Using AI to understand what sets incident.io apart from the competition

Whenever a new customer joins incident.io, we make notes on what made them choose to buy our product and, if we were in a competitive process, why they chose us over other providers they were evaluating.

It’s a lot of messy data and raw notes, but contained within is a veritable treasure trove of customer feedback. Summarising large amounts of data? Sounds like the perfect job for an LLM 🙂

Why customers chose incident.io

The notes we used in this analysis are a combination of things customers have said passively in calls and over Slack, direct responses to us asking them their reasons for choosing us, and often information they volunteered unprompted.

So here’s what happens when you ask ChatGPT to review and summarise nearly 4000 words of feedback we’ve received from April to June this year.

✨ Ease of use and integration

• Seamless integration with existing tools
  Many customers praised incident.io's ease of integration, particularly with Slack and other tools. This seamless integration reduces friction and makes it easier for teams to adopt and use the platform effectively.
• User-friendly interface
  The user-friendly interface and intuitive design of incident.io were frequently highlighted as significant advantages. Customers appreciated how easy it was to navigate and use the platform without extensive training.

🚨 Superior on-call management

• Comprehensive on-call features
  incident.io's on-call management features were a critical factor in many deals. Customers valued the ability to manage on-call schedules and automate parts of their incident response process effectively.
• Effective on-call solutions
  The on-call features of incident.io often filled gaps left by competitors, providing a more robust and comprehensive solution that meets customer needs better.

💰 Pricing and value

• Competitive and flexible pricing
  Many deals highlighted how incident.io offered more competitive pricing compared to some competitors like PagerDuty and Opsgenie. The ability to offer flexible pricing and rightsizing contracts, helped in closing deals.
• Cost-effectiveness
  Customers saw incident.io as a cost-effective solution, often finding that they could get more value for their money compared to competitors. This was especially true when considering the additional features and superior support provided by incident.io.

🧡 Customer support and engagement

• Proactive and personalized support
  incident.io's customer support was frequently mentioned as a decisive factor. The proactive engagement, personalized support, and dedication shown by the sales and customer success teams helped build strong relationships and trust with customers.
• Addressing customer needs and concerns
  The effort put into understanding and addressing customer needs were crucial in helping hesitant prospects make a decision.

💪 Product superiority

• Feature-rich platform
  The depth and richness of incident.io’s features, such as the ability to automate incident responses, customize workflows, and integrate with various tools, were major selling points.
• Innovation and reliability
  incident.io's continuous innovation and reliability made a strong impression on customers. Features like paging without incidents and intuitive Slack groups were highlighted as superior to those offered by competitors.

🤝 Customer Testimonials and Case Studies

• Real-world success stories
  Leveraging successful customer stories and case studies provided tangible proof of incident.io's value. These testimonials helped convince new prospects of the platform’s effectiveness and reliability.

What about the people who didn't chose incident.io?

Now the obvious question is: is this just confirmation bias, since you’re only looking at customers who chose incident.io?

The answer is yes, to a degree. But we also keep a record of win/loss percentages whenever we’re in a process with other competitors and the good news (for us 😉) is that we’re winning the considerable majority of these head-to-heads. For that reason, we feel it's a fair representation of the market.

But for completeness, let’s do the exact same process for deals we lost! We’ve deliberately excluded non-competitive reasons here like us talking to the wrong people, the timing not being right for picking a new tool, or organization-level reasons like team re-orgs or people moving roles.

🫰Competitive pricing and offers

• Competitors, particularly Rootly and PagerDuty, often undercut incident.io on pricing. Some deals were lost to significant discounts or special offers from competitors.

⏰ Timing and fit issues

• Some prospects were not ready for a new tool due to their current project timelines, existing contracts with competitors, or internal processes that were not aligned with what incident.io offers.

⚙️ Feature gaps and specific requirements

• Certain deals were lost due to specific feature requirements that incident.io could not meet, such as niche security needs or integrations with tools like MS Teams*.

In summary

When a customer chooses incident.io over a competitor, it’s usually because:

• We’re much easier to use and adopt
  We love to see this, since it's an explicit goal in everything we build.
• Our on-call solution is far superior
  We’ve spent 9 months building and have hundreds of customers using our On-call product already, strengthening it with their feedback.
• We’re high value for money
  We're not aiming to be the cheapest solution, but one that feels like fair value exchange.
• We care deeply about customer success
  We're not just a product offering, how we partner with customers sets us apart.
• We’re more feature rich and reliable
  Our platform has more functionality, that works better, and is more reliable.

When someone choses a competitor, or doesn’t make a change, it’s usually because:

• They’ve aggressively undercut on pricing
  If you want the cheapest, there's other solutions that'll suit your needs
• They’re stuck in a contract they can’t exit
  Just a loss for now. We see many customers join us from other providers, and we’re always happy to talk again at renewal
• There’s a niche product feature we don’t support
  Product gaps are vanishing by the day, but there may be some areas we're not as keen to pursue as others.