Companies of all sizes and across industries need customer insights platforms to help them have a reliable read on how customers feel about their products. These customer insights tools bring the spotlight to the pain points and frustrations customers may be facing with your product.
By understanding customer behavior, needs, and motivations at a deeper level, UX researchers and designers can optimize the user journey and experience of their product or service offerings and come up with new strategies to meet customer needs effectively. This can in turn boost customer engagement, and satisfaction as well as drive business growth and success in today’s competitive product market.
To enable you to dive deeper into understanding your customers and their motivations, we will look at what customer insight platforms are.
What are Customer Insights Platforms and Tools
Customer insights platforms and tools are software designed to collect, analyze, and manage customer data to enable product teams to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and make informed decisions based on actionable data.
These platforms monitor and gather data across customers’ digital footprint that includes; customer interactions, online user behavior, purchase history, and social media interactions to create a clear view of customer goals, motivations, and behaviors.
With features such as data visualization, user journey mapping, and advanced analytics, relevant insights can be gotten from the collected data which can help product teams to identify trends, anticipate needs and gaps in the market, and enhance customer product experience.
In a nutshell, customer insights platforms enable product teams to:
- Understand customers individually, at scale
- Spot points of friction in customers’ product experience
- Track customer trends
- Predict customer behavior
- Accurately identify channels and actions contributing to customer conversion
- Identify opportunities at different stages of the user flow and journey
- Drive conversion through action prioritization
- Extend product reach and adoption through audience segmentation
With customer insights platforms, it becomes easier to build stronger customer relationships, and foster business growth through data-driven decision-making.
For each tool, we included:
- A short description
- A list of features
- Pros & Cons list
- User reviews
- Pricing
We use a table to evaluate each of these tools based on the reviews from Capterra:
Rating | Ease of Use | Quality of Support | Pricing | |
UXtweak | 4.8 | 5.0 | ✓ Free plan Plus plan - $80/month Billed annually | |
Google Analytics | 4.1 | 4.1 | ✓ Free plan This is a free tool | |
Mixpanel | 4.0 | 4.3 | ✓ Free plan Pricing available upon demand. | |
Hotjar | 4.6 | 4.5 | ✓ Free plan Paid plan - starts from $32. | |
CrazyEgg | 4.5 | 4.2 | ✗ No free plan Paid plan - from $29/month | |
Google Trends | 4.8 | 4.3 | ✓ Free plan The tool is free | |
Kissmetrics | 3.5 | 4.3 | ✗ No free plan Paid plan starts at $299 per month | |
Survey Monkey | 4.6 | 4.3 | ✓ Free plan Paid plan starts at $25 per month | |
Sprout Social | 4.4 | 4.3 | ✗ No free plan Paid plan starts at $249 per month | |
Zendesk | 4.3 | 4.3 | ✗ No free plan Paid plan starts at $49 per month | |
Qualtrics | 4.4 | 4.7 | ✓ Free plan Paid plan starts at $125 per month |
1. UXtweak
UXtweak is an all-in-one customer insights platform that provides valuable customer insights with many different features. It is designed for usability testing, information architecture research, and customer behavior analytics at any stage of the development cycle.
UXtweak allows you to collect customer feedback, create customized surveys, understand customer behaviors, monitor interactions with session replays and heatmaps, as well as other research activities to help you understand your customers better.
Key features
- Survey tool
- Session Recording & Heatmaps
- Mobile Testing
- Website Testing
- Prototype Testing
- Preference Test
- Five Second Test
- First Click Test
- Card Sorting
- Tree Testing
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are based solely on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.9/5
Ease of Use – 4.8/5
Quality of Support – 5.0/5
Pros
- Has a great survey feature for collecting customer insights
- Advanced analytics that are easy to read – UXtweak offers a variety of data visualizations that will give you plenty of insights about your users’ behavior.
- Has over 155M+ User Panel to recruit participants from.
- Onsite Recruiting feature – allows you to turn real website visitors into testers.
- Intuitive UI and easy set-up
- Offers all the tools you need in one place
- Has a free plan
Cons
- Supports only 10 languages.
Pricing & Plans
UXtweak has a free plan available with unlimited time for small projects. You can also choose a pro plan for only $80 per month and billed annually.
