Pros & Cons of Qualtrics Research Core: Analysis of a Leading Survey Software in 2024

Is Qualtrics Research Core any good? Yes, for complex surveys and reporting. The market research industry is growing at unprecedented rate, spearheaded by powerful applications like Qualtrics Research Core. The program offers outstanding tools, mostly through its potent iQ artificial intelligence engine whose unique algorithms are able to dive into any set of data and generate useful insights from it.

If you are planning to launch a new business or if your current business is not picking up as you wish it, then most probably the idea of market research and specifically survey software has made its way into your business radar, prompting you to scour the market for one that will help you gain useful insights in your market that you could decisively act on.

As microsurveys become all the rage these days, it confirms the simple fact that fielding business surveys remains one of the most direct and most effective means of gathering critical information about a business market. Surveys—that is, survey software—provide a wealth of data, intelligence and insight that define how business enterprises should act and drive the next activities of their businesses in order to increase revenues and market share in their specific industries.

Emerging market realities, global competition, and the needs of businesses to align products and services to customer expectations are factors that drive the global market research industry to produce $45 billion in revenues each year. The U.S. industry for business intelligence, market research, and opinion polling alone will reach $31 billion by 2020.

While these are all impressive figures and considerations, the following infographics also throws significant pieces of information that you can consider before diving into market research and specific survey software:

And speaking of market research and survey software, we now provide a comprehensive look at the pros and cons of Qualtrics Research Core, one of the biggest names in the industry, to help you decide whether this is a platform that would work for your specific business requirements.

Qualtrics Research Core is one the most trusted enterprise research platforms in the world. More than 8,500 brands and 99 of the top 100 business schools depend on Qualtrics to capture, measure, analyze and act on data.

Powered by a brilliant algorithm and state-of-the-art predictive intelligence engine called iQ, Qualtrics Research Core provides intuitive, beautiful and complex surveys to serve any enterprise needs: from tracking consumer behavior across diverse segments, benchmarking your company against competition, conducting complex academic research, to advertising and product testing. The vendor offers a great free trial plan for those who’d like to try out the key features of the product first.

Qualtrics Research Core’s smart iQ is behind its thrust to manage what it calls the four key experiences of business, namely: Customer Experience, Employee Experience, Brand Experience and Product Experience.

Qualtrics Research Core is loaded with a multitude of features, including:

Customer Satisfaction

1. NPS
2. Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty
3. Digital Feedback Surveys
4. VOC Programs
5. Event Feedback Surveys

Product & R&D

1. Product Satisfaction & Usage
2. Naming and Concept Testing
3. Pricing Research
4. Feature & Product Prioritisation
5. User Experience

Segmentation & Strategy

1. Market & Opportunity Assessment
2. Segmentation & Targeting
3. Habits / Practices / Product Usage
4. Competitive Benchmarking

Marketing & Brand Research

1. Positioning
2. Concept Testing
3. Brand Equity Research
4. Advertising & Message Testing
5. Shopper Research
6. Perception & Awareness

Pros and Cons of Qualtrics Research Core

We begin looking at the pros and cons of Qualtrics Research Core by identifying some of its most outstanding features, listed below.

One platform, multiple-use cases

As many of its established clients have come to find out, you can use Qualtrics Research Core in many ways, from measuring customer satisfaction, conducting specific product R&D, measuring segmentation and targeting strategies, to marketing and brand research.

Intuitive, easy-to-use GUI design survey platform

Qualtrics Research Core made sure usability would not get in the way its customers could make the most of its application. No extensive training, education is required for the platform and users can run the software from the get-go, ensuring clients get the value from their purchases from day one.

Premium flexibility at reasonable prices

Qualtrics delivers professional-grade functions that were once only available via expensive outsourced consultants. With powerful solutions for everything from concept testing to user experience research and pricing, Qualtrics provides self-serve access to anyone in an organization, never limiting use to trained experts:

1. Qualtrics Research Core allows you to create, test, and modify surveys instantly with no coding required
2. It provides intuitive and powerful survey flow logic options to tailor your survey
3. It enables you to leverage the following: 100+ question types, embedded data, advanced branching and display logic, quotas, triggers, mobile and offline compatibility, randomization, and every advanced feature you need

Powerful collaboration, analysis and reporting

Qualtrics Research Core supports 30 different graph types, allows you to share real-time web reports, or to export to Word, PowerPoint, or PDF to create professional presentation in minutes. All these capabilities enable better decisions with real-time insights:

1. Create, share, and collaborate on custom online reports that automatically update in real-time so that everyone in your organization is working off the same information
2. Automatically build reports, with the best visualizations selected for each question type. Easily format and customize beautiful graphs and charts in just a few clicks—all from within the platform and with drag and drop ease
3. Schedule reports to be automatically sent to peers, clients, managers, and others. Analyse open text responses faster than ever.

