AskNicely is the preferred solution over Applause due to our:

• Focus on customer experience, rather than a larger feature set that includes employee experience and research
• Ease of use, implementation, and management that lets you manage your CXM platform without requiring spend on expensive services
• Better customer service
• Focus on identifying opportunities to generate positive reviews on important review sites, not just any review
• Built-in testimonials widget that automatically puts approved customer feedback onto your website
• More sophisticated AI analysis of text-based responses to identify CX themes
• More affordable pricing that’s designed for multi-location services businesses, not large enterprises

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While many customer experience management (CXM) platforms emphasize reputation management, loyalty programs, and generalized market insight, AskNicely's unique approach recognizes that sustainable growth for service businesses requires addressing the underlying operational inefficiencies that constrain earned growth. These include:

• AskNicely supports proactive problem resolution.
  Service quality can suffer due to variations in employee skills and attitudes. AskNicely provides tools to proactively identify and resolve customer issues, preventing escalations and negative impacts to the overall service experience, as well as poor experiences making their way into public reviews or forums.
• AskNicely supports employee motivation and activation.
  In services businesses, the frontline team is everything. AskNicely provides ongoing employee performance management and gamified motivational tools to support consistent, high-quality service delivery. By providing specific data-driven insights into location- and employee-level performance alongside full-team visibility and gamification, managers can coach more effectively and employees are more motivated to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Even a strong customer strategy is handicapped by unresolved operational challenges. AskNicely helps service businesses align and empower teams with real-time customer feedback to unlock sustained, profitable growth.

There are several key ways in which Customer Experience Management (CXM) software helps services businesses:

• Driving earned revenue growth: By improving reputation, service quality, and customer satisfaction, CXM software can generate positive word-of-mouth, increase referrals, and enable upselling and cross-selling, ultimately driving revenue growth.
• Enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty: CXM software lets service businesses better understand customer preferences, provide tailored services, and foster customer loyalty through programs and incentives.
• Improving consistency of service quality: Since service quality often relies on human performance, CXM software helps service businesses provide more consistent service through employee training, performance management, and customer feedback collection mechanisms.
• Reputation management: Word-of-mouth plays a huge role in the success of service businesses. CXM software can help actively manage online reputation, respond to reviews, and proactively address reputational issues before they hit public forums.‍
• Improving operational efficiency: CXM software helps streamline processes, optimize resource allocation, and proactively resolve customer issues, leading to greater operational efficiency and cost savings.