Let’s get you geared up to gather insightful responses through Freshsurvey. Before sending out surveys using Freshsurvey's Email, Email Embed, Webapp Embed, or Share-a-Link collectors, ensure you have completed the following essential steps. 

Here's a comprehensive checklist to ensure you're all set before launching your surveys. Let's dive in step-by-step:

1. Survey Questionnaire Readiness: Before we start:

Do you have your survey questions ready? Before anything else, ensure your survey questionnaire is ready and flows logically. Configure skip and display logic to ensure the right question is displayed to the appropriate customer. The survey's structure and questions matter greatly in Freshsurvey for optimal functionality.

 Personalization Tips:

Freshsurvey allows you to add a personal touch to your surveys:

  • Company Logo: Enhance brand identity by incorporating your company's logo.

  • Color Scheme: Match your survey's colors to your brand for a seamless experience.



  • Custom Domain: Personalize the survey link using a custom domain for a professional touch.


2. Choosing the Right Distribution Channel:

Select the appropriate collector based on your use cases:

  • Email: Utilize Freshworks' native email service for automated survey triggering to the intended audience. Freshsurvey completely manages this trigger. 

Note configuring the DKIM setting will help us land the survey in their inbox rather than the SPAM folder.

  • Share-a-link: Distribute surveys through social or internal systems via survey links. So, typically, there is no trigger involved in this collector. As soon as the respondent clicks on the survey link, the survey is rendered in a web browser to collect the response. You can even parse additional respondent information to the Freshsurvey. {Refer to this article to know how to parse a contact or transactional information}


  • Email Embed: Manage the trigger from a third-party email campaign or marketing tool. To a greater extent, this is similar to sharing a link via email. Having said that, this collector gives you the flexibility to embed the 1st question of the survey or even parse additional respondent information to the Freshsurvey.


  • Web App Embed: Incorporate surveys within applications or services for user feedback.

    • Remember, Contact information is mandatory to choose this collector. The contact information is passed on to Freshsurvey as a part of the payload. As soon as the contact gets added, and depending on the contact’s eligibility to take the survey, the survey will be rendered within the application or service.

3. Let’s understand the different collectors i.e. Channel, Audience, and survey schedules. 

This should help you to decide what to choose for the different survey scenarios that you might have. 

3.1) Deciding Survey Frequency:

Understanding and setting the right frequency for your survey matters:


One-time surveys: 

  • Suitable for singular outreach, like market research or event feedback. If you intend to send your survey only once to selected contacts, then you choose this.

Remember, if the same contact is requested to render the survey, they will be ignored since the system has already contacted them. 

Recurring surveys:

  • Ideal for periodic relationship surveys like NPS, mainly used to send your survey at pre-defined intervals. 

Assume you are a subscription-based business. You should reach out to your audience once every 6 months to see how customers perceive and are loyal to your brand. The point to note here is if the customer has taken or dismissed the survey, it cannot be rendered to them until the reminder or recurring window is set under the schedule options. 

Transactional surveys: 

  • Designed to capture feedback after specific customer interactions or touchpoints. For instance, trigger surveys immediately after a service call closure, product purchase, or post-transaction. Use this option to gather feedback based on individual interactions, ensuring timely and targeted insights for continuous improvement.

3.2) Things to remember for Survey Frequency:

  • For one-time/recurring surveys, it is preferable to use Contacts with or without List and Segment.

  • Ad-hoc survey sending needs special attention while using one-time frequency.

    • Ad-hoc survey requests can include a transactional payload.

3.3) Unique Aspects of Recurring and Transactional Surveys:

  • Specifying the waiting period before resurveying contacts for recurring surveys is mandatory.

  • Dynamic addition of contacts for Transactional surveys: When a transactional survey is requested for a specific contact, the contact will be added to the Freshsurvey contact management section before triggering or rendering the survey.

  • Anonymously capturing survey responses for Email Embed and Share-a-link collectors. Instead of capturing the survey respondent's information, you can also choose to capture the response anonymously. 

  • Configuration options for scheduling, delaying, reminders, and link expiry

    • Delay, Reminder, and Link expiry 


Customize delay periods between survey distribution, send timely reminders for pending responses, and control survey access duration by setting link expiry for a streamlined survey experience.


  • Throttling the survey and global survey setting 


Throttle survey distribution rates to manage response influx, while global survey settings provide overarching control over survey parameters for consistent and standardized survey behavior.


Let us illustrate the difference between the distribution rate and global survey setting:

Assume You're launching a satisfaction survey after a recent service update. You can employ survey throttling to avoid an influx of responses overwhelming your system. This limits the number of surveys sent per hour.

Meanwhile, global survey settings ensure uniformity across all surveys. For instance, you can enforce that a specific contact can be only reached 1 in a week across all your surveys configured.

By using survey throttling and global settings, you control the survey distribution pace and maintain consistency in survey behavior, ensuring a manageable flow of feedback without compromising data quality.

  •  Multiple responses for the same survey


This feature allows flexibility in deciding whether respondents can provide multiple submissions or restricts them to a single response, based on specific survey objectives. 

For instance, if you're running a single survey across various online training sessions, the same contact can respond multiple times to the survey. Despite being a Transactional or One-time survey, enabling multiple submissions ensures comprehensive feedback across all training sessions, facilitating a broader range of insights.


  • Partial responses waiting window


Implement a waiting window for partial responses, allowing respondents to complete surveys within a specified timeframe, ensuring comprehensive feedback collection even for partially completed submissions. 


In other words, for instance, a customer has selected the NPS rating for your company but has not answered the subsequent questions. This setting helps you to decide how long it has to wait. Once the waiting window is closed, the response will be recorded as a partial response and the customer screen will go to the thank you page. 


By now we have completed setting up the survey and also decided when to trigger or render the survey to the specific audience. Before you start receiving the responses here is one last step you need to think through.


4. Configuring Workflows:

Automate the follow-up task efficiently with workflows.  For instance, if you want to notify an internal team member of any negative survey response or push all the responses to a CRM/ Helpdesk system, you can do them in the workflow section. 

Workflows can be triggered automatically by checking the defined condition or manually triggered by any reviewer accessing the Freshsurvey product. 

Conclusion:

  • unchecked

    Decide your survey goal (Why this survey?) and the audience first (Whom to ask?)

  • unchecked

    Create: Build your survey questionnaire and logical flow (What to ask them?)

  • uncheckedPersonalize your reach-outs

  • uncheckedDeliver: Pick the right collector and set schedules that match the intent (How to reach them? And When?)

  • uncheckedAct: Set up the follow-up actions under the workflow


Completing these steps will ensure a smoother and more effective survey distribution process using Freshsurvey's various collectors. For any other assistance, please get in touch with our support team at support@freshsurvey.io