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We had a lot of fun today talking today with Robb Novak from SurveyGizmo. Robb’s title is “Onboarding & Integrations”, which means he is responsible for sales and helping other companies, products and services integrate with SurveyGizmo (which is a good idea wink wink). He is very passionate about the results SurveyGizmo is helping his clients achieve.
The background of SurveyGizmo is a UX success story. Their success comes from building a product that has considered the user in every level of design, concept and idea iteration. Robb explains that the company started when its CEO was asked to build a basic survey tool for the company he was working for. He then went on to sell the software to many other companies and has been improving the software ever since (approx. 6 years). The product continues to grow and evolve as the needs of their users continue to grow and evolve.
During the interview, we talk about SurveyGizmo’s functions and features, who their customers are, how to best use the product and the company’s culture, which is, according to Robb, that they “take their work seriously, just not themselves.” That is certainly a culture that we at Little Wing Marketing can relate to. Did I mention that my Jack Russell, Sherman, is running around the office today in a Santa suit?
Santa Sherm!
Very serious. Let’s get back on topic…
Some takeaways for me was that SurveyGizmo was much more than just a survey tool. Robb talks about how the “Gizmo” part of their name refers to all the other things the software can do- its a tool that can be manipulated for many other functions within a business (for example marketing automation, implementing online courses, social integrations etc. or by creating polls, forms, and quizzes). Many users don’t even begin to realize the capabilities until they have spent some time using the product.
More than anything, SurveyGizmo is committed to providing the best customer service possible. It only makes sense that a company whose service is targeted toward learning and iterating based on customer feedback would have a heavy emphasis on customer service. Robb went in depth about how SurveyGizmo’s internal support staff is the largest department within their company. He mentioned it is not unusual for a developer to get on the phone with a customer during a conversation with customer support to help resolve an issue. Their support staff can help with a question about SurveyGizmo or even how best to create and implement their survey? And if you really want them to handle everything, they have a service for that too.
If you’ve been looking for a solution that’s more than what Survey Monkey provides but is less than what UserZoom costs, SurveyGizmo could be an excellent fit for you. We came away very impressed.
I hope you enjoy the podcast!
Hey guys! Great post as usual. We’ve always admired Surveygizmo.
However, I’m not sure you’d want to compare SG against UserZoom. SG is much more of an online survey solution that you’d compare against Qualtrics or Surveymonkey. UserZoom is more a UX research platform. We do include surveys too, but the vast majority of features our customers use are more geared towards usability testing, IA design, etc.
It’s my personal vision anyhow.
All the best,
Alfonso
Alfonso, I think you bring up a good point. The survey space is chock full of different ways to talk to your user. What this means is that a diverse set of tools and methods all gets grouped as “surveys”. This leads to comparisons between, say, Survey Monkey, SurveyGizmo, and UserZoom, where the comparison is less that wholly accurate.
From everything I’ve seen, UserZoom really is the 800 lb. gorilla in the survey space. It has a feature set and caters to a clientele that nobody else is touching, at least that I’ve seen.
On the opposite end of that is Survey Monkey, which is more of a mom-and-pop survey solution (though I don’t know if they’d agree with that assessment).
Somewhere in the middle floats SurveyGizmo. They have more features than Survey Monkey but don’t pretend to compete with UserZoom.
The point of comparison was really in the price point among survey tools. It wasn’t meant to suggest that each were equal in stature or function. And in that sense, the comparison stands. You can get a free plan, you can pay $1000/mo.+ or you can spend $75/mo. It just comes down to the individual or businesses’ needs.