within the data collected from a client NPS ask.” (User in Information Technology and Services, Enterprise)

Cautions

One reviewer pointed out that CustomerGauge can improve its automation capabilities:

• “I would like email reminders to be a thing when you put a follow up in someone's name. To expand, if a case remained open for a long period with no action, rather than me following the case up by running a report and checking on the status of the case, I'd prefer the CSM got an automated nudge.” (User in Information Technology and Services, Enterprise)

Pros and Cons of Each

Clicktools and Qualtrics are both excellent CX platforms for conducting surveys and collecting feedback. However, while Qualtrics is a powerful solution primed for various use cases, Clicktools relies on deep CRM integrations to take action based on CX data.

Tools like CustomerGauge and Qualtrics also support CRM integrations with software like Salesforce, but these platforms have in-built features to manage CX data and take action based on it.

Each of the three platforms has its respective strengths and drawbacks. For example, Gartner ranked CustomerGauge as the best CX vendor for B2B businesses, while Qualtrics supports various use cases.

Meanwhile, Clicktools is an excellent tool for collecting feedback and pushing it to your CRM, improving the customer journey at each stage.

We’ve reviewed each platform’s pros and cons to help you choose the one that’s best for your business needs.

CallidusCloud Clicktools

Pros

• Excellent surveying capabilities. Clicktools lets you conduct surveys with different question types to help you collect the CX data you need to take action.

• Seamless integration with Salesforce. Clicktools’s CRM integration helps teams capture CX data through surveys, forms, video scripts, and conditional questioning. It then uses contextual sentiment analysis to improve your CRM data and help your customer support teams drive loyalty.

• Advanced customization. Clicktools lets you customize your surveys extensively using CSS and Javascript.

Cons

• Reliance on integrations. Clicktools’s integrations with CRMs are a great strength – and a potential drawback. The platform doesn’t function as a standalone CX management suite, although competitors like Qualtrics and CustomerGauge do.

• Unintuitive user interface (UI). Many users expressed that Clicktools’s UI is unintuitive and difficult to get used to.

Qualtrics

Pros

• Suited for every use case. Qualtrics is equipped to handle various CX needs, from small-scale research requirements to large-scale CX management.

• Drives CX across multiple departments. Some CX vendors are less experienced in driving CX data across multiple departments, like Sales, Marketing, and Products. Fortunately, Qualtrics isn’t one of them—the CX platform is ideal for multi-departmental needs.

• Actionable insights. Qualtrics provides comprehensive analytics and insights to help businesses interpret customer sentiments and take action to reduce churn.

• Feature-rich. Qualtrics is one of the most feature-rich CX platforms, supporting almost 50 languages, multiple survey and question types, and advanced survey logic.

Cons

• Steep learning curve. Qualtrics’s feature-rich design comes with a cost: it takes time to get comfortable with the platform, and some users find the interface unintuitive.

• High price tag. Many reviewers have expressed concern about Qualtrics’s pricing, stating that it’s beyond what small businesses can afford.

CustomerGauge

Pros

• Monetize NPS. Linking CX to financial data helps B2B businesses prioritize accounts and identify which accounts have the most potential for revenue gain—i.e. where to direct your upsell, cross-sell, and referral marketing efforts.

• Built for B2B businesses. CustomerGauge is built for B2B businesses. It excels at customer journey orchestration and mapping complex B2B journeys. The platform helps account, relationship, and customer success managers leverage CX data to increase revenue.
  
  CustomerGauge’s platform is based on the Account Experience methodology, which is tailored for B2B.

• Goal-setting and alerts. Closing the loop entails taking action based on customer feedback, and letting customers know how you’ve tackled their concerns. It’s important to close the loop at the frontline, management, and executive levels.
  
  CustomerGauge helps you close the loop quickly, at every level, by letting you set goals and sending automated alerts to your team.
  
  

• Improved response rates. CustomerGauge helps businesses improve their response rates. It has an average NPS response rate of 15%. In comparison, users of platforms like Qualtrics typically have response rates of 1-2%.

Cons

• Not suited for B2C needs. CustomerGauge is tailored to B2B and B2B2C business needs, so its features can be overkill for B2C businesses.

• Not built for non-commercial needs. While tools like Qualtrics are good for academic research, CustomerGauge is designed for commercial needs.

Looking for a powerful CX platform to transform your B2B customer experiences? Then CustomerGauge is your best bet.

Book a demo to learn more!