Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer Methodology

Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer Methodology

For April 2021 publish and earlier. Click here for May 2021 to October 2022 publish. 

Last Updated: March 10, 2020

Peer perspective leverages firsthand experiences from enterprise organizations that have implemented technology solutions.

Gartner Peer Insights is a free peer review and ratings platform designed for enterprise software and services decision makers. Reviews are categorized by markets that are defined by Gartner Research in Magic Quadrant and Market Guide documents. All reviews go through a strict validation and moderation process in an effort to ensure they are authentic.

The “Voice of the Customer” is a document that synthesizes Gartner Peer Insights’ reviews in a market into insights for IT decision makers. This aggregated peer perspective, along with the individual detailed reviews, is complementary to expert-generated research such as Magic Quadrants and Market Guides. It can play a key role in your buying process, as it focuses on direct peer experiences of implementing and operating a solution.

Understanding the “Voice of the Customer” Quadrants

  • voc quadrant example

Vendors in the “Voice of the Customer” document are categorized into four quadrants based on Review Coverage (x-axis) and Overall Market Rating (y-axis).

Review Coverage

Vendors’ Review Coverage is measured by the review volume and diversities in industry types, company size and deployment region. For a detailed definition of Review Coverage, please refer to the Customers’ Choice Methodology.

Vendors who meet all the Review Coverage requirements outlined in the methodology will be considered as having high Review Coverage and will be positioned in the right-hand quadrants. The reviews of these vendors are from various geographical regions, industries and company sizes. Because of their high review volume, their average review ratings are more statistically significant.

Vendors who are positioned in the left-hand quadrants are those with enough reviews to be highlighted in the Voice of the Customer, but with low Review Coverage, which means:

  • They may be specialized in an individual industry, region or firm size

  • Their products may have a smaller overall user base

  • Peer Insights has not yet captured a critical mass of user reviews for them

A deeper examination of the underlying reviews on the Peer Insights site is recommended in these cases to help determine if the vendor is one you should be considering.

Overall Market Rating

The overall rating of a market is the mean of all eligible vendors’ average review ratings. The average review rating for a vendor is calculated using the response to the following survey question on a scale of 1 (“completely dissatisfied”) to 5 (“completely satisfied): “Please rate your overall experience with this vendor.” Only the reviews submitted within a specified 12-month period are considered in the calculation. Vendors whose average rating is equal to or above the market overall rating will be positioned in the upper quadrants. This benchmark helps end users compare a vendor against that market’s average customer satisfaction rating.

Understand Each Quadrant

Peer reviews are driven solely by the specific experiences of reviewers. Placement in the upper right quadrant does not mean that the vendor is the best choice for any particular organization. Vendors from any of the four quadrants may be the best fit depending on your business needs.

Upper-Right Quadrant: Customers’ Choice vendors

Gartner Peer Insights recognizes a maximum of seven vendors in a given market through Customers’ Choice distinctions. Vendors who are rated above or equal to the overall market rating and meet the Review Coverage requirements are qualified for the distinctions. See the full Customers’ Choice methodology here.

There are many factors that users take into consideration when they write a review for a vendor. In a review survey, Peer Insights guides users to give a thorough, detailed review of a vendor’s product in writing and in rating. If you are deciding what software may be best for you, reading the reviews of the Customers’ Choice vendors may be helpful since they have a significant volume and diversity of reviews for their products.

Upper-Left Quadrant: Vendors who are rated equal to or above the average market rating but do not meet either the review volume or the diversity threshold to achieve the Customers’ Choice distinction.

Although these vendors have not completely met all the criteria for Customers’ Choice, their “higher-than-average” ratings indicate that most of the customers rate these vendors highly. They may excel at specific use cases, in specific industries, or for specific organization sizes that align with your particular needs. When considering vendors in this quadrant, it is important for you to make sure to complement this report with Peer Insights reviews, expert advice, demos and direct user references.

Lower-Left Quadrant: Vendors who have ratings less than the overall market rating and have low Review Coverage.

Although the average ratings are low, vendors in this quadrant can be worthy of consideration for users, depending on specific use cases. Like all vendors in this report, their products align to this market and they have met the minimum criteria to appear in the “Voice of the Customer” quadrant. Due to the low review volume, the ratings may not truly represent the vendor capabilities. If a vendor is newer to the enterprise space, unique in some ways, or innovating rapidly, they could appear in this quadrant. However, it is also possible that vendors who are struggling to reach long-term viability also appear here. Due to these possible mixed results, users must delve into the review details and cross-check with other Gartner research resources to make better decisions.

Lower-Right Quadrant: Vendors whose ratings are less than the overall market rating but have more evidence that they are more likely to operate in multiple regions, sizes of firm and industries.

Because the review volume and review diversity of the vendors in this quadrant are high, it will be helpful to go directly to the reviews on Peer Insights and use customized filters (firm size, industry, region, job roles) to determine if the vendors perform better in a particular category relevant to you.

Review Inclusion Criteria

Review Source

Gartner Peer Insights maintains high-quality, relevant content written by verified users, which is free of conflicts of interest. As a neutral website operator, Gartner Peer Insights displays content generated by the community of users in the form of software and services reviews. The honest opinions expressed in the reviews are those of the reviewers and not of Gartner. Gartner endorses neither the opinions expressed by the reviewers nor the responses to those reviews by the vendors. Gartner is committed to providing a platform for high-quality reviews and has developed and maintained a robust reviews quality assurance (QA) process in order to achieve that goal. Prior to publishing, all reviews go through a rigorous QA process in an effort to ensure published reviews are from verified sources and provide helpful content. Read our Community Guidelines to better understand reviews on Peer Insights.

Review Eligibility

“Voice of the Customer” is a report that assesses vendors in the market based on end user reviews on the Peer Insights platform. Eligible reviews are those reviews that were submitted:

  • In the last 12 months

  • From end users of companies with >$50M in annual revenue

  • For products that are actively being sold by vendors

Vendor Inclusion Criteria

To be included in the “Voice of the Customer” report for a Gartner Peer Insights market, a vendor must have a product that belongs to that market as determined by Gartner Peer Insights and 10 or more eligible published reviews during the specified one-year submission period. A dedicated Gartner Peer Insights market alignment team uses a set of criteria for evaluating whether a technology provider’s products and/or services align with the Gartner Peer Insights market definitions. Learn more about the evaluation process here.

As the Voice of the Customer document was created to help end users shortlist vendors in their buying/selection process, it was important to provide a focused report. Therefore, there is a limit to the maximum number of vendors included in this document. Peer Insights has set the limit such that it is high enough for end users to find options they might not know about but are still effective to be put to use in the end user’s process.

Currently, Gartner Peer Insights limits the number of vendors included in the document to 25. If more than 25 vendors meet the inclusion criteria, the 25 vendors with the highest number of eligible published reviews will be included. If two or more qualified vendors with the same number of eligible reviews tie for the 25th position, all vendors in the tie will be included in the document.

Frequently Asked Questions

Gartner Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer” FAQ
Gartner Peer Insights User FAQ
Gartner Peer Insights Vendor FAQ

Resources for Users

Gartner Peer Insights
Gartner Peer Insights Community Guidelines
Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Methodology
Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Category Distinction Methodology
“Interactive Magic Quadrant With Peer Insights User Reviews”
“How Markets and Vendors Are Evaluated in Gartner Magic Quadrants”

Resources for Technology and Service Providers

Gartner Peer Insights Tool for Technology Providers
Technology Provider FAQ

Contact

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