Pulse vs Qualtrics

A research program built mainly on surveys can keep its questionnaires, sample and analysis together in Qualtrics. Its survey platform offers 23 question types on paid plans, carries a concept from validation through to post-launch tracking, and flags bots and duplicate responses. For sample, Qualtrics gave access in May 2024 to 35 million panelists through a network of 200+ panel partners, targeted with panel criteria, quotas and custom screening questions, with traditional panels reaching 200+ global markets. Qualtrics Assist then takes questions about the results in plain language.

Where survey results feed the work of other departments in a large company, Qualtrics can carry them to a service team in ServiceNow or Zendesk, an engineering team in Jira and a sales team in Salesforce or HubSpot, and it offers a v3 REST API as well, while vanity URLs let surveys run on the company's own domain. Permissions can be set by user, user type, group and division, and data is stored in a data center in the region the customer chooses.

When a concept validates well and still loses buyers after launch, Pulse can ask those buyers why. Each takes the interview when it suits them, with no call to schedule, and a whole study can run overnight. That leaves the insights team the part of the work that needs its judgment, framing the question, reading what was unexpected and making the decision.

• Qualtrics on Capterra: 4.7 (427 reviews)

1. Sort the program by question type. Go through the Qualtrics program question by question. Tracking waves and counts can stay where they run; the questions that need a customer to explain a choice move to Pulse, starting with the one the business is waiting on for a decision.
2. Carry the questionnaire's topics over. A Qualtrics questionnaire already names the topics a program cares about. Carry them into a Pulse brief as the areas the conversation should cover, and write the one research question they serve above them. Pulse builds the interview guide from that brief.
3. Rewrite the sample spec as a profile. Where a Qualtrics study drew respondents through panel partners, describe the same people as a profile in the Pulse brief, with the screener that finds them, and Pulse recruits to it. Customers who used to get the team's Qualtrics email invitations can be uploaded as a list instead.
4. Compare against Insights Explorer. Insights Explorer will already have surfaced key themes from the Qualtrics survey. Lay the Pulse report's themes beside that list, marking the reasons both sources found and those that came up only in conversation, then send the comparison to the division whose survey first raised the question.

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