In today’s fast-moving market, understanding your customers isn’t just important—it’s essential. But here’s the kicker: according to Gartner, 58% of consumers feel that companies don’t truly understand their needs or preferences. That’s a massive gap, and if businesses don’t bridge it, they risk losing customers to competitors who do. That’s why customer insights platforms are more important than ever.
These powerful tools help businesses gather, analyze, and act on real customer feedback, ensuring they make decisions based on facts rather than guesswork. Let’s dive into what these platforms are, why mobile-first research is a game-changer, and what to look for when choosing a customer insights software provider.
A customer insights platform is a tool that helps businesses collect and analyze customer data and feedback. The goal? To create a clear, data-driven understanding of what your customers want, how they behave, and what drives their decisions.
The data can come from sources like insight communities and conversational surveys.
Armed with these insights from these platforms, researchers, CMOs, and other decision-makers can personalize marketing, refine products, and deliver exceptional customer experiences that build loyalty and boost revenue.
Smartphones have changed the way people interact with brands, so businesses need to meet customers where they are—on their phones. A mobile-first customer insights platform ensures that the feedback you're getting is authentic, accurate, and high quality.
There’s more to it than convenience. Research from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that consumers are more honest when responding to surveys on their phones:
A study by Wharton professors Shiri Melumad and Robert Meyer reveals a fascinating truth: we tend to be more self-disclosing when using our phones compared to traditional computers. This means we share more personal information, thoughts, and experiences on our tiny screens than on our large desktops...Our smartphones have become extensions of ourselves, constantly with us and used for deeply personal activities like messaging loved ones. This constant presence fosters a sense of psychological comfort, making us feel more at ease sharing personal information.
That means engaging with your customers via mobile doesn’t just get you more responses—it gets you better, more authentic ones, and gets to the heart of how your customers truly think and feel.
Through SMS survey tools and other mobile-first research platforms, you can more easily get to “system 1” responses and understand the underlying motivations and attitudes driving customer behaviors.
There are many players in this space and choosing the right one might be confusing. If you’re evaluating top customer insights platforms, it’s important to have a set of clear criteria to base your decision on.
Here are some must-have features to ensure you’re getting the most out of your investment:
People are on their phones all the time—so your research needs to be there too. A customer insights platform that prioritizes SMS and text distribution ensures higher engagement, better-quality responses, and a smoother experience for participants.
Whether you’re trying to reach Gen Zs or even B2B audiences, mobile is the way to engage modern people. So if the platform you’re evaluating doesn’t have the ability to reach people via SMS and text, you’re excluding a huge chunk of customers who can provide valuable feedback.
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No one wants to fill out a boring questionnaire. No matter how powerful a customer insights platform is on the backend, if the participant-facing interface is not engaging, you won’t get the participation and data quality you’re looking for.
Look for customer insights tools that deliver a conversational experience to participants. This ensures that your customers enjoy the experience and that they’ll continue to participate.
Remember: Customer research is part of the brand experience. The surveys that you send your customers are a direct reflection of your brand.
Many customer insights platforms specialize in quant or qual research, but not both. So sometimes customer research professionals are forced to use multiple insight platforms. Seems like an okay solution, but think about it from the participants’ point of view. Interacting with one customer insights platform for qual and then seeing another interface to answer quant questions is jarring.
Customer research is part of the brand experience.
Not to mention that having multiple subscriptions and dealing with multiple vendors can easily rack up your research costs. 🤑
A better approach is to choose a customer insights platform that can capture quant and qual—including video feedback. This “quali-quant” approach not only delivers a more frictionless experience to your participants, but it also makes it easy for you to manage the research process.
Speaking of video—it is our firm belief at Rival Technologies that any decent customer insights platform should allow you to capture video feedback.
Open-text responses are great, but they only tell part of the story. Research tech that allows participants to record video responses give you access to tone of voice, facial expressions, and emotions—providing a much deeper understanding of how they truly feel.
For many Rival Technologies customers, video feedback has become a crucial tool in conducting in-the-moment research. It enhances many robust research use cases like mobile diaries, IHUTs, and user testing.
Videos from your customers can help fortify your insights and enhance storytelling. Incorporating open-end responses in your reports is great—but imagine how much more powerful and compelling they can be if you include real videos from real people!
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The best customer research is often ongoing and longitudinal. Why? Because customer behaviors and attitudes change so quickly. Your research from last year may not be as relevant today given the changes in the consumer landscape.
Ongoing research also enables iterative and deeper learning. Through research, you may uncover an interesting insight about your customers. You may want to ask follow-up questions to dig deeper—having a customer insights platform that lets you recontact people can be very helpful in this case.
Ongoing research enables iterative and deeper learning.
It's also important to build your customers' profiles over time. Dynamic profiling allows you to track customer preferences and behaviors without asking the same questions repeatedly, making research more efficient and personalized.
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Collecting insights is just the beginning—you need to make sense of them. Look for a customer insights platform that offers in-depth analysis, visual reporting, and storytelling features that make it easy to share findings with stakeholders and drive action.
We’d be remiss not to mention AI here. The best customer insights platforms today are quickly integrating AI research tools to optimize and accelerate research processes.
At Rival, we’ve intentionally taken a “Human in the Loop” posture when it comes to AI innovation. Every AI tool we develop for our customer insights platform is designed to maintain human oversight. Our goal is never to automate tasks and replace researchers; rather, we’re building tools that augment what researchers do best.
Some AI tools now available on Rival’s customer insights platform include:
We’re constantly adding more AI tools. You can check out our AI page for more info.
To get the most out of a customer insights company, I recommend asking about the following:
Customer success support: Unfortunately, many platform companies have powerful tech but weak customer support. At Rival, we believe in being a partner, not just a vendor. That's why we've invested in an amazing customer success team, who acts like an extension of your brand. Make sure you ask if the vendor you're considering has the same philosophy!
Customer testimonials and references: What other companies are already working with the customer insights platform you're considering? Ask for customer stories or references, or check out the company's G2 reviews to find out.
Customer Insights Platform: A Must Have for Better Decision Making
A customer insights platform is table stakes for any brand that wants to be customer-centric today. With the right partner, you can truly understand your customers, make informed decisions, and build stronger relationships that drive long-term success.
If you’re ready to up your customer research game, focus on solutions that are mobile-first, AI-powered, and designed for modern consumers. Because when you truly listen to your customers, they’ll tell you everything you need to know.
Wondering why Rival Technologies is a top customer insights platform company? Request a demo so we can show you our capabilities!
Got questions about insight communities and mobile research?Chat with one of our experts
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