Medallia: Visual Data Analysis with AI and BI for SMEs

Medallia is a comprehensive experience management platform spanning from feedback capture to advanced analysis and action implementation. More than a traditional analytics and data analysis tool, it’s an Artificial Intelligence (AI) core focused on understanding “Voice of the Customer” (VoC) and “Voice of the Employee” (VoE). Its strength lies in its multilingual text analysis module, which interprets language to detect emotions, sentiments, and key themes in multiple languages.

For small and medium-sized businesses, understanding the customer is the main lever for growth and retention. Medallia allows SMEs to stop guessing and start measuring, analyzing large volumes of comments, surveys, calls, and social media reviews in real-time. If your business needs to know exactly why a customer is satisfied or upset, or if you’re looking for the best AI tool to analyze customer feedback and optimize CX (customer experience), this Medallia review will show you its enterprise capabilities.

AgentAya Verdict

Medallia is a leading customer experience (CX) management tool that excels thanks to its powerful Artificial Intelligence engine for text analysis. Our verdict is clear: it’s the definitive solution if customer feedback is your business’s most important asset. This platform groups in a single environment survey responses, social media interactions, voice calls, and internal system data, which favors collaboration between areas and guarantees information consistency.

However, its positioning is clearly enterprise. The main limitation for the average SME is the lack of price transparency and the complexity of large-scale implementation. We recommend Medallia for medium-sized SMEs or high-growth startups whose business model critically depends on service quality (such as SaaS, high-volume e-commerce, or franchise chains). If your SME manages large volumes of interactions and needs immediate insights into customer voice, Medallia is the right investment to sustainably improve customer experience.

Score Breakdown

Below, we present the breakdown of our Medallia evaluation, with a strong focus on its Customer Experience capabilities.

Category	Score	Description
Features and Functionality	5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Leader in text analysis and CX, emotion detection, and real-time alerts.
Integrations	4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Integration with surveys, social media, CRM, voice services, and chat through pre-configured adapters.
Language and Support	4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Platform and documentation available in multiple languages, with 24/7 global technical support.
Ease of Use	4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Native interface with pre-designed dashboards and low-code/no-code workflow editor.
Value for Money	2/5 ⭐⭐	Enterprise licensing without public prices and custom rates; value justified only by analyzed feedback volume.
AI Functions	4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Sentiment, emotion, intent, and effort analysis; thematic categorization and trend detection.
AI Languages (Natural Language)	4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Natural language processing in dozens of languages with adapted models.
Support and Onboarding	4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Implementation services, Medallia Academy (online/in-person training), and assigned success manager.

AgentAya Overall Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 / 5

Main Features

SMEs adopting Medallia obtain a centralized system to listen to their customers, allowing them to save time and money by prioritizing improvement actions that will have the greatest impact on satisfaction.

• Omnichannel Integration: Consolidates data from surveys, customer voice, employee voice, and digital channels (social media, chat, calls) in one place.
• Interactive Dashboards: Provides customizable visualizations and pre-designed dashboards facilitating identification of highest-impact themes.
• Live Notifications and Alerts: Allows configuring immediate alerts triggered when critical issues or emerging trends are detected.
• Workflow Management (Low-Code): Allows SME teams to automate follow-up actions based on feedback (e.g., automatically create support ticket if sentiment is negative).
• Emotion and Effort Analysis: Its AI not only analyzes sentiment (positive/negative), but also emotion, intent, and customer effort, offering deeper insight.

AI Functions

Medallia’s Artificial Intelligence is its central component and is specifically designed for text analysis and natural language processing (NLP). This isn’t just standard software; it’s robust AI that mimics human understanding of unstructured feedback.

