Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. Medallia

We've used lightning forms on literally dozens of our SharePoint sites now and it's just excellent, especially because it doesn't interfere with our ability to governance and administer the sites

Any customer service industry would benefit from implementing Medallia. This is your one-stop-shop for everything surveying and data analytics. I have personally seen this successfully implemented in both software companies and retail. Medallia offers multiple integration options to create connected applications in your business. This is designed as an enterprise solution, smaller businesses may find it difficult to justify the cost.

Incentivized

• Simple user interface - users of the forms intuitively aware of how/where to input information. This is in part due to being able to show or hide different questions or areas of the form, and making them required or not, based on previous answers.
• Low/simple code - building complex forms with automation and multiple dependencies or lookups is relatively easy once you get started. You have the power of JavaScript to use and do some quite clever things if you can get to grips with it - a lot of solutions are only a Google away.
• As it is based on SharePoint, it integrates perfectly with the rest of the M365 suite. Things like PowerAutomate enhance its functionality even further.

• It provides a rating for customers to rank how satisfied or not satisfied they are with the service.
• As an Account Manager, this is a helpful tool to hear customers' experiences and feedback.
• It helps us manage our next steps because the tools also provide options to note the action taken and if the issue has been resolved or not.

Incentivized

• The styling of the form can sometimes be slightly awkward to use depending on what you're looking to do. For instance, if I was looking to highlight fields that users have missed (left empty), I would need to set up a validation for that question and then set a style for that particular field for when it is invalid. When you have a large and complex form with lots of dependencies, this is awkward.
• Support for complex and niche issues is slightly lacking in my experience. I submitted a helpdesk ticket for help with a strange issue I couldn't figure out, which took several weeks to get a response to. Because it is niche, it's more difficult to find an answer by searching the internet. Luckily, knowing there is likely to always be a fix if you find the right place/use the right formula, I manage to resolve the issue with some trial and error.
• It is disappointing that Lightning Forms does not integrate with the MS Lists app. Having the ability to access the form through the list app would add in a lot of useful functionality, including a better experience for users when taking photos to add as attachments.

• Our service model does not provide any ownership over the platform. We have to engage our Medallia Project Team to build surveys, troubleshoot issues, make changes to surveys, reports, and dashboards, resulting in long turnaround times and inefficiency.
• Medallia charges for both "units" and users. "Units" are defined as named individuals in surveys, but don't have log-in privileges. In our case, they are customer service agents or business consultants that engaged with the client but are not part of our closed-loop case management process or access to the platform.

It is very user friendly both to me who is building the content (with little background knowledge of coding etc., other than what I have picked up from using products like PowerAutomate, PowerBI, a bit of html etc.) and to end users of varying levels of IT proficiency. This has been extremely important as we have used the forms to make relatively large process changes, and need to have our users on board and seeing that it is actually easier than it was before.

Medallia's user interface is simple and intuitive for the end-user. Everyone in our organization from the CEO to store level team members use Medallia to see how we are delivering experiences for our customers. From an administrative side, I would rate Medallia closer to a 7.5, but this part of Medallia is not used as often post-implementation. That being said, you will need a technical/IT resource on staff or will need to pay a premium to a 3rd party to manage it for you.

Incentivized

Some support has been okay, but in one instance of a fairly complex problem, the support team were not able to provide me with a fix within a few weeks, before I was able to find a workaround myself.

Medallia is always there to answer questions and/or support our needs. In some cases it does require a PO if the request does not fall under normal support, but that does not change the fact that they are very responses and available to support your needs

Incentivized

We were using Microsoft Forms, SharePoint Lists and PowerAutomate to attempt to do much of what we are currently doing. Functionality is very limited in comparison. The ability to make questions required based on previous answers was a massive improvement from normal SharePoint List forms and has greatly improved the quality of data. Also just the very visual display and customisation is much better.

We are also using Salesforce.com for our customers/clients' records, usage, cases, and such. Like Medallia, we are using Salesforce.com to understand the different account usage based on the services we provide. With the data provided by Salesforce.com, we would understand where we are lacking, which parts we are strong in, and which part of the service needs improvement. All in all, both products are very helpful and, [conveniently,] both are integrated into one another.

Incentivized

• We changed the process by which site colleagues report repairs on behalf of customers. Instead of emailing them into a shared inbox, they now report them using a lightning form. We have seen a great improvement in the time taken for our team to log the repair issue from the time is arrives with them.
• We anticipate that streamlining our void property reletting process by using a SharePoint kanban board view with lightning forms (providing a single platform for all things void) will reduce avoidable days vacant and therefore reduce our void loss.

• It does play a big role when we are running a referral campaign. Referral greatly affects sales and retention since customers are bringing in new clients/customers.
• It helps our organization keep track of the accounts that are most likely to churn by checking their feedback and knowing how we can improve our service.

Incentivized