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a customer insights platform that provides insights into customer behavior and interactions with websites and apps to identify effective content by tracking and reporting website traffic. Google Analytics uses advanced analytics and unique insights to discover customer trends and patterns in the data.
It identifies users with high revenue potential and identifies content converting the most customers. By analyzing your website’s performance, including how users interact with your website, you can evaluate and optimize your UX, website copy, and CTAs that elevate the user experience (UX).
Key Features
- Google unique insights
- Automation and analytics
- Reporting
- Advertising Workspace
- Explorations
- Data Collection and Management
- Advanced-Data Governance
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.7/5
Ease of Use – 4.1/5
Quality of Support – 4.1/5
Pros
- Track customer engagement metrics with advanced analytics and unique insights
- Ability to log into multiple accounts at once
- It is flexible and adaptable to various industries and business models
- Very easy to use
- It processes data extremely fast.
Cons
- Some features are not applicable in some countries overseas
- Troubleshooting takes a while when conducted alone.
Pricing & Plans
Google Analytics helps you turn customer insights into action for free. It is a free tool.
3. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a customer insights platform for web and mobile that provides interactive reports that enable businesses to analyze customer behavior cost-effectively. This tool helps product teams to measure what matters, make decisions fast, and build better products through data.
This tool takes a different approach than most platforms. Instead of analyzing page views, it measures the actions or steps taken by customers and visitors visiting using the product application while being monitored.
Key features
- Interactive reports
- Team boards and Alerts
- Limitless segmentation
- Group Analytics and Insights
- Data integration and Management
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.5/5
Ease of Use – 4.0/5
Quality of Support – 4.3/5
Pros
- Track and analyze customer behavior on websites and mobile applications.
- Very intuitive user interface.
- Easy to use and quick to get started.
- Mixpanel integrates with platforms such as Google Cloud, Optimizely, Zoho, and Slack
Cons
- Some statistical data are not available
- Does not send surveys to customers directly in-app
Pricing & Plans
Mixpanel has a free plan that is available for up to 100,000 tracked users/customers. They also have a paid plan that starts at $20/month.
4. Hotjar
Hotjar is an all-in-one customer insights platform that helps businesses and product teams to bring their customer data to life with insights. Hotjar gives businesses an intuitive, visual way to discover, consolidate, and communicate customer needs by quickly recruiting the right participants and getting interviews scheduled with them easily.
With features like surveys, interviews, and customer feedback, you can understand your customer’s behavior and create engaging experiences that drive results with its range of features.
Key Features
- Heatmaps
- Session Recordings
- Feedback
- Surveys
- User interviews
- Integrations
- Hotjar API
- Funnels
- Dashboard
- Highlights
- Trends
- Survey templates
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.7/5
Ease of Use – 4.6/5
Quality of Support – 4.5/5
Pros
- Has a great survey feature which is helpful in uncovering customer insights.
- It is very easy to set up and use
- Has an advanced analytics functionality that helps to monitor customer interaction.
- Integrates with external applications
- Very intuitive and simple user interface
Cons
- The user data can be difficult to interpret when there are multiple results.
- Slow loading time often due to multiple scrolling.
Pricing & Plans
Hotjar offers a free plan. Their plus plan starts at $39/month.
5. CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg is a customer insights platform that helps businesses to analyze customer behavior across websites, products, email, and ad campaigns.
The platform enables product teams to investigate buyers’ journeys, identify various audience segments present across the web pages, and recognize issues such as confusing navigation or form glitches. Using the A/B testing tool, design teams can set up specific goals to test web pages.
Key features
- Heatmaps
- Recordings
- A/B Testing
- Traffic Analysis
- Errors Tracking
- Surveys
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.5/5
Ease of Use – 4.5/5
Quality of Support – 4.2/5
Pros
- Easy to integrate with external applications
- Excellent surveys tool used to collect customer insights
- Very easy to set up and understand
- Offers great reports with meaningful user data
Cons
- Inefficiency in session recordings and annotating notes.
Pricing & Plans
Crazy Egg delivers valuable customer insights with its 30-day free trial. They have a paid basic plan that starts at $24/month.
