Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Survicate

IBM analytics has continued to improve upon the days of being the original core metrics. After using the updated version for quite some time, it has been great at providing the needed analytics to measure ROI and goal performance for our quarterly KPI's. It has resulted in a great increase in web engagements although we are a midsize company, smaller outfits may not need such an expensive option.

Incentivized

Survicate is well suited for very basic intercept polls and is less suited for more complex surveying tasks (e.g., anything more than basic skip-logic or surveying niche cohorts) and longitudinal surveying (e.g., comparing responses from the same or similar cohorts year over year).

Incentivized

• IBM CXA comprises an acquisition called Tealeaf. This tool has deep heritage and this is evident in its present-day capabilities.
• The Universal Behaviour Exchange or UBX puts the concept of personalisation at the forefront. The ability to combine physical (analog) and digital transactions to create the complete picture of a customer journey, is a stand out benefit.
• The solution does not have to involve the purchase of software. IBM CXA can be sold as a service bundled with analytics as a service. This not only lowers the cost of ownership, it gets around one of the principal issues. Strong staff with design and analytical capability to drive the solution and deliver tangible benefits.
• The seamless integration of Watson AI services to help with the heavy lifiting. Watson reinforces the analytical focus this solution has and can learn to recognise situations specific to a company.

Incentivized

• IMO, the strengths of feedback lite is what it is called for - 'lite"... it is basic, simple, and easy to set up and use.
• Especially should be mention that it is easy to set up, and you can have it working in less than a few hours.
• Reliable - I don't remember even one "problem" or an issue we experienced with it.

Incentivized

• The user interface is in Flash, which can be very frustrating and slow at times. Apparently, this is to be transitioned in a future release.
• Can only segment the last 93 days of data. Any historical segmentation beyond the 93 days must be run in Explore (which is credit based, and has its own limitations with the number of credits per month, based on the initial contract with IBM).
• Reports can only display 93 days of data at a given time for custom date ranges. There are pre-programmed date ranges setup with IBM during implementation (last week, last month, last quarter etc.), but are not flexible enough to answer more specific questions.
• Certain reports cannot have segments applied, making answering some simple questions a bit more tricky. For example, I can create a segment around mobile devices and apply it to the marketing channels report, but I can't create a marketing channel segment and apply it to the mobile reports.
• Built in API calls allows for nice report design and automation.

• In my opinion, inconsistent and visually unappealing survey visuals (e.g., NPS and cSAT questions look completely different from each other, creating a disjointed visual experience)
• Poor customer service (in my experience, issue resolution can take weeks)
• Lack of clarity around API & other technical capabilities requiring engineering assistance
• Very limited maximum response limit per month

Incentivized

IBM Digital Analytics is a great solution for our clients and I believe they offer the best solution for the retail space. We have access to IBM support via email or live chat and they can answer many of the reporting questions that come up. IBM is receptive to our feedback of the product so I am confident they will continue making improvements

We use Survicate for now, over 7 years, and the tool is being constantly improved. New features and products has been introduced over the years. The team listens to our feedback we sometimes share, and improve the product based on that. We really appreciate being supported by the Customer Success, all the insights and help we got from them. And even though they introduced many new features over the years, the tool still remained super easy to use, even from new employees that join our team

Very easy to implement and use.

It's rare to use products that offer wide range of features, and yet are really ease to use. Over the years, the product has changed a lot, they introduced numerous new features, but the product remained really simple to use. We know it, because new employees who join our team, have no problem in starting to use Survicate on their own, without and dedicated training. The UI is really clear.

Never had any issues

As reports are templated, the system is pretty quick. Sometimes you have to wait a bit for a report to render. Or you might have to re-load the page. But there is no real issue here and the system is on par with other similar systems.

Overall, the level of support is very good and I would say it is a strong asset of the solution. However, you can sometimes feel that there is a difference of level among the support team.

We had a lot of issues during implementation that required help from Survicate's engineers. In my experience, it took us over 4 weeks to be fully up and running due to lag times in communication.

Incentivized

Online training is really great. One of the best assets that they have. Lots of great videos, pop quizzes at the end of each module. Fantastic. Other tools have similar features, but not as good.

See previous comment: reading and understanding the encyclopedic implementation guide is a must.

Setup was simple. One-time installation for our website and inside the product. We used Google Tag Manager to implement Survicate. So within 2 hours, we were able to run surveys, and also all attributes and events were passed to Survicate, so that we were able to use them to trigger surveys

Much of the work we did in IBM Digital Analytics could have been answered through Google Analytics, a much simpler, agile and FREE solution set. Not mention, given the vast number of Google Analytics USERS, free and actionable support is simply a click away ... this compared to IBM Digital Analytics fractured and often absent support service.

Considering the simplicity of the need, and the cost of such solution (~600$/yr), I don't think there was very deep research for any alternatives. The main alternative was embedding a feedback tool "organically" into our site, that option was taken off the table, for strategic considerations.

Incentivized

This solution can support large amount of data and transaction. The way that user management features are built, it shows it is meant for large organizations.

• We spend too much time trying to work around bugs on the new UI.
• We spend too much time trying to figure out how to make certain segments work because support and the knowledge center are lackluster.
• Our sales rep is very unresponsive and leaves us searching for a lot of answers on our own, including what other products we may benefit from that IBM offers.

Incentivized

• We had a business need - to collect feedback on our support knowledge base content. Feedback Lite fulfills this need, with simple, easy to use, solution.

Incentivized