Choose your channel: anytime and to anyone

Through the years, Qualtrics Research Core has enabled more distribution channels than any competition, so there’s virtually no one it can’t reach. These channels can include:

1. Email surveys
2. SMS surveys
3. Mobile site and website
4. Social networks
5. QR codes
6. IVR to remove expensive associate outcalls
7. Survey director
8. Receipt surveys
9. Offline surveys

Cost-effective no matter the target

For extremely reasonable price, customers get outstanding value of such rich features that they can then use to provide insights on the following key areas:

1. Customer experience
2. Employee experience
3. Brand experience
4. Product experience

Market Research in Laymen’s Terms

Qualtrics Research Core and its powerful Stats iQ removes the mystery out of market research: you can be novice deciphering data in no time, making out trends, producing predictive models without spending any time in Excel or SPSS. The platform will guide you generate the strongest statistical relationships and compile the results in layman’s terms, making it easy to come out with informed actions right away.

Extract hidden values from text responses

Companies often overlook the true value of text responses before them. With Qualtrics Research Code’s Text iQ equipped with superb artificial intelligence and natural language processing capabilities, text responses will never again look as bland as before and absent of any useful value: the handy tool will easily suggest relevant topics and assign sentiment scores to individual text comments.

Let Driver iQ optimize your marketing campaigns

Qualtrics Research Core takes the guesswork out of marketing campaigns through its Driver iQ, a robust tool that presents real-time data on your customers’ experiences, then correlates the information generated to prioritize the key drivers of your business. The same set of data enables it to predict actions that promises the best possible results out of your campaigns.

Library of critical information that matter to your business

Aside from crunching and making sense of all the numbers and statistics that your marketing campaigns have accumulated overtime, Qualtrics Research Core will also store this useful information in its iQ Directory that serves as a repository of useful information that you may need in the future. The directory keeps live, organized chronicle of your audience’s emotions, sentiments, beliefs and preferences, handy for succeeding marketing campaigns and future business planning, customer management—even academic studies.

As outstanding as Qualtrics Research Core is, some users have noted using extra precaution in using embedded data (ED): never place an extra space at the end of your ED, otherwise you will notice glitches in your logic or data. Evidently Qualtrics could easily address that, for example by simply enabling that option through a dropdown menu, to eliminate the usual error of inputting manually.

Is Qualtrics suitable for small businesses?

Qualtrics can be a robust tool for small businesses, though its suitability depends on the organization’s specific needs and budget. Known for its advanced features in survey design, analytics, and data visualization, Qualtrics provides businesses with comprehensive tools for gaining in-depth insights from customer feedback and market research. However, some of these features may be more complex and costly than what a small business might typically require.

• Feature Set: Qualtrics offers customizable survey design, reporting, and integration with other software. Qualtrics’ wide array of question types and survey logic can benefit small businesses needing insights into customer satisfaction or employee engagement. The platform’s analytical capabilities also allow small businesses to uncover trends and actionable insights from survey data.
• Cost Considerations: One of the main challenges for small businesses is Qualtrics’ pricing, which tends to be higher than simpler survey tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey. While Qualtrics does offer flexible plans, smaller organizations may find the costs restrictive, especially if they don’t need advanced analytics or extensive customization.
• Usability: Qualtrics is known for being user-friendly but has a steeper learning curve for advanced features. Small businesses with limited time for onboarding might prefer a simpler tool. However, Qualtrics’ resources and support can help ease the learning process.

Qualtrics can be an excellent choice for small businesses that prioritize robust survey tools and can afford the investment. However, simpler, more budget-friendly alternatives may be better for smaller-scale needs.

Takeaway

Notice that our list of the pros and cons of Qualtrics Research Core hardly mentions anything of substance against it. Aside from the minor ED issue, Qualtrics Research Core remains the market research tool to beat in the industry, with powerful features and capabilities for any unique business need.

By Christopher Robinson

Christopher Robinson is a senior productivity research analyst who specializes in optimizing online collaboration and project management using Scrum and agile approaches. In his work, he always emphasizes the need for distributed work training and the formation of efficient work habits. His work was mentioned in various business publications, including Entrepreneur and InfoQ. He’s a strong proponent of the GTD model. He has been cooperating with the FinancesOnline team for 5 years now, and his publications always focus on practical aspects of productivity tools that can have an actual, transformative impact on a company.