6. Google Trends
Google Trends is a customer insights tool that enables businesses to track, analyze and uncover popular search queries online by providing a list of trending user searches and keywords across multiple languages and regions. It tells you what people are searching for and where revealing trends in customer and purchasing behavior among different audiences.
Google Trends helps you design content and campaigns targeting the interests and needs of your users. Using features like sentiment tracking, google trends uses data analysis to help you optimize your product with trends and interests that align with your customers.
Key features
- Sentiment tracking
- Market trends
- Data analysis
- Behavior analytics
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.7/5
Ease of Use – 4.8/5
Quality of Support – 4.3/5
Pros
- Effective sentiment analysis feature that spots events which helps to better predict customer needs
- Keywords used to conduct comparative analysis on particular audiences
- Has a great discovery feature that reveals trending topics.
Cons
- With too many data trends, it can be difficult to read and interpret this data.
- Related topics and queries are weaker than trends.
Pricing & Plans
Google Trends helps you uncover customer insights and track data trends for free. It is a free tool.
7. Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a customer insights platform that uncovers important insights by linking customer journey data to a personal profile. It exposes how customers engage with your product, who your super users are, and what features drive conversions.
Kissmetrics visualizes a user’s full customer journey across devices and makes it easy to track their characteristics to help you determine which features are most valuable to your customers and to learn more about who your most valuable customers are.
Key features
- Advanced BI Reporting
- Detailed Customer Activity
- Revenue Generation
- Instant Key Metrics
- Tracking and Analytics
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.3/5
Ease of Use – 3.5/5
Quality of Support – 4.3/5
Pros
- Has a unique people search report feature helps to identify dedicated customers who need more attention
- Has Customization options tailor-made to your needs
- Easy to track what features customers like and how they purchase it
- Easy to access customer data from analytics by defining user funnels.
Cons
- Initial setup can be difficult.
- Funnel report is limited to the basic plan and an upgrade is needed for extra features.
Pricing & Plans
Kissmectrics allows you to track customer behavior with their 14-day free trial. To access other features, they have a paid plan that starts at $299 per month
8. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a customer insights platform that offers businesses a way to turn customer feedback into action that drives growth and innovation. SurveyMonkey offers expert-written survey templates that speak to customers, employees, or your target audience and collect feedback in minutes
Key features
- Surveys
- Feedback plugins
- Audience panel
- CX metrics
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.6/5
Ease of Use – 4.6/5
Quality of Support – 4.3/5
Pros
- Ability to create custom dashboards for different users or managers with its reporting tool.
- Has a free plan.
- Great customer support.
- Very simple and intuitive user interface.
- Ability to customize survey forms to collect customer feedback and insights
Cons
- Inconsistent proprietary user panels.
- Limitations on the number of responses and questions.
Pricing & Plans
SurveyMonkey enables you to understand customer pain points with their free plan. They also have a paid plan that starts at $25 per month.
9. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a customer insights platform that helps you track and monitor all social media campaigns and interactions in one place and gives you live reports in real time. This tool offers you insight into social media product trends, as well as customer sentiment about your product or brand which is effective for creating a more personalized product experience for your customers.
Key features
- Sentiment analysis
- Engagement
- Social media
- Conversations and listening
- Publishing and Scheduling
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are solely based on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.4/5
Ease of Use – 4.4/5
Quality of Support – 4.3/5
Pros
- Has an effective sentiment analysis feature that finds out the context behind user comments on social media.
- Has a great dashboard view of the social media statistics that shows the significance of any change.
- Ability to convert customer comments into tasks.
Cons
- Inability to switch users or accounts
- Pricing is expensive.
Pricing & Plans
Sprout social enables you to find out the context behind user comments on social media with a 30-day trial which you need to upgrade to their paid plan that starts at $249 per month.
10. Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer insights platform that allows you to build a long-lasting relationship with your customers through customer interaction and live functionality in a single interface with features like web widgets, pre-defined ticket responses, and more.
Key features
- CRM
- Email Management
- Multi-Channel Communication
- Live Chat
- Reporting and Analytics
- Ticketing
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are based solely on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.4/5
Ease of Use – 4.3/5
Quality of Support – 4.3/5
Pros
- Great customer support ticket management functionality.
- Straightforward and user-friendly interface.
- Wide variety of solutions that enhance product feedback.
- Has a great live chat tool that helps to capture customer insights
Cons
- During training, test demos can be limiting.
