Service Management Group (SMG)

Leading CXM platform for multi-location consumer brands, particularly in foodservice, retail, and convenience sectors

Service Management Group (SMG) is a Kansas City-based customer experience management company that partners with multi-location consumer brands — including restaurant chains, retailers, and service businesses — to measure and improve customer and employee experiences. Founded in 1991, SMG combines technology-enabled research with professional services, offering a SaaS-based platform (smg360) that aggregates feedback from surveys, social reviews, and other listening channels into actionable insights for operators and executives. SMG occupies a distinctive position in the CXM market by blending the rigor of a research firm with the scalability of a software platform. Its clients are predominantly large multi-unit operators in foodservice, retail, and hospitality who need to monitor experience quality across hundreds or thousands of locations. The 2012 acquisition of Locately, a mobile-survey and GPS-driven location analytics startup, reflected SMG's early interest in passive behavioral data to complement traditional survey-based research — an effort to understand in-store and competitive visit patterns alongside stated customer sentiment. In 2021, SMG was acquired by Forsta (itself formed from the merger of Confirmit and FocusVision), bringing SMG into a broader global CX and market research technology group. This acquisition positioned SMG's multi-location CXM expertise within a larger enterprise research and insights platform, expanding its reach while retaining its brand and operational focus on the restaurant, retail, and convenience store verticals.