Customer feedback software

Customer feedback has never been more important. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 73% of customers will stop doing business with a company after multiple bad experiences. Proactively collecting customer feedback allows you to understand what your customers are experiencing, so you can improve your processes before it’s too late.

Customer feedback software can help you build the strategies and systems that help you stand out in a crowded marketplace. In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know about identifying, selecting and rolling out customer feedback tools to help your customer service team stay competitive for years to come.

• What is customer feedback software?
• Customer feedback software comparison chart
• The 16 best customer feedback software
• Features to look for in customer feedback tools
• How to choose the right customer feedback system
• Customer feedback software FAQ
• Try customer feedback software for free

Customer feedback software is a tool that helps determine how customers feel about a business’s products and services. Collecting this kind of information is a valuable source of customer data that reveals trends in customer pain points, opinions, reactions, preferences and complaints. The right feedback software makes it easy to collect and share these insights with the appropriate teams across the organisation, so the business can consistently learn and improve.

1. Zendesk

As a customer satisfaction (CSAT) software, Zendesk is as versatile as it gets. You can use Zendesk to automatically solicit feedback from customers and prospects via surveys and support tickets right within the support application. But that’s just the beginning. All data from customer interactions – including CSAT surveys – gets captured and leveraged to improve service quality.

With CSAT surveys, you can help your team highlight top performers and identify training opportunities to maintain a happy and effective workforce. You can also see trends in customer complaints and areas of opportunity and what channels are most popular for what types of communication.

Thanks to the array of free native integrations on Zendesk Marketplace, you can keep using your favourite survey tools and access your data in one place. Combining the industry-leading automation and analytics tools of your service desk software with your feedback tools allows you to create a complete customer feedback system.

The customer surveys you can create in Zendesk help you learn what your business needs to do to be more customer-orientated. Complementary tools, like knowledge management software, let you create articles based on frequently asked questions, so your company can help customers even when your reps aren’t online. By collecting feedback via comments or ratings on those articles, you can learn which are the most or least helpful to create a collection of useful help centre content.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customer segmentation
• 1600+ apps and integrations
• Omnichannel support
• Customisable platform
• Industry-leading Agent Workspace
• Self-service options
• Live chat and messaging
• Support for multiple languages
• Chatbots
• Industry-leading Agent Workspace

Pricing:

• Support Team: $19 per agent/month
• Support Professional: $55 per agent/month
• Support Enterprise: $115 per agent/month
• Suite Team: $55 per agent/month
• Suite Growth: $89 per agent/month
• Suite Professional: $115 per agent/month
• Suite Enterprise: contact sales
• Suite Enterprise Plus: contact sales
  *Plans are billed annually.

• Start a free trial
• View pricing
• Request a demo
• Take a product tour
• Evaluate the ROI of Zendesk

Free trial:

2. SurveyMonkey

While it’s not solely dedicated to customer satisfaction surveys, SurveyMonkey can collect, consolidate and report on customer feedback. It has several survey templates addressing particular use cases, like customer service, HR and marketing. SurveyMonkey also has AI features that can gather data from millions of surveys to help users ask better questions.

The software is structured so that users get prompted to organise customers into segmented lists that can be tagged and categorised for targeted surveys. You can send surveys to multiple or single lists. When combined with Zendesk, you can trigger SurveyMonkey surveys based on Zendesk events.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customer segmentation
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Basic: $0 per month
• Team Advantage: $25 per user/month
• Team Premier: $75 per user/month
• Advantage Annual: $39 per month
• Standard Monthly: $99 per month
• Premier Annual: $119 per month
• Enterprise: contact SurveyMonkey
  *Plans are billed annually except for Standard Monthly.

Free trial:

Learn more about the SurveyMonkey app for Zendesk.

3. Qualaroo

Qualaroo provides customer feedback tools, including Net Promoter ScoreⓇ (NPS), CSAT and customer effort score (CES) surveys. It also provides an in-app survey that helps businesses target customers with the right questions and identify how many visitors saw the survey – and whether they filled it out or not.