AI-powered features are:

• Deep Language Analysis: Medallia’s AI goes beyond keyword detection to detect emotions, sentiments, intent, and effort in multilingual texts.
• Automatic Thematic Categorization: The system automatically categorizes thousands of open comments into relevant themes (e.g., “Shipping Issues,” “Product X Quality,” “Checkout Service”), eliminating manual reading and accelerating decision-making for SMEs.
• Real-Time Trend Detection: AI can quickly identify emerging themes or micro-trends in feedback before they become widespread problems.
• Custom KPI Creation: Uses text analysis to create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) directly linked to customer experience.

The true “intelligent” power lies in its ability to process natural language in dozens of languages with sector-adapted models, which is crucial for precision in international markets.

Integrations

Medallia Experience Cloud integrates with a wide range of enterprise systems, ensuring customer feedback links directly with SME operational data.

Integrations are made through an extensive network of pre-configured adapters and application programming interfaces (API) for legacy systems. Integration is native with:

• CRM Systems: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and SAP.
• Customer Service Platforms: Zendesk and ServiceNow.
• Communication Channels: Voice services, SMS, and chat.

Although Medallia doesn’t focus on popular local tools (as it centers on text analysis of captured feedback, not messaging conversation), its adapters with global CRMs allow SMEs to consolidate information captured by those channels in Medallia’s analysis. There’s a robust and documented API to connect custom systems or internal databases.

Security and Data Compliance

Medallia, being a platform handling personal and sensitive customer data, operates under strict security protocols providing confidence to SMEs.

• Data Ownership: The client (the SME) retains exclusive ownership of data processed through the platform.
• AI Data Use and Retention: Customer data is used only for specific client analysis and not to train Medallia’s AI models without explicit consent. Medallia follows strict data retention and deletion policies.
• Encryption Protocols: The platform uses industry-leading encryption protocols to protect data in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-256).
• Regulations and Certifications: Medallia complies with relevant data protection regulations like GDPR and local and international compliance frameworks.
• Security Certifications: Medallia holds several recognized security certifications (e.g., ISO 27001), ensuring adherence to highest information security management standards. The platform includes multi-factor authentication (MFA) and access controls.

Language – Customer Support

Medallia offers corporate-level support with global coverage.

The platform, documentation, guides, and 24/7 technical support are available in multiple languages (including English, French, German, Japanese, and more). This ensures SMEs can receive help and deploy the tool without language barriers. The presence of an assigned success manager at deployment start facilitates localized onboarding.

AI Language – The Tool Itself

Medallia Experience Cloud’s interface is available in multiple languages.

Medallia’s great strength in international markets is that its natural language processing (NLP) models can analyze text in dozens of languages. This means an SME operating regionally or serving customers with diverse origins can consolidate and analyze all feedback with high linguistic precision. This is a key differentiator versus other BI tools that limit their conversational functions to English.

Mobile Access (iOS, Android, Others)

Medallia offers native mobile applications for iOS and Android.

The applications allow users (from CEO to branch manager) to access dashboards, receive personalized alerts, and immediately access key insights in real-time, from anywhere. While configuration work is done on desktop, the mobile app is fully functional for alert management and mobile decision-making.

Support, Onboarding Process, and Account Management

Given its enterprise focus, Medallia offers a very complete support ecosystem to ensure deployment success.

• Training Materials/Onboarding: Medallia provides implementation services, access to Medallia Academy (online and in-person training), and abundant help resources integrated into the platform. Initial configuration is guided, which is necessary given its scope complexity.
• Customer Success / Account Management: One of Medallia’s biggest benefits is that a success manager is assigned to the client throughout deployment. This constant support is invaluable for SMEs without a large IT team.
• Suitability for SMEs with Little Technical Experience: Although the daily use interface (dashboards) is intuitive, the learning curve is steep in the configuration and customization phase. Implementation success for an SME will depend directly on using onboarding services and the account manager.

Ease of Use / UX

Interface quality is highly functional and modern. Uses pre-designed dashboards and a low-code/no-code workflow editor to automate actions.

