DYK # 40: Did you know … the VoC market isn’t settling down.
Just as I was preparing a Whitepaper to analyse the VoC market for SMB clients, news broke on the VoC enterprise front again. So we changed our April DYK to focus on that for you.
2025 acquisitions
Last year in October, I wrote a report assessing the impact Qualtrics’ proposed acquisition of PG Forsta has on the enterprise VoC market across ANZ. The acquisition announcement rattled the market since PG Forsta had acquired InMoment only a few months prior.
That’s 3 large enterprise grade VoC vendors potentially merging into one.
These changes have a real impact on large SMBs and enterprise organisations using VoC platforms as part of their CX programmes. If the top end of the market is consolidating, that typically means uncertainty and changes for buyers and customers. Check out our 2025 report here to learn more.
2026 news
And now, 6 months later, more news are rattling the VoC market.
Last week (w/c 20 April), news broke that Thoma Bravo is nearing an agreement to hand Medallia to its lenders, wiping out $5.1 billion in equity from its $6.4 billion take-private in 2021. The change would transfer control of the company to creditors, including Blackstone, KKR, Apollo Global, and Antares Captital, who hold $3 billion in Medallia debt (yes, that’s billions, not millions). That in itself is a rather unusual move. The announcement came after months of restructuring negotiations, despite Medallia’s new leadership team installed early 2025 in an attempt to stabilise the business.
Alongside the Medallia changes, news surrounding the Qualtrics-PG Forsta acquisition emerged in March 2026. According to news outlets, the $5.3 billion debt financing behind the transaction had been paused, due to investors’ concerns about potential disruptions to software companies, caused by AI. It has also been reported that Qualtrics is reviewing its senior leadership team with changes on the horizon, while the Qualtrics-PG Forsta deal is still awaiting approval by regulators.
Implications for VoC programmes
That sounds like a lot of change, and it certainly send a signal to the market. So let’s look into what that means for us in the VoC space.
In our 2025 report, we argued that other players such as Verint, Concentrix or Sprinklr stand to benefit from the uncertainty surrounding their competitors. It seems this story continues, although the narrative is shifting.
What started out as a story about market consolidation is now becoming a story about market change.
The backbone of VoC platforms has always been about collecting feedback (data), analysing and more recently unifying different data sets, and generating insights. The call to move beyond that has become louder over the years, to move from merely generating insights to driving action and experience improvements for organisations (and their customers).
While many vendors reinforce that message, little has been witnessed within organisations that signals a shift. The challenge here is that acting on insights largely sits outside the tech stack, and requires a conversation about org structures, culture and accountabilities.
Our upcoming book “CXTS - Customer Experience is a Team Sport” explores this topic in detail, so make sure to register your interest and we’ll let you know when it’s available (later this year).
However, AI is advancing this conversation and moving simple tasks and automations in particular back into the tech conversation. “Closing the loop” or automating small tasks can be counted as acting on feedback to drive experience improvements. Vendors increasingly focus on that, and that’s where it becomes even more interesting from a CX market perspective.
Including (AI / agentic AI-driven) actioning of insights into the tech conversation also means that choice of vendors to consider for these tasks becomes broader.
Aside from VoC vendors you may want to rethink your approach to “VoC” and the tech you utilise. Once you move your attention from collecting and analysing feedback to acting on it, you’ll need deeper ties into contact centre operations, service management, digital, etc., meaning vendors such as NiCE, Verint, Zoom, Sprinklr but also the likes of ServiceNow should be considered. Bill Staikos explains it beautifully in his LinkedIn article “Medallia, Qualtrics, and the New Math in CXM”: “The market is starting to care less about who can describe the customer best and more about who can change work in the moment… Those companies are closer to the day-to-day running of the business. That is the standard the broader CXM market is now being measured against.”
And that’s not just interesting, that’s important to move CX to a place where we can actually drive action and demonstrate ROI of CX from a practice standpoint.
For a long time now, showcasing ROI faced scrutiny, since many of these large scale VoC programmes are rather expensive to run. With a lack of acting on insights and driving real experience improvements through organisations, the question arises, what are you spending our money on? Collecting feedback, creating dashboards and sharing insights is no longer enough. To be fair, it never was, but it’s becoming blatantly obvious now.
Implications for users
Last time we reported on the market changes, a very important question came up, so let’s look into that as well: What does that mean for you, if you’re using these platforms?
If you're in a current contract: don’t make any hasty decisions. If unsure, request a meeting with your account manager and ask some sharp questions.
Renewal coming up: Now is the time to question vendors, not just about what’s on the roadmap, but also about the impact potential changes would have on you. If unsure, review your terms and shorten the renewal period.
RFP: Select your vendors carefully, and again, ask sharp questions. Don’t rely on the sales pitch alone, ensure your contract is tight and in your favour.
➡️ And if you need help preparing or running these meetings or RFPs, or you have a general question about the market and specific vendors, book a consultation today. We’re here to help.
While these changes impact certain vendors, they also signal a broader shift in the market. A shift many vendors and CX practitioners are yet to understand fully.
And lastly
Technology is, and always has been, an enabler. If you don’t design your CX practice in a holistic manner, with a solid plan from the onset, technology is only going to deepen the cracks. Don’t get me wrong, tech is important, and its vital to enable your CX practice and CX success. But you must treat it as an enabler, not the solution.
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