Businesses can conduct A/B testing to measure the success of different surveys. Plus, Qualaroo AI features can gauge customer sentiment by analysing results. If there’s a negative response, a trigger can notify an agent to contact the customer to prevent churn.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customer segmentation
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Email Surveys Essentials: $19 per month
• Email Surveys Business: $99 per month
• Contextual Surveys Essentials: $69 per month
• Contextual Surveys Premium: $149 per month
• Contextual Surveys Business: $299+ per month
• Contextual and Email Surveys Essentials: $79 per month
• Contextual and Email Surveys Premium: $169 per month
• Contextual and Email Surveys Business: $299+ per month
  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial: 15 days

4. GetFeedback

GetFeedback is a customer feedback service that helps businesses create better customer experiences. Businesses can administer CES, CSAT and digital experience surveys across channels, including mobile apps. It also facilitates real-time agent responses with notifications.

GetFeedback customers can build dashboards that filter data by a customer’s attributes, the products they use or the region they’re in. Its analytics use machine learning to track key phrases and sentiment and collect insights into reports to help teams identify trends.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customer segmentation
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Contact GetFeedback

Free trial:

Learn more about the GetFeedback app for Zendesk.

5. Surveypal

Surveypal is unique in its approach because its primary focus is on getting the most out of your survey data. It simplifies the survey data reporting process by making it easy to automatically generate reports, export survey data and organise surveys.

Surveypal enables you to quickly conduct root cause analysis on issues like a decrease in NPS in email channels or an increase in average handling time. Because the platform surfaces these issues in real time, you can act on them immediately. Plus, Surveypal integrates with Zendesk, so you can pull in and act on customer insights throughout the entire customer journey.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customer segmentation
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Measure: 19€ per agent/month
• Analyze: 29€ per agent/month

Free trial:

Learn more about the SurveyPal app for Zendesk.

6. Nicereply

With Nicereply, you can survey customers without leaving your customer service software. Businesses can automatically publish feedback to associated tickets, measure customer satisfaction and NPS and trigger surveys after resolving a chat or a ticket. When integrated with Zendesk, Nicereply can publish survey responses in Zendesk as comments and customisable ticket field values.

Nicereply puts data at your fingertips with logical, automatic feedback collection and distribution. It can organise performance by agent, team and department. And businesses can use it to create analytic dashboards with trend analysis, bar charts, leaderboards and more.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Starter: $59 per month
• Essential: $119 per month
• Growth: $239 per month
• Business: $359 per month
  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about the Nicereply app for Zendesk.

7. Typeform

Typeform helps businesses deliver good customer experiences by creating visually appealing surveys that are easy to complete. The software presents one survey question at a time to eliminate walls of text and accompanies the questions with eye-catching visuals.

Businesses can add a conversational touch to their surveys with questions that adapt to the respondent’s previous answers. Along with surveys, businesses can access templates for quizzes, polls and general forms. Typeform has a free plan that lets users ask 10 questions per feedback form and embed them on a website.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month
• Basic: $25 per month (includes 1 user)
• Plus: $50 per month (includes 3 users)
• Business: $83 per month (includes 5 users)
• Enterprise: Contact Typeform
  *Plans are billed annually

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about the Typeform app for Zendesk.

8. InMoment

InMoment provides digital customer experience software that comes with feedback tools to help with retention and engagement. Users can send its surveys via email, mobile, SMS and apps. Businesses can set up automations to survey small segments of their customer base every day with customisable parameters.

Agents can close the feedback loop using email notifications or triggers in their customer relationship management (CRM) dashboard that send results to the right person. The software also provides automated recommended actions to agents.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customer segmentation
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• CoreCX: contact InMoment
• Enterprise: contact InMoment
• Custom: contact InMoment

Free trial:

30 days

Learn more about the InMoment integration for Zendesk.

9. Feedier

Feedier gives businesses feedback management tools to help centralise data and turn it into actionable insights. The software integrates with a business’s CRM system for a full view of the customer, and its AI can analyse text and interpret the customer’s sentiment (positive, neutral or negative) to provide accurate recommendations.

Feedier lets businesses create feedback campaigns with different types of questions, images and answer options. Reports can be generated in real time to help teams act with informed data.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customer segmentation
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Contact Feedier

Free trial:

10. Playvox

Playvox is primarily a workforce management system, but with its acquisition of Prodsight in 2022 it expanded its capabilities as a feedback management system. Unlike many software providers in this overview, Playvox doesn’t rely on customisable surveys to gather feedback.

