Influitive

Amazing Platform to Build a Customer Community & an Advocate Marketing Program

Avantages :

Influitive helps us communicate with our customers in a meaningful way at scale and reward them for everything that they do for our business. Not only can we provide tools and resources to help customers with our product but we can drive measurable results by utilizing advocates to help with every aspect of the business including sales, customer success, editorial, marketing and product development. It's a great way to create a community amongst our customers and we can get feedback on various initiatives quickly. What I love about the advocate hub is it's intuitive, easy to use and is adaptable. I like to think of it as a ball of clay - you can adapt it to what works for your team, audience and business. The first thing I noticed when I started using the AdvocateHub was how easy it is to use and how flexible the platform is. This enables me to adapt my program and shape it to fit my needs and strategies. Influitive is committed to ensuring their customers are successful. The company is dedicated to ensuring that my program is successful which is a huge benefit of using their platform. It feels more like a partnership than a vendor relationship.

Inconvénients :

There's not much that I would recommend in terms of room for improvement. Influitive is awesome!

A proven partner for over seven years

Commentaires : For over 7 years, we have had a positive experience with Influitive. Our community of educators continues to grow each year as does our member engagement. We've had good connections with our CSMs and generally have a quick response to reported issues. Before we renewed our contract this year, we did evaluate other companies and systems and still believe Influitive meets our needs the best in regards to customer experience.

Avantages :

We have worked with Influitive for over 7 years with our customer advocacy community of educators. The platform is relatively easy to use and the reporting provides us with key data points to share within our organization. Our members enjoy the quick consumable content and earning points towards classroom supplies, books, gift cards, and company swag.

Inconvénients :

As with any new software platform, we've had a few bugs and issues in the last few months. We're working with the support and product teams to resolve our issues. We wish the content library of campaigns were more robust and updated consistently to take some of the extra work off of our plates.

Buggy, Unreliable Software. Support is Non-existant

Commentaires : While we have had positive results with Influitive, we have faced numerous challenges. The team is almost impossible to work with (a far cry from the past where they were absolutely exceptional). There is a lack of caring about the customer and in expertise (even of their own software). My first few weeks with Influitive went like this: sales member left items out of the contract and rushed us to sign it (we did, realized our mistake, and accepted it). The company forgot to actually setup our hub (we had to email them to get them to give us what we purchased). The next thing I know I'm receiving crude calls from someone claiming to be their legal team telling me I'm being sued for someone else's account (yes they messed that up). Later, when we tried to purchase the item that was left out of the contract, they tried a bait and switch and tried again to sell us something we didn't want in place of what we specifically asked for. It's gotten to the point where we file a ticket knowing support will tell us to ignore it, and every senior person we've reached out to at the company is leaving or moving positions and unable to help us (redirecting us to other people who we never hear from).

Avantages :

I've used Influitive for several years. It can drive results if implemented correctly and with dedicated resources. The platform offers a nice balance for users with challenges, rewards, a messaging center, and a new focus on a forum (although if you already have a forum you cannot turn this off and they will force you to use it).

Inconvénients :

The company has changed directions pushing the forum over the challenges (the initial reason Influitive was created). The software is often unreliable, with our team finding bugs and issues almost daily. These issues range from targeting (advocates not receiving challenges), inaccurate counts, data disappearing, and blatant issues in production such as when they broke the rewards page or the challenge forms. We have numerous complaints from our users, and people complaining that it doesn't work. In less than a year we have filed probably over 20 bugs - most of which support ignores. The most common response we get is "it will fix itself eventually." While they have an API, it's very random and not well designed. For example, there is a groups endpoint, but the only way to get the group ID is to go back into the admin, go into reports, dig into the report, pivot and filter, and then eventually you'll find a hidden ID that doesn't match the group ID used throughout the system. The forum likewise is extremely buggy - although they've made vast improvements. Now posts and responses at least show up in order, although moderation and editing capabilities are a far cry from any other available forum solution (in most cases limited or non-existent). If users need to be able to copy/ paste code examples - you can forget it (this feature, while available doesn't work and is as you guessed it, extremely buggy). Unfortunately, this is the tip of the iceberg.

Producing Great Results!

Commentaires : The idea of customer advocacy and customer marketing is a new way of thinking within B2B business. I feel fortunate that we have chosen a partnership with Influitive, who in my mind, is the leader in this particular space. Our implementation was quite easy and even with my competing priority of creating an online user community at the same time.
Their customer support is quite incredible. They are timely, polite, and sure to close the loop. The knowledge base articles are great and usually show walk-throughs and how-to's on nearly everything. I also appreciate their willingness to continue to foster partnership through ongoing coaching with advocacy experts every two weeks. They have even gone so far as to add me to a great SLACK group with Awesome Advocate Marketers from around the world to learn and grow.
As a result of our coaching, execution, and leveraging the software within the first 30 days we have had 12 new software reviews, 9 referral leads, and 10+ users raising their hand to be references. I have been blown away with our results and so have my executives. We are going to continue to build on our early success and leverage this tool at an upcoming event - specifically with Influitive's great mobile app.
Another thing I appreciate about Influitive is they are constantly learning, growing and trying new things. Their own VIP AdvocateHub is a great place to learn about the company, what's coming around the corner, and also great advice to incorporate into your own hub.
We are really looking forward to continuing our success with our Hub and ultimately mobilizing our advocates to spread the footprint of our brand and services via word of mouth, social, and reviews while having fun at the same time!

Avantages :

You truly get out what you put in. The time spent building campaigns and targeted challenges are directly related to what results you're able to yield thereafter. Their customer support is incredible. Their coaching is very helpful and they are all about building value for your Hub. If you are the sponsor, rest assured you will have plenty of benchmarking and metrics to present to your executive teams.

Inconvénients :

No real cons to speak of at this time. Like any other B2B company, they are interested in appending add-on solutions such as API links to Marketo, Salesforce, SSO etc. These do cost money and are typically not included in a base contract.

Growing your program with Influitive...

Avantages :

It gamifies advocate engagement to the point where it's not too "cheesy" on their end. Participation feels organic and can be as serious or fun as you want it to be. I feel this was something other vendors attempted but could never do as well. The AdvocateHub provides detailed metrics so that we can accurately present our success to other departments. Plenty of reports are at our fingertips and can be pulled quickly or sent automatically on a week-week, month-month basis. We needed that to be there and done well, it was selling point for the AdvocateHub. Customer advocates in our AdvocateHub are encouraged to engage daily and Influitive does a great job to coach us on how to do just that. You're never left in the dark or left alone to fend for yourself and your customers. Influitive is there with you to coach you through the process and truly cares about getting the most out of your new AdvocateHub. "You're their only customer" is the feeling you get from them.

Inconvénients :

It's a growing vendor so there can still be a few dents in the software here and there. Targeting and uploading content can sometimes take a bit of time at certain points in the day but nothing that has hindered us so far.