VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vision Critical today launched the next generation of Sparq, a cloud-based customer intelligence platform that enables companies to make confident decisions at the speed of business by engaging their customers for ongoing insight through secure, online Insight Communities. The next generation of Sparq features an updated user interface and an array of new capabilities that allow companies to better understand customer motivations, preferences, and needs over time. Sparq’s easy to administer tools, templates, and enhanced targeting capabilities allow users to ask the right questions to the right customers at the right time. In conjunction with the evolution of its customer intelligence platform, Vision Critical also is releasing its first mobile application, Engage, making it simple and convenient for companies to gather in-the-moment intelligence from their customers. Companies can deploy their customer communities in fourteen languages, providing global customer insight. High performing global companies including Adobe, DEWALT, and Univision Communications Inc., credit their Vision Critical Insight Communities with helping engage their customers for vital insight into important business decisions.
Comments on the news:
- “Our customers have become their own intelligence ecosystems, assembling knowledge about products and services and then delivering opinions widely and loudly in real time,” said Scott Miller, CEO at Vision Critical. “Companies can either embrace this phenomenon or quickly become out of touch with the wants and needs of their customers. With today’s launch of the next generation of Sparq, we are making our solutions absolutely indispensable to marketers, researchers, product developers, and executives who recognize that engaging a community of their customers for insight is critical to their success. As Vision Critical continues its hyper-growth, we know that continuing to invest in our technology is essential, and are committed to delivering the capabilities our customers — and their customers — need to ensure their success.”
- “We spend a great deal of time listening to our own customers,” said Andrew Reid, founder and president of corporate innovation at Vision Critical.“ In response to what we heard, we have built the next generation of Sparq to enable our customers to engage their customers with a deep, flexible set of tools geared to today’s always-on, mobile-savvy customer. Through our platform, companies will be able to make sense of the disparate data that already exists in different pockets of their organization with ongoing insight from their customers.
- “With our Vision Critical Insight Community, we are able to keep our finger on the pulse of our customers and respond to their needs immediately,” said Lori Iventosch-James, Group Research Manager at Adobe. “The key customer insight provided by our community has informed early product concepts and development, business strategy and marketing, new acquisitions and many other highly visible and critical outcomes for Adobe. “We think of our community as a constructive feedback loop that brings us closer to our customers by understanding their experience from their perspective. We continue to enjoy high response rates, which is a strong indication of the high engagement of our community members. We’re excited to see the latest enhancements to the Sparq platform that will help us continue to generate valuable insight and provide a great experience for our members.”
- “We’ve been a Vision Critical customer for three years and have had a lot of success with our Insight Community,” said Shannon Chenoweth, Market Research Manager at DEWALT. “It’s helped us solve problems quickly and in a cost efficient way and we rely on it to drive key decisions in our business. Unlike traditional research, we have a relationship with our community members and we want them to feel good about contributing and sharing their opinions. They are our ‘go to’ for answers, we depend on them 100 percent, and they never let us down. We’re looking forward to getting our hands on the next generation features of Sparq that make it even easier for us to get the insight we need.”
- “The flexibility and speed of Univision’s Insight Community, which is powered by the Sparq platform, has allowed us to get quick answers to urgent business questions,” said Belia Jimenez, vice president, Corporate Research at Univision Communications Inc. “We’ve been able to get a unique perspective on the habits and traditions of the U.S. Hispanic community and culture. I’m especially excited that Vision Critical’s new mobile application, Engage, offers in-the-moment engagement opportunities since this will allow us to connect with our digital-savvy audience in new and creative ways.”
High-performing companies can now search, compile and compare insight gathered over time to drive customer-centric decision-making at the speed of business with Search and Stories.
Through Sparq’s new Stories feature, companies can now share compelling, insight-driven stories that address key business issues on a cross-departmental level. To make information sharing even easier across the new platform, the new Search feature allows users to find, access, compare and compile the collective wisdom of their communities to answer targeted business questions with speed and ease. Storytelling is an extremely effective way to share and consume data and insight, helping to make sense of complex information across multiple channels. Additionally, it inspires action far more than facts and figures, something that becomes critical as customers are responsible for providing actionable insight that drives optimal business outcomes. The combined power of Search and Stories makes it easy to use the important insight brands have gathered over time through their communities to share compelling, customer insight-driven stories throughout their organization.
Engage, Vision Critical’s first member-facing mobile application, allows for real-time customer interaction and a seamless experience across all channels.
With geo-targeting, iBeacon, and time-based deployment capabilities, Engage, Vision Critical’s first member-facing mobile application, allows large companies to access community members for in-the-moment insight. At launch, Engage is available on both iOS and Android through the App Store and Google Play, making it accessible by the majority of customers today.
With availability in fourteen languages, Sparq allows global companies to connect their customer insight across borders.
Sparq is a global customer intelligence platform, allowing for multilingual community support that provides companies the ability to gather insight from customers engaging with them around the world. Unlocking the value of customer intelligence is predicated on the authenticity and openness of the customers within the community. By enabling brands to engage with customers in the language of their preference and consolidate insight and content dramatically increases the comprehensiveness of the picture that Sparq can paint for business leaders and the accuracy of the decisions the platform drives. Paired with the other capabilities available within the next generation of the Sparq platform, companies will be able to understand their customers on a deeper level than ever before.
The user and customer interface within Sparq has been modernized to allow for better community understanding while simultaneously inspiring higher member engagement.
In an effort to drive the highest engagement rates, Sparq now features an updated member experience designed to help organizations access the right customers at the right times. The next generation mobile experience is fully immersive and seamless across devices, allowing members to engage in activities whenever and wherever they want. Sparq also allows users to access their community metrics, offering a real-time pulse on community engagement levels as well as a view to community size and member demographics.
Enhanced platform flexibility and multi-media fueled activities drive uniquely engaged customers within the next generation of the Sparq platform.
Drag and drop controls within Sparq now allow users to create activities and engage communities more quickly and easily than ever before. Interactive highlighter, video and media questions can also now be incorporated to create a more engaging experience for community members. Additionally, built-in, industry leading survey templates are available to help users grow their collective wisdom faster across communities.
About Vision Critical
Vision Critical provides a cloud-based customer intelligence platform that allows companies to build engaged, secure communities of customers they can use continuously, across the enterprise, for ongoing, real-time feedback and insight. Designed for today’s always-on, social and mobile savvy customer, Vision Critical’s technology helps large, customer-centric enterprises discover what their customers want so they can deliver what they need. Unlike traditional customer research, which is slow, expensive and gathers dust on a shelf, Vision Critical’s customer intelligence platform replaces static data and cumbersome reports with real-time actionable customer intelligence that companies need to build better products, deliver better services and achieve better business outcomes.
Hundreds of high-performance organizations use Vision Critical’s technology. Learn more at www.visioncritical.com. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/visioncritical.