Playvox uses AI to analyse user sentiment and intent to tag tickets. Then, it auto-populates ticket fields based on its analysis to get the right tickets to the right person. Playvox also analyses user replies and updates fields with the discussed topics to ensure comprehensive reporting. It tags reviews, NPS feedback and surveys for easy, fast reporting.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Contact Playvox

Free trial:

Learn more about the Playvox app for Zendesk.

11. Idiomatic

Idiomatic uses advanced sentiment analysis to identify the key insights hidden within mountains of customer feedback. The feedback software helps businesses use their data to create an accurate Voice of the Customer programme – turning feedback into usable insights – by filling in gaps between customer comments and how agents interpret them.

Idiomatic has a native Zendesk integration that pulls and organises tickets by sentiment in real time. Businesses can use Idiomatic to map out and prioritise product, messaging or service improvements by analysing customer sentiment based on product and customer type or preset Zendesk tags.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer segmentation
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Simple data sources: $399 per month + $0.05 per comment
• Complex date sources: $1,999 per month + $0.05 per ticket
  *Idiomatic’s pricing is based on data sources and the number of tickets/comments.

Free trial:

Unavailable

12. Chatdesk

Chatdesk helps businesses aggregate and analyse the feedback generated from all of their channels. It pulls together feedback scattered across online reviews, customer surveys, email conversations, live chats and social media chatter. And it automatically combines and organises fragmented feedback and adds identification tags to help filter the data.

Chatdesk can also help retailers looking to leverage Voice of the Customer reporting and manufacturers hoping to more easily identify product defects. As a native integration with Zendesk, Chatdesk seamlessly integrates and extends your Zendesk customer service software.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer segmentation
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• On-demand: starts at $900 per month
• Dedicated: $3,510 per full-time expert/month
  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about the Chatdesk app for Zendesk.

13. Hotjar

Hotjar is a customer behaviour analytics software that lets businesses understand how customers interact with their website. One unique feedback tool it provides is heatmaps that show which aspects of your pages get the most attention, including click and scroll activity.

Hotjar also has more traditional feedback tools, like customer surveys, through its Ask suite that businesses can automate with AI. Businesses can also embed a feedback widget on web pages for customers to freely provide their perspective without being prompted.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer segmentation
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Ask Basic: $0 per month (up to 20 monthly responses)
• Ask Plus: $48 per month
• Ask Business: starts at $64 per month
• Ask Scale: starts at $128 per month
  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

Unavailable

14. Jira Software

Jira Software is primarily known for its project management and issue tracking features, but it also provides businesses with user feedback tools. By leveraging customisable issue types and workflows, businesses can create dedicated feedback channels where customers can report suggestions, concerns or feature requests.

The Jira dashboard and reporting features visually represent feedback trends, enabling businesses to monitor and analyse customer sentiments over time. Businesses can then prioritise, categorise and assign feedback items to relevant teams for action.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer segmentation
• Customer feedback surveys
• 1600+ apps and integrations
• Omnichannel support
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month (up to 10 agents)
• Standard: starts at $790 per year
• Premium: starts at $1,525 per year
• Enterprise: contact Jira

Free trial:

7 days

15. Qualtrics XM

Qualtrics XM offers businesses a suite of tools to collect, analyse and act upon customer feedback. Its survey creation tools allow businesses to design tailored feedback mechanisms, capturing insights across various customer touchpoints, from post-purchase evaluations to long-term satisfaction assessments.

Beyond mere collection, Qualtrics has feedback analysis features that employ analytics and AI-driven insights to identify patterns, sentiments and trends in a company’s data. This enables businesses to pinpoint areas of satisfaction and concern, facilitating informed interventions. Its closed-loop feedback system also helps agents address individual customer issues in real time.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer segmentation
• Customer feedback surveys
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Contact Qualtrics

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about the Qualtrics app for Zendesk.

16. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub acts, in part, as the feedback management tool of the larger HubSpot suite. It lets businesses collect and leverage customer feedback with features that businesses can use to deploy CSAT and NPS surveys. Businesses can integrate these feedback channels into the broader CRM system, allowing for a unified view of customer interactions and sentiments.

