Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ 2022 report: ValueBlue awarded Customers’ Choice for EA tools

Once a year, Gartner publishes their Voice of the Customer report as part of their Peer Insights program. The report highlights the best-performing vendors for enterprise software solutions based on feedback from customers. In the report, Gartner recognizes the Customers’ Choice distinction to those with the highest overall Peer Insights ratings.

ValueBlue is extremely proud to be recognized as a Customers’ Choice in the category of EA tools!

The Road from Peer Insights to Customers’ Choice

Gartner Peer Insights: Customer First

You may have heard of Gartner’s Peer Insights platform, a free peer review and ratings platform designed for enterprise software and services decision-makers. Customers leave reviews (which go through a strict validation and moderation process in an effort to ensure they are authentic) and rate their experience with certain vendor solutions. This is a valuable source for strategic decision-makers looking for a specific software solution. It lists the vendors, ranks them according to customer reviews, and shows the written reviews by peers for third-party product validation.

Now, the Peer Insights platform is just the start of Gartner’s reviewing system. One step deeper brings you to the Customer First program. It is linked to Peer Insights, but participating vendors explicitly invite and encourage all connections to leave reviews of their experience and interaction with the vendor. This can be a little daunting as the invitation extends to critical feedback as well, but it’s also a differentiator proving that the organization values all customer feedback.

ValueBlue is one of only two vendors in the Enterprise Architecture space to participate in the Customer First program. The feedback from all connections we collect, we use to steer our Product Roadmap and Customer Services.

The Voice of the Customer report

Going another level deeper, Gartner publishes their annual report called Voice of the Customer. Applications to be included in the report go further than customers’ ratings and reviews. Gartner combines that information with their own analyses to create three determining factors:

1. Data collection: The ability to collect all three types of Voice of the Customer data:
   • Direct feedback
   • Indirect feedback
   • Inferred feedback
2. Analysis and insight: The ability to analyze and derive insight from a diverse set of structured and unstructured feedback datasets using a variety of visualization and analytical techniques.
3. Action: The ability to act upon derived insights through the use of alerts, workflows, case assignments, and recommendations.

In short: vendors must be able to collect enough feedback, interpret the data, translate the insights into an actionable plan, and execute on it.

How to read the Gartner Peer Insights: Voice of the Customer report

The detailed analyses are conveyed in a quadrant, similar to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant approach. The X-axis shows the level of user interest and adoption – the further to the right, the better. The Y-axis reflects the overall rating of the vendor – the higher, the better.

Traditionally, the Magic Quadrant is more precise in placing the vendors within each of the quadrants. It allows for a detailed comparison of all vendors, even within one of the four squares. That isn’t the case for the Voice of the Customer quadrant. Instead, it lists the vendor for each quadrant in alphabetical order, unrelated to their respective positioning.

Vendors aim to be positioned in the top right. For the Voice of the Customer report, the top-right positioning qualifies them the recognition of a Customers’ Choice – the highest award in Gartner’s review program.

Gartner Peer Insights: Customers’ Choice

Gartner recognizes ValueBlue as a vendor that meets or exceeds both the average User Interest and Adoption (X-axis) and the average Overall Rating (Y-axis). We are therefore positioned in the top-right quadrant, granting ValueBlue with the Customers’ Choice distinction.

Key results:

• Consistent ratings of >4.4 out of 5, out of the 55 reviews collected over last 18 months to date, resulting in a final rating of 4.7 out of 5 – the highest Overal Rating.
• 93% of ValueBlue customers are willing to recommend us as a vendor.
• Customer feedback was collected from a worldwide coverage of connections.

“Unbiased, third-party validation is some of the most valuable feedback for us. Participating in an open forum such as Gartner Peer Insights encourages our customers to provide an honest appraisal of our software product and our customer service. Receiving sufficient positive feedback to garner ValueBlue a Customers’ Choice is truly an honor since our customers are really the ones bestowing it.”

Casper Teijema, Director Professional Services