UserVoice Announces Integration With Visual Studio Online

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwired – May 12, 2014) – Today UserVoice, the complete platform for managing in-app user engagement, feedback, and support, announced a strategic collaboration with Microsoft Corp. to integrate UserVoice’s customer service solution into Microsoft Visual Studio Online, the home for project data in the cloud. Visual Studio Online gives development teams the ability to create, deliver and mange next-generation applications as they move through the engineering cycle. 

With UserVoice as part of Visual Studio Online starting today, companies now have an end-to-end solution for developers to make consumer engagement and feedback part of the development process to ensure that timely and effective product decisions are made.

This holistic integrated solution solves three major engineering problems. In the past, engineers dropped each feature request into a devolving development backlog with no way to prioritize the items that mattered the most to their customers. With the UserVoice integration, engineers can see a repository of backlog items that puts in plain view the most important and germane development requests of their customers. This allows developers to focus their resources on projects that really matter.

A side effect of the devolving development backlog is that it becomes disconnected from the customers that generated the feedback in the first place. With the UserVoice integration, engineers can see the customers that make requests and their comments. It also allows developers an easy way to reach out to those same customers – publically or privately – to obtain their feedback on a prototype. 

Lastly, with the UserVoice integration, engineers can now close the loop with their customers when launching products. No longer do enhancements need to be buried in newsletters that no one reads. Now, companies have a direct way to contact those individuals that wanted the feature and to let them know that they have been heard.

“By integrating UserVoice with Visual Studio Online, companies can more easily turn customer engagement and feedback from thousands of users into smart product decisions while prioritizing a manageable backlog,” said Brian Harry, Corporate Vice President, Developer Division at Microsoft. “Now, development teams can use Visual Studio Online as the centerpiece for development while integrating popular third-party tools and cloud solutions like UserVoice.”

“Microsoft’s Visual Studio Online is the optimal platform to integrate UserVoice’s capabilities,” said Richard White, CEO and founder of UserVoice. “In this new digital era where every consumer has a platform to have his or her voice heard, UserVoice is proud to support Microsoft with processes and tools that enable them to meet the challenges of gathering and implementing feedback at a large scale to deliver products that attract and retain consumers.” 

For more information on the Microsoft and UserVoice integration, please visit: http://uservoice.com/for/visual-studio-online

About UserVoice

UserVoice is the embeddable customer engagement platform that users actually want to engage with. Our model of sustainable engagement through in-app customer feedback & support keeps customers happy and gives companies the analytics they need to make smart, data-driven customer experience decisions. Designed for the challenges of social world, the UserVoice platform also enables companies to scale that engagement to thousands while maintaining a level of individual personalization the modern consumer expects.

2013 winner of the prestigious CRM Idol award. 2014 winner of the CRM Watchlist. Join the more than 160,000 organizations — including Yahoo, SwiftKey, Microsoft, Zynga, and HipChat — that have found a better way to listen to their users’ voices.

For more information and to get started for free, visit. http://uservoice.com