Analytics within the platform enable businesses to dissect feedback and identify recurring themes and areas for improvement. HubSpot automation features ensure timely follow-ups on feedback. By centralising feedback within the customer journey, HubSpot Service Hub lets businesses gather insights and translate them into actionable strategies.

Features:

• Analytics and reporting
• Customer segmentation
• Customer feedback surveys
• Multichannel support
• Customisable platform

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month (limited tools)
• CRM Suite Starter: $20 per month
• Starter: $45 per month
• Professional: $450 per month
• Enterprise: $1,200 per month
  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about the HubSpot app for Zendesk.

Navigating the various options of customer feedback software can feel overwhelming, but understanding some essential features can simplify the selection process. Look out for these six essential features to help narrow down your options

Analytics and reporting

Reporting and analytics are pivotal components of customer feedback software, empowering businesses to transform raw feedback into actionable insights. Through detailed reports and visual dashboards, businesses can identify trends, patterns and areas of concern from feedback, enabling them to pinpoint specific areas for improvement.

Analytics tools, such as sentiment analysis, delve deeper into feedback to uncover underlying emotions and themes, providing a more nuanced understanding of customer perceptions. By leveraging these insights, businesses can make informed decisions, prioritise product enhancements and tailor their strategies to better align with customer needs and expectations.

Customer feedback surveys

Survey capabilities in customer feedback software are a necessary feature for businesses aiming to proactively gauge customer sentiments and gather structured insights. Surveys offer a direct channel for customers to voice their opinions, preferences and concerns in a systematic manner.

By crafting tailored questions, businesses can extract specific information, measure satisfaction levels and identify potential areas of improvement. The structured nature of surveys ensures that feedback is consistent and comparable, facilitating trend analysis over time. Plus, the ability to customise feedback forms, from simple star ratings to detailed questionnaires, allows businesses to adapt to different feedback needs.

Customer segmentation

Customer segmentation features in feedback software enable businesses to categorise their customers into distinct groups based on things like:

• Demographics
• Purchase behaviour
• Product usage

By segmenting feedback, businesses can gain a granular understanding of the specific needs, preferences and pain points of each group. This targeted approach allows for more personalised and relevant responses to feedback, ensuring you provide tailored service based on the unique characteristics of each group.

Segmentation also helps identify high-value customer groups and those at risk of churn so you can improve retention strategies. Businesses can then allocate resources more effectively and design strategies that cater to the specific needs of these segments.

Apps and integrations

Apps and integrations significantly enhance the performance of customer feedback software by streamlining and centralising the feedback collection and analysis process. Feedback software can automatically pull in customer comments, reviews and concerns from multiple touchpoints by integrating with various platforms such as CRM systems, e-commerce sites, help desk solutions and social media channels.

This holistic approach ensures that no valuable feedback is missed and provides a comprehensive view of the customer experience. Apps can introduce specialised functionalities, like advanced analytics or sentiment analysis, which allow businesses to delve deeper into feedback data. As a result, businesses can respond more promptly and effectively to customer needs, fostering improved customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Omnichannel support

Omnichannel capabilities in customer feedback software are crucial in today’s interconnected digital landscape, where customers interact with businesses across multiple touchpoints. By supporting omnichannel feedback collection, the software ensures that businesses capture customer sentiments from various sources, be it their websites, social media or elsewhere.

This comprehensive approach provides a holistic view of the customer journey across channels. Businesses can engage with a broader customer base by being present on multiple platforms, ensuring diverse and representative feedback. Omnichannel support ensures no feedback is left unheard, allowing businesses to craft strategies that resonate with customers’ multifaceted experiences and expectations.

Customisation

Customisation features in customer feedback software are instrumental in allowing businesses to tailor the feedback process to their unique needs and brand identity. By enabling modifications in survey design and report data, customisation helps ensure the collected feedback is relevant and actionable.

Customisation allows businesses to prioritise specific metrics, integrate with niche platforms and set up unique workflows, ensuring the software aligns seamlessly with their operation. Customisation transforms generic feedback tools into specialised solutions, optimising performance and ensuring businesses get the maximum value from their feedback.

Customer feedback software is an important investment for any business. Here are some benefits to investing in and partnering with the right software.

