If you’re running a B2B business, you know “customer experience” isn’t just a feel-good buzzword—it's tied directly to whether your customers stick around, spend more, and recommend you to others. Lots of platforms promise to help you “drive revenue growth” by tracking customer sentiment and feedback. But which tools actually help you put money in the bank, and which just give you another dashboard to ignore?
This guide is for people who want clear answers, not vague promises. We’ll dive into how AskNicely stacks up against other B2B customer experience platforms, focusing on what really moves the needle for revenue growth. No hype. Just the stuff that matters.
What Is a B2B Customer Experience Platform, Really?
Let’s get our terms straight. A B2B customer experience (CX) platform is a tool that helps businesses collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback—usually from surveys, reviews, or support interactions. The goal: spot unhappy customers before they churn, encourage fans to refer you, and figure out which teams are actually delighting (or annoying) your clients.
The reality? Most platforms look similar on paper. They promise “actionable insights,” “closed-loop feedback,” and “customer-centric cultures.” But in practice, the difference is in how easy they make it for your team to actually do something useful with the feedback.
The Usual Suspects: Who Are AskNicely’s Main Competitors?
In the B2B space, the main names you’ll keep bumping into are:
- AskNicely: Focuses on frontline feedback, turning customer input into daily actions for teams.
- Qualtrics: The heavyweight, with deep analytics and survey tools—often used by big enterprises.
- Medallia: Known for large, complex organizations; strong on multi-channel feedback and integrations.
- SurveyMonkey (Momentive): Survey tool that's branched into CX, but still often used for basic feedback.
- Zendesk CX Suite: Built around support tickets with CX add-ons—great if you already live in Zendesk.
- Gainsight: Focuses on customer success teams with a heavy emphasis on retention and expansion.
There are plenty of others, but these are the ones you’ll see most in B2B reviews and RFPs.
What Actually Drives Revenue Growth? (And What Doesn’t)
Not every feature moves the needle. Here’s what’s worth paying attention to if you want to actually tie CX to revenue:
What Works
- Real-time feedback loops: The faster frontline teams see and act on customer feedback, the more likely you’ll fix issues before accounts churn.
- Closed-loop follow-up: If a customer gives a bad score, does someone actually call or email to fix it? This is where you save at-risk deals.
- Linking feedback to accounts/segments: Can you see which customer types are unhappy? Which teams or services are causing friction?
- Easy sharing with the right teams: Does the feedback get to sales, customer success, or product managers without jumping through hoops?
- Built-in automation: Are there triggers to flag at-risk customers or prompt follow-ups, or do you have to dig through reports manually?
What To Ignore
- Overly fancy dashboards: Pretty charts are fine, but if it takes a data scientist to get answers, your team won’t use it.
- “Gamification” for its own sake: Making a leaderboard of NPS scores doesn’t fix underlying problems.
- Generic survey templates: If everyone uses the same bland questions, you’ll get bland answers.
How Does AskNicely Stack Up?
Here’s where AskNicely stands out—and where it doesn’t.
Strengths
- Frontline Focus: AskNicely is built for companies with customer-facing teams (think: account managers, support reps, field service). Feedback goes straight to the people who can do something about it daily—not just to managers.
- Actionable Nudges: Instead of just collecting NPS or CSAT scores, AskNicely sends “nudges” or tasks to staff to follow up, close the loop, or celebrate wins.
- Simplicity: The interface is clean and focused. You don’t need a CX consultant to set it up or get value.
- Integrations: Plays nicely with CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and even Slack, so feedback actually shows up where your teams work.
- Reputation Management: Built-in tools to encourage happy customers to leave public reviews (helpful for B2B companies looking to build trust).
Weaknesses
- Not Built for Complex Data Science: If you want to run deep statistical analysis or create custom segmentations across 10+ data sources, it’s not as robust as Qualtrics or Medallia.
- Limited for Non-Frontline Use Cases: If your teams don’t interact directly with customers often, you might not get the full value.
