Driving global brand success with a new standard in experience management

About us
SMG works with top global brands, united by a shared focus on quality and a passion for creating great experiences. Our AI-powered platform helps you connect with people and make real improvements across:
Make human experiences the heart of every business.
Accelerate value by changing how brands act on brand, customer, and employee insights.
Be deeply curious | finding answers to important questions
Always be hungry | striving and driving like you really want it
Crave collaboration | energizing and feeding off one another
Make ’em feel elite | creating advocates from world-class service


Our technologies
Our purpose-built, AI-native data platform delivers faster research cycles, intelligent insights, and prescriptive actions.
SMG's experience management platform delivers role-based reporting and action tools to ensure insights lead to measurable results.
Bulbshare empowers brands to co-create, gather insights, and drive decisions through rich audience collaboration.

SMG’s team of experts guides you through experience management, using smart technology and hands-on support to help you succeed.
Our history
1991
SMG was founded as a unit of a Kansas City ad agency called Barkley and launched an employee experience solution
1995
Customer experience solution launched
1997
SMG co-founder Leonard Schlesinger published “The Service Profit Chain”
1999
SMG spun off from Barkley as an independent company
2003
Introduced competitive benchmarks to the marketplace
2007
Launched brand experience solution
2012
Launched top-rated smg360® mobile reporting app
2016
Launched digital feedback and call center solutions
2020
Patents granted for tracking consumer brand strength and capturing consumer location and behavior data
2021
Identified by Forrester as a “Leader” in Customer Feedback Management Wave and received significant strategic investment from Brentwood Associates
2022
Closed our offices and adopted a remote-first model
2024
Acquired Bulbshare
2025
Launched Ignite®
SMG by the numbers
30+
Years
180+
countries
550+
brands
18B
active/passive signals per year



Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB)
We firmly believe all benefit when everyone is heard, recognized, and valued. Our workplace policies and practices support a culture of inclusion and respect for all employees, partners, and suppliers, which strengthens the work we do for our clients and drives our success.