Systematise feedback collection and curation

To make decisions that most benefit your company and customers, you need as much high-quality feedback as possible. But manually collecting and curating that feedback is difficult, costly and prone to error.

Customer feedback platforms help you avoid the cost and headache of manual feedback collection. Instead, you can use your software to trigger surveys or similar feedback mechanisms based on events.

For instance, with Zendesk you can prompt customers with automated CSAT surveys once a live chat conversation ends. Similarly, use knowledge base software to add survey pop-ups, comment sections and other feedback elements to knowledge base articles that solicit comments on specific articles. However you choose to systematise feedback collection, your software can help make it easier.

Resolve customer complaints and prevent churn

Customer feedback software plays a pivotal role in addressing customer grievances and mitigating churn by providing businesses with the tools to capture, analyse and act upon complaints. Businesses can swiftly identify recurring issues and prioritise their resolution by centralising feedback.

Automated alerts and real-time notifications ensure that urgent complaints are promptly escalated, facilitating timely interventions. Businesses can salvage potentially strained relationships and foster trust by demonstrating a proactive approach to resolving complaints and valuing customer feedback. This proactive management of grievances significantly reduces customer attrition and strengthens brand allegiance.

Make customer-centric decisions that improve CX

Customer feedback software is a cornerstone for businesses aiming to refine their customer experience (CX), product offerings and overarching business strategy. By collecting direct insights from end users, the software can provide an unfiltered lens into customers’ perceptions, preferences and pain points. Zendesk equips your business with robust reports that help you identify gaps in your service, leading to targeted enhancements that elevate the overall customer journey.

Feedback also sheds light on features that resonate with users, as well as areas that need improvement, ensuring that product development aligns with genuine customer needs. The insights you gather can inform broader business strategies, guiding decisions on market positioning, pricing and expansion.

Boost brand reputation

Customer feedback software can help bolster a business’s brand reputation by fostering a culture of transparency, responsiveness and continuous improvement. By actively seeking and valuing customer opinions, businesses convey that they prioritise customer needs and are committed to delivering great experiences.

Addressing feedback promptly and effectively showcases a brand’s dedication to customer satisfaction, building trust and credibility in the market. Businesses can highlight positive testimonials and reviews, often captured through feedback systems, to reinforce brand image and attract potential customers. Alternatively, addressing negative feedback demonstrates the brand’s accountability, turning potential pitfalls into opportunities for publicised growth.

The term “customer feedback tool” can refer to many different types of tools. Businesses can expand upon these tools’ functionality for online reviews, social monitoring and feedback analytics. It’s important to be aware of the layered nature of customer feedback tools because it can ultimately affect your buying decisions. Consider the following questions to ensure you choose the right customer feedback system.

What is your use case?

Different businesses have different feedback requirements. For instance, a business-to-business (B2B) enterprise might prioritise CRM system integration capabilities, while a business-to-consumer (B2C) company may emphasise omnichannel feedback collection. By defining your primary use case – product development, CX enhancement or market research – businesses can pinpoint software features that are most relevant to their needs, such as:

• Advanced analytics
• Customisation options
• Survey formats

Defining your use case ensures optimal utilisation of the software, avoiding unnecessary features that inflate costs without adding value. Additionally, aligning feedback software with your intended use case can help businesses maximise their return on investment (ROI) and streamline feedback processes.

How easy is it to use?

Ease of use is an important consideration when selecting customer feedback software since it directly impacts the tool’s efficiency, adoption rate and overall effectiveness. A user-friendly interface ensures that employees across various departments can seamlessly navigate, collect and analyse feedback without facing steep learning curves or requiring extensive training.

An intuitive software encourages greater participation from team members, fostering a collaborative culture that values customer insights. On the customer side of things, a straightforward feedback system increases response rates, ensuring a richer data pool.

What is the total cost of ownership?

When evaluating customer feedback software, businesses must consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) rather than just the upfront purchase or subscription price. TCO encompasses the initial acquisition cost and any ongoing expenses such as maintenance, upgrades, training and potential integrations.

Hidden costs like downtime due to system outages, inefficiencies from a poorly suited software or expenses related to scaling as the business grows can significantly impact the overall cost. For example, Zendesk has a low TCO, helping your money do more in the long run.

Here’s some additional information on customer feedback software to help you get the most from your new system.