The learning curve is a dual consideration: while initial configuration and advanced customization require time and experience (or support from a success manager), daily interface use to consume insights and take actions is quick and intuitive. An SME can start obtaining value within minutes once initial integration is complete, thanks to its ready-to-adopt analysis notebooks.

Pricing and Plans

Medallia positions itself as a corporate experience management solution.

• Free Version or Trial: Medallia doesn’t offer a perpetual free version. Demonstrations or trials are managed commercially, as licensing is enterprise.
• Subscription Plans: Pricing structure is customized with rates depending on data volume (interactions, surveys) to be processed, specific modules activated (voice analysis, surveys), and required service level. Standard prices aren’t published on official website.
• Value for SMEs: While initial cost is considerable investment, ROI for an SME with high transaction volume is achieved through customer retention and process improvement. Value is exponentially greater for those needing to rigorously integrate omnichannel feedback.

Case Study

Case Name: Sustained Customer Experience Improvement in a Restaurant Chain

Context: A quick-service restaurant chain faced the challenge of service inconsistency across its 15 establishments. Satisfaction data was scattered across manual surveys, social media comments, and local manager notes. They needed a single vision to guide decisions.

Medallia Use: The chain implemented Medallia to centralize feedback from table surveys, online reviews, and social media mentions.

• Data Unification: Medallia grouped and unified responses from all channels in a single analysis environment.
• AI and Theme Detection: The AI core evaluated thousands of comments, immediately detecting themes like “Slow service during peak hours” or “Poor coffee quality at specific location.”
• Automatic Notifications: Live notifications were created that alerted the area manager if sentiment at an establishment fell below a specific threshold.

Result: The restaurant chain could identify satisfaction variations by establishment and adjust menus or service processes within hours, instead of weeks. Constant customer experience improvement, guided by real-time AI insights, resulted in increased customer loyalty and improved online satisfaction scores.

Medallia vs Alternatives

Medallia is the leader in the CX and text analysis niche. Below, we compare its strengths and weaknesses versus main Medallia alternatives.

Alternative	Main Emphasis	Alternative Pros	Alternative Cons
Microsoft Power BI	Ecosystem and Affordability	Excellent value for money. Better for internal data analysis (sales, finance) and best M365 integration.	Its text and sentiment analysis isn’t its main function and is less deep than Medallia’s.
IBM Cognos Analytics	Predictive Analytics and Data Governance	Superior in predictive analytics (advanced forecasting) and rigorous data modeling for financial purposes.	Higher cost and complexity. Oriented to internal data and formal reporting, not CX.
Tableau	Data Visualization (historical leader)	Best for interactive visual exploration and UX. Greater visualization development speed.	Doesn’t natively include omnichannel feedback capture and analysis functionality.
Zoho Analytics	Productivity Suite (SMEs)	Excellent integration if already using other Zoho tools. Very affordable.	Lower scalability for large feedback volumes and less sophisticated text analysis.
Lexalytics	Text Analysis (NLP)	Specialized in deep language understanding, but doesn’t have complete CX suite.	It’s an API or engine, not a comprehensive experience management platform.

Comparing Medallia vs Microsoft Power BI: Medallia is superior in its text analysis depth, emotion detection, and omnichannel feedback management. Power BI is superior as a general-purpose BI tool for analyzing financial, operational, and sales data.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

Is Medallia good for SMEs?

Medallia is ideal for medium-sized or high-growth SMEs managing large volumes of customer interactions. While cost may be high, value is justified if your business depends on continuous customer experience improvement.

How accurate is Medallia’s sentiment analysis in multiple languages?

Medallia’s sentiment analysis is highly accurate, as its natural language processing AI models are multilingual and specifically adapted to detect sentiments, emotions, and intent in text across multiple languages.

Is Medallia a BI tool?

It’s not a traditional BI tool. Medallia is a Customer Experience Management (CX) platform, but its AI text analysis is considered a form of analytics and data analysis specialized in customer voice.