- B2C Features Are Lighter: If you want high-volume, transactional feedback (like from ecommerce), other tools are better suited.
Pro Tip: If your biggest pain is getting frontline teams to actually do something with customer feedback, AskNicely is one of the few that makes this easy by design.
How Do the Other Platforms Compare?
Let’s get real about the other big names:
Qualtrics
- Best for: Enterprises with big budgets and complex needs.
- Strengths: Deep analytics, sophisticated survey logic, powerful segmentation.
- Weaknesses: Can be overkill for most B2B teams. Steep learning curve, expensive, lots of features you may never use.
Why choose it? If your board wants quarterly reports with fancy charts, or you need to run advanced statistical analysis, Qualtrics is the go-to. Otherwise, you’ll probably find it heavy.
Medallia
- Best for: Companies with multiple channels (phone, web, in-person) and huge customer bases.
- Strengths: Multi-channel feedback, strong integrations, solid closed-loop tools.
- Weaknesses: Complex and pricey. Implementation can drag on for months.
Why choose it? If you’re a giant with lots of teams and touchpoints, Medallia can wrangle the chaos. For most B2B firms, it’s more than you need.
SurveyMonkey (Momentive)
- Best for: Anyone who just needs surveys—fast.
- Strengths: Easy to launch surveys, lots of templates, affordable.
- Weaknesses: Lacks deep integration with customer data; hard to connect feedback to revenue or account health.
Why choose it? If you’re testing the waters or need quick-and-dirty feedback, SurveyMonkey works. But you’ll outgrow it if you want real CX impact.
Zendesk CX Suite
- Best for: Teams already deep in Zendesk for support.
- Strengths: Ties feedback to support tickets, solid reporting.
- Weaknesses: Not as flexible for non-support use cases; limited outside the Zendesk ecosystem.
Why choose it? If your CX is rooted in support, this keeps things in one place. But don’t expect magic for sales or success teams.
Gainsight
- Best for: Customer success teams focused on retention and expansion.
- Strengths: Maps feedback directly to accounts, churn-risk scoring, playbooks.
- Weaknesses: Steep learning curve, better for SaaS than services or traditional B2B.
Why choose it? If you have a dedicated customer success org and want to automate playbooks, Gainsight is worth a look.
Choosing the Right Platform: What Really Matters
Don’t get distracted by the endless feature lists. Here’s what to actually ask:
- How easy is it for my team to act on feedback, not just collect it?
- Does it fit our sales/support/customer success workflows?
- Can I connect feedback to real revenue outcomes (renewals, upsells, churn)?
- How much setup and ongoing admin does it require?
- Will my staff actually use it, or will it become shelfware?
If you can answer “yes” to these with a given platform, you’re onto something. If not, keep looking.
What to Avoid: - Buying for “future needs” you may never have. - Getting wowed by AI or “predictive” features you don’t understand. - Assuming a bigger, pricier tool is better.
So, Which Platform Should You Pick?
- If you’ve got a team that talks to customers every day and you want to actually change frontline behavior, AskNicely is built for you.
- If you’re an enterprise with a big CX budget, complex data, and lots of execs to keep happy, Qualtrics or Medallia are safe bets.
- If you just need basic surveys, start simple with SurveyMonkey.
- If your world revolves around support tickets, Zendesk’s suite is easiest.
- If you’re a SaaS with a mature customer success team, Gainsight is worth the investment.
There’s no magic bullet. The right tool is the one your team will actually use to fix problems and make customers happier—consistently.
Keep It Simple, Iterate, and Don’t Sweat the Hype
You can spend months comparing features, running demos, and reading vendor whitepapers. Don’t bother. Pick the platform that fits your team, gets feedback to the right people, and makes it easy to act. Try it out. See what sticks. Iterate as you go.
Turns out, the secret to driving revenue growth from customer experience isn’t a tool—it’s actually using the damn thing. Pick something simple, get started, and improve from there. That’s how you win.