AskNicely
AskNicely is a customer experience platform that helps your service business collect real-time feedback and empower your frontline teams to deliver consistently excellent customer service every day.
Smaply
Smaply is a visual journey mapping software that helps you centralize customer insights, create detailed personas, and map complex ecosystem maps to improve your overall customer experience strategy.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | AskNicely | Smaply |
|---|---|---|
| Website | asknicely.com | smaply.com |
| Pricing Model | Custom | Freemium |
| Starting Price | Custom Pricing | Free |
| FREE Trial | ✘ No free trial | ✓ 14 days free trial |
| Free Plan | ✘ No free plan | ✓ Has free plan |
| Product Demo | ✓ Request demo here | ✓ Request demo here |
| Deployment | ||
| Integrations | ||
| Target Users | ||
| Target Industries | ||
| Customer Count | 0 | 0 |
| Founded Year | 2014 | 2012 |
| Headquarters | Portland, USA | Innsbruck, Austria |
Overview
AskNicely
AskNicely helps you turn customer feedback into actionable insights for your frontline staff. Instead of letting survey data sit in a spreadsheet, you can automatically collect feedback via email, SMS, or web after every customer interaction. This allows you to measure your Net Promoter Score (NPS) in real-time and respond to issues before they escalate into public complaints.
You can motivate your team by sharing positive shout-outs directly to their mobile devices and setting performance goals based on actual customer sentiment. The platform is designed specifically for service-based businesses with distributed teams, helping you maintain high standards across multiple locations. By connecting your CRM, you can automate the entire feedback loop and focus on growing your business through word-of-mouth and repeat customers.
Smaply
Smaply is a dedicated journey mapping tool designed to help you visualize and manage your customer experience in one central place. Instead of scattered spreadsheets or static slide decks, you get a dynamic environment where you can build detailed journey maps, develop rich user personas, and visualize stakeholder relationships through ecosystem maps.
You can use the platform to identify pain points in your current service delivery and collaborate with your team to design better future-state experiences. It is particularly effective for UX researchers, service designers, and CX managers in mid-market to enterprise organizations who need to transform raw qualitative data into actionable visual insights that stakeholders can actually understand.
Overview
AskNicely Features
- Automated NPS Surveys Send automated surveys via email, SMS, or web to track your Net Promoter Score without manual effort.
- Frontline Coaching Deliver personalized feedback and coaching tips directly to your staff's mobile phones to improve service quality.
- Real-time Dashboards Monitor customer satisfaction trends across different locations and teams with easy-to-read visual reports.
- Workflow Automation Trigger immediate alerts for negative feedback so you can resolve customer issues within minutes.
- Review Generation Prompt your happiest customers to leave reviews on Google and other platforms to boost your online reputation.
- Customer Experience TV Broadcast live customer feedback on office screens to keep your team focused on excellence and celebrate wins.
Smaply Features
- Journey Map Editor. Create multi-layered journey maps with text, images, and storyboard icons to visualize every step of your customer's experience.
- Persona Editor. Build detailed profiles of your target users to ensure your team stays focused on real human needs and behaviors.
- Ecosystem Maps. Visualize the complex relationships between stakeholders, processes, and technologies that happen behind the scenes of your service.
- Live Collaboration. Invite your teammates to edit maps in real-time and leave comments to speed up your design and approval process.
- Dynamic Data Linking. Link personas directly to your journey maps so you can see how different segments experience the same service differently.
- Export Options. Generate high-resolution PDF, PNG, or Excel files of your maps to share professional reports with your stakeholders.
Pricing Comparison
AskNicely Pricing
Smaply Pricing
- 1 active project
- 3 journey maps
- 3 personas
- 1 ecosystem map
- Basic export options
- Everything in Free, plus:
- 3 active projects
- Unlimited journey maps
- Unlimited personas
- Unlimited ecosystem maps
- Premium export formats
Pros & Cons
AskNicely
Pros
- Seamless integration with popular CRMs like Salesforce
- High response rates due to short, mobile-friendly surveys
- Excellent mobile app for frontline staff engagement
- Intuitive interface makes setup and navigation simple
Cons
- Custom reporting can be difficult to configure
- Pricing is higher than basic survey tools
- Limited flexibility in survey design templates
Smaply
Pros
- Intuitive drag-and-drop interface for quick mapping
- Professional export quality for stakeholder presentations
- Specialized tools for personas and ecosystem maps
- Generous free tier for individual practitioners
Cons
- Learning curve for complex multi-lane maps
- Limited integrations with external data sources
- Performance can slow down with very large maps