Delve into the "whys" and "hows" of your customers
Get a more holistic view of business issues and more impactful results from research with first-hand, qualitative customer discussions. Add a new depth to your research at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional focus groups with Vision Critical Discussions. Quickly launch and easily manage ad hoc online discussions and analyze data in a more meaningful way with our suite of tools.
Highlights
Uncover the “whys” and the “hows” of your customers with Vision Critical Discussions.
- Create engaging conversations with your customers.
- Instantly and easily design different branded experiences for your ad hoc discussions.
- Leverage participant engagement tools such as threaded discussions, voting and avatars.
- Manage, moderate and analyze ad hoc discussions all within the same user interface.
- Easily export comments for in-depth analysis by multiple filters.
- Integrate ad hoc discussions with surveys for more in-depth insights.
- Flexible deployments allow you to use customer lists or market samples.
Quickly setup your topic and other forum properties. |
 Agree and disagree buttons to capture lurkers thoughts. |
Easily customize your discussion using our theme editor to match your company’s brand. |
 View the entire the discussion in context with a fluid threaded layout. |
Features
Threaded and Branded Discussions
Inspired by the social interaction of the web, Vision Critical Discussions creates engaging conversations on topics that are important to your business. People share experiences, compare or commiserate. You get first-hand feedback, opinions and ideas from your customers. The familiar interface, common to social media communities, means people instantly understand how to participate and share opinions. With customized themes, you can ensure your forums are consistent with your brand, product or category. Intuitive tools allow participants to agree or disagree with posts, star their favourites and customize their own avatars.
Research as an Extension of your Brand
Create a customized theme for your online discussions that is consistent with your company, brand, product, or category. Create variations of themes for different topics, different customer segments, different stakeholders or different regions. Our custom theming editor makes it easy and simple to create a branded experience for your discussions by selecting fonts, color palettes, images, logos and more.
Moderator Tools and Analysis
We offer a wide collection of tools to aid you in managing timelines, workflows, analysis, promoting engagement and analyzing data. Use multiple moderators and different types of moderator to help with workload, scheduling and format. Use co-moderators, guest moderators or observers all with different permission levels and access to functionality. Use quick filters such as new items, your items, and your favorites to easily navigate the discussion for more efficient moderation and analysis. Analyze data in a more meaningful way with our tools for sifting and sorting through comments. Export your online forum data file to Excel, easily pull out quotes, or create word clouds to visualize themes or insights.
Integrated Research, Workflow & Data
While you can conduct ad hoc online surveys and discussion forums independently, the real power of these two research methods is seen when they are combined. Vision Critical provides the only suite of web-based ad hoc research tools that links statistical data and contextual data for streamlined analysis and a faster route to insights. Enhance your research by combining customer conversations with your survey data. Seamlessly stream respondents from an online survey to an online discussion forum. And, give analysts integrated data for better reporting and insights.
Support
Vision Critical provides hands-on training and world-class support to all of our clients.
- VC Tech Support – our team is committed to helping you and your business.
- VC Training – learn how to get the most from our tools with on-site or virtual training.
- VC Research Experts – get help designing, analyzing or reporting on your research.
- VC Engagement Specialists – help you get better response rates.
- VC Market Panels – access market samples quickly, easily and cost effectively.
Resources
With Vision Critical Discussions you have in your hands a very powerful suite of tools. The resources below have been designed to help you to get the very most out of them!
Learning Resources
Getting Started – Vision Critical Discussions
This handbook highlights the features of the Vision Critical Discussions tool including how to create, theme and deploy your online discussion forums.
Best Practices for Combining Surveys and Forums
While you can conduct a survey or a forum independent of each other, the real power comes from combining the two together. Get the what and the why - that one-two punch for a holistic view of your business issues.
Forum Best Practices
You don’t need to be a professional focus group moderator to run a discussion forum. See these handy tips for setting the tone and fostering an environment for active participation in order to get the information you need.
5 Tips for More Engaging Online Surveys and Forums
Read how to design your research in a thoughtful way so your respondents can give you thoughtful answers.
Visit Vision Critical University for a comprehensive range of learning resources, white papers, and other thought-provoking content from our industry thought-leaders.