Alchemer is a company that empowers you to do more with feedback. Ranging from a one-time survey to a powerful feedback program, Alchemer provides customer-obsessed teams with the clarity to move from asking to action, driving businesses forward. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Alchemer CEO Martin Mrugal to learn more about the company.
Martin Mrugal’s Background
What is Martin Mrugal’s background? Mrugal said:
“I spent the early part of my career in transportation and logistics focused on automotive and petrochemical manufacturing industries. I was doing advanced financial analysis, so I went to graduate school. After I graduated, I went to work for SAP where I spent the next 22 plus years in various roles in Industry GTM, Presales, Product launch, Operations, and Innovation.”
“In my last role at SAP, I created the first global customer success team and customer engagement model. After SAP I spent time at two private equity backed companies in Chief Customer Officer and Chief Operating Officer roles respectively. This is my third role as a private equity operator and the first in a CEO capacity.”
Company’s Focus
Tell me about Alchemer and the company’s focus. Mrugal shared:
“Alchemer’s value can be summed up in three words: Collect, Connect, and Clarity.”
“Collect: Alchemer gives easy and practical ways to collect feedback during moments that matter, whether they happen in a survey, on your website or app, or in a third-party channel. Customer feedback lives everywhere; Alchemer helps you collect it all.”
“Connect: Alchemer empowers you to act fast on feedback with integrations and automations that connect feedback across your organization. Alchemer listens for key moments in your customers’ feedback and automates the next step, everything from triggering a survey, opening a case, or closing the loop.”
“Clarity: Using Alchemer provides understanding about what customers need with a clarity that makes the next step obvious. Alchemer gets to the heart of what customers think through AI technology purposely built for CX and feedback programs to deliver actionable insights, role-based dashboard and reports that enable easy sharing, and best-in-class analysis and reporting tools so researchers can easily provide the “Aha” moment the business demands.”
“Our focus is on the mid-market. There are more expensive platforms for more complex data collection. There are more simplistic options for basic surveys. Alchemer is well-positioned to manage the middle area for small and mid-sized companies and departments who need a robust feedback platform without unnecessary bells and whistles.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Mrugal affirmed:
“Alchemer empowers customers to do more with feedback. From a one-time survey to a powerful feedback program, Alchemer gives customer-obsessed teams the clarity to move from asking to action, driving business forward.”
“We believe customers should expect more from feedback. That means a robust platform that can collect and analyze feedback in any way, via any channel. But it also means a platform that isn’t bloated with modules you never use. Alchemer is different because we empower teams to collect feedback their way, on their own – no consultants or middle-men required.”
Customer Experience Status
What’s the status of customer experience today? Mrugal pointed out:
“Customer experience is at an inflection point.”
“Most businesspeople understand that improving the customer experience is the best thing to do for the business and your customers. But CX is struggling to help the business understand the financial impact of these actions. They know they should take CX actions – but many can’t connect these actions to ROI. That provides a really unique opportunity for the evolution of CX.”
“The latest Forrester CX Index shows that CX quality among U.S. brands sits at an all-time low after declining for an unprecedented third year in a row. And with Accenture finding that 37% of people think companies are prioritizing higher profits over better customer experience, there’s a lack of trust and a feeling that companies may not care about the customer experience.”
“But they should. McKinsey found that companies that care about customer experience tend to have 2X the growth of companies that don’t. CX is clearly an area where businesses are struggling to meet consumer demands and it shows in every major and micro-transaction we have with brands today.”
“There is technology available to help at this particular inflection point. CX software needs to improve the experience while driving growth. We must help our customers achieve the results they want while adding to the bottom line.”
“I’m excited to be at this inflection point because Alchemer can make a real difference for businesses invested in CX – not just by making the customer experience better, but also making it easier for CX teams to connect their actions to real business results.”
Helping Businesses Meet Customer Expectations
How are you helping businesses to meet customer expectations? Mrugal emphasized:
“Alchemer helps businesses meet customer expectations by offering flexible, customizable survey solutions and experience management tools designed to capture valuable feedback and turn it into actionable insights. We achieve this by offering:
- Customizable Surveys and Feedback Mechanisms: Alchemer allows businesses to create tailored surveys and feedback forms that can be embedded across various customer touchpoints (email, website, mobile apps, etc.). This ensures that companies can collect relevant and timely customer feedback, which is crucial for understanding evolving customer needs and expectations.
- Real-Time Data Collection and Reporting: The platform provides real-time feedback collection and reporting capabilities, helping companies react quickly to customer concerns or shifting preferences. This agility enables businesses to stay ahead of customer demands and make adjustments before issues escalate.
- Integration with Business Systems: Alchemer integrates seamlessly with other business tools (e.g., CRM systems, marketing automation platforms), allowing organizations to enrich their customer data. This integration enables more holistic customer profiles and helps businesses tailor their products, services, and communications more effectively to meet individual customer needs.
- Advanced Analytics and Insights: Alchemer’s advanced analytics tools allow businesses to go beyond simple data collection, helping them to analyze feedback for deeper insights. This includes identifying trends, customer sentiment, and key drivers of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, enabling more informed decision-making.
- Actionable Insights and Automation: Through its workflow automation features, Alchemer enables businesses to act on feedback quickly. For example, Alchemer can trigger alerts or follow-up actions when negative feedback is received, ensuring prompt responses to improve the customer experience.
By providing these capabilities, Alchemer empowers businesses to stay closely aligned with their customers’ needs and expectations, fostering better customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term growth.”
Opinion About The Role Of AI
As the market moves forward, what’s the role of AI? Mrugal noted:
“AI is an accelerator. Smart teams leverage tech like AI to do more, expand their opportunities, and drive more revenue.”
“At Alchemer, we use AI both internally in terms of how we build software and externally in the products we offer, like Alchemer Pulse.”
“Alchemer Pulse is purpose-built to help customer experience and feedback programs act on unstructured feedback at scale:
– Bring together all your open text to understand how your customers really think and feel – in their own words.
– Turn qualitative feedback data into trackable, actionable insights with summaries of themes and sentiment.
– Analyze and act on open text feedback faster than ever, at an unheard-of scale, so you can track – and show off – your impact.
Alchemer Pulse and other AI-powered platforms accelerate time to insight, revealing what people think and feel, at scale. The role of AI is essentially to eliminate manual tasks and empower teams to spend their time doing the strategic steps necessary to improve their businesses.”
Future Goals
What are some of Alchemer’s future goals? Mrugal concluded:
“Let’s start with our vision which is to be the undisputed leader in helping our customers turn feedback into actionable results that drive business impact and financial results. We do that by powering the growth of customer-obsessed organizations by providing a platform that is easy to use, robust, secure, scalable, and purpose-built to engage their customers through feedback. Lastly, we will provide world class customer support and service to accelerate time to value and customer impact by having a relentless focus on customer success.”