- Pricing and cost structure.
- Customizations are restricted.
Pricing & Plans
Zendesk unlocks customer insights which help to improve product experience with its paid plan at $49 per month
11. Qualtrics
Qualtrics is an omnichannel customer insights analytics platform and AI-powered automation tool that helps you understand customers better than ever, respond in the right ways every time, and keep every customer happy across all your product experiences.
Key features
- Digital Experience Analytics
- Customer Journey Optimization
- Quality Management
- Contact Center Analytics
- CrossXM
- Website and Mobile App Feedback
User reviews & rating
The ratings below are based solely on the tool’s reviews from Capterra:
Overall – 4.7/5
Ease of Use – 4.4/5
Quality of Support – 4.7/5
Pros
- Qualtrics helps UX researchers to build a solid foundation of a chain of projects that they can lead from a single library which serves as a repository
- Ability to copy the previous surveys which become very helpful and important when you work with complex surveys.
- Qualtrics is very flexible and Integrates well with other platforms.
Cons
- Dashboards often encounter errors when attempting to download manually.
- Inability to transfer ownership when sharing surveys.
Pricing & Plans
Qualtrics helps you to know what customers need when they need it, and how to deliver it with their free plan. They also have a paid plan that starts at $125 per month
Free Customer Insights Platforms
With a host of customer insights tools available, picking the right tool that matches your research study objective is really important.
There are often different features and functionalities offered by different customer insights platforms, therefore, understanding what types of data collection methods are supported (e.g., surveys, interviews, feedback forms), and how data is analyzed and visualized on each of these tools streamlines the decision-making process.
With budget also being a major deciding factor for picking the right insights platform, we have put together a list of free forever customer insights platforms that you can get started with:
- UXtweak
- Google Analytics
- Mixpanel
- Google Trends
- Hotjar
- Survey Monkey
- Qualtrics
Why are customer insights platforms crucial for businesses?
Customer insights involve collecting and analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data that helps to expose changes in customer behavior and how these changes affect customer experience.
These platforms serve as a third eye for businesses to understand their users knowing what they need to do differently in their products to meet the ever-changing customer needs and demand, enhancing customer satisfaction, and ultimately driving business growth.
Key reasons why customer insights platforms are essential:
1. Data-driven Decision-Making
Customer insights platforms provide valuable data and analytics about customer behavior, motivation, and interactions with a product. This information enables businesses to make well-informed decisions regarding product development and also craft customer-driven stories that address vital business issues, marketing strategies, and customer service improvements.
2. Understanding Customer Needs
By analyzing customer data, businesses, and product teams can hone in on a particular demography by learning about their needs and pain points. The insights obtained from this data allows teams to tailor their products and services to better serve their customers, improving customer loyalty, engagement, and adoption.
3. Personalization and Customization
Customer insights platforms enhance personalized experiences for customers. When businesses have a comprehensive view of their customer’s data, they can deliver targeted marketing messages, push notifications, and product offers, which can create a more engaging product experience for each customer.
4. Identifying Growth Opportunities
Customer insights platforms help businesses spot emerging trends and new opportunities in the market through tracking and monitoring. Staying attuned to current market and industry trends is a great way to identify potential areas in your product for scale and innovation.
5. Reduced Churn and Increased Retention
Understanding the reasons behind customer churn is critical for eliminating it. Customer insights platforms allow product teams to identify customers that encounter friction in a customer journey and then implement improved flows and experiences targeted at retaining these customers to reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value.
By leveraging these insights platforms, UX researchers and designers can build stronger relationships with their customers and position their products for long-term success in the market and industry.
Understand your customer with the right Customer Insights Platform
For product teams and businesses that care about their customer’s opinions, they understand the need for collecting, cleaning, and analyzing customer data to produce quality customer insights.
The best customer insights platform helps businesses to create a better product and customer experience. By visualizing the customer journey, highlighting touchpoints and pain points, responding promptly to changing customer behavior, and uncovering patterns, businesses can make data-driven decisions, foster customer loyalty, and ultimately improve the experience of their product.
Always ensure that the insights platform that you choose has the right features and functionality that meet the objective of your research study. Try UXtweak and gain insights into your customers’ behavior today!
