by Steve Van Lieshout
February 22, 2022
In a January 26 webinar, the Gartner Peer Insights team revealed its roadmap of Planned Actions for 2022 designed to give vendors and end-users alike a more flexible and streamlined experience.
Historically, Gartner had rejected reviews of technology solutions provided by Partners. Starting in Q1 2022, Partners will be allowed to publish reviews on the technology solutions and services they engage every day.
Gartner says it has long considered a policy update to accepting Partner reviews – ultimately, they decided Partners have a valuable perspective on software tools and are deeply acquainted with each tool’s challenges and strengths. According to a survey from the GPI team, 85% of End Users would find Partner insights valuable when considering a tool or service.
Gartner provides more insight into its Partner review approval process in this blog, but noted in the webinar that Partner reviews will get ‘special treatment’, including unique labels for Partner reviews in the website experience.
Partner reviews will NOT be included in product scores and ratings, nor will Partner reviews be shared in research assets (VoC reports, Magic Quadrants, etc.). Partner reviews will only exist as an entry on the website and will not factor into downstream analytics for vendor comparisons.
For Peer Insights purposes, Gartner defines ‘Partner’ as “an external third party business entity that provides business value to the vendor through services such as, but not limited to, developing the offering, GTM operations, marketing, deployment, sales, service support. Depending upon the operations, partner organizations play different roles and could be recognized by different names such as System Integrator, Consultancy, Resellers, MSPs, GTM Partners, Technology Partners, Channel Partners or anything else. We will now be approving reviews for partners where the partner organization does not have any type of exclusive relationship with the vendor.”
Gartner will roll out a new Product Profile capability, a complimentary feature for any vendor with a product listed on the platform.
Gartner invites vendors to provide a company and product description, pricing information (optional), and product screenshots. While there are guidelines to acceptable content (see this Gartner blog for more), it presents the first opportunity for brands to own their presence on the Peer Insights platform. Spotlight is encouraging all vendors in our ecosystem to devote time and resources to support Product Profiles, as it is an important piece of educational content that will be highly visible to customers, prospects, and analysts.
Currently, vendors using the Peer Insights platform are required to pre-select the incentive offered to reviewers upon completion of a review. Moving forward, vendors will have the option to provide reviewers with a choice. Starting in Q1 2022, End Users submitting reviews will be able to choose their own incentive at the end of the review input process.
Incentives typically come in three forms: Gartner’s incentive pool; a vendor-funded incentive pool; a vendor-funded pool for charitable donations made in the reviewers’ name. The Peer Insights team said users wanted more flexibility in incentives. Gartner offers more guidance here.
For more insight into Peer Insights and the world of customer reviews, be sure to check out our Guide to Peer Review Sites content. Spotlight also offers services to vendors looking to operationalize customer review programs – Contact Us if you’d like to learn more!
