Survey forms are a great way to get real-life answers and opinions from the people that matter most to your organization. Salesforce can be used for surveys by either investing in Salesforce Surveys and Feedback Management (add-on license), or by integrating web forms with Salesforce.
The benefits are obvious of having feedback stored in your CRM and linked to all the other information you have on a contact. But there are many other advantages to the integrated webform approach.
We’ve put together seven ideas for integrating surveys to Salesforce that can help you to gather invaluable customer insights – ideas you can start using in your organization today. Let’s take a look!
1. Prefill Information into Surveys Through a Link
Example of a prefill link containing a Salesforce merge field.
Tip: Surveys are a big ask, no matter the length, subject, or customer. With a Salesforce-integrated data collection platform, you can prefill survey forms with existing customer data such as Name, Email, and Company.
Benefit: Your customers have less work to do if you prefill information that you already have.
Real-Life Example: In Case Study 1871, a coworking space in Chicago administered semiannual surveys to members that were integrated with Salesforce. This enabled them to prefill forms with the information they had already collected, which in turn helped them improve their response rates by lessening the burden on members.
2. File Uploads in Salesforce Survey Forms
A file upload shown in Salesforce.
Tip: You may want to include a file upload field in your survey – this allows users to upload images to support their answers or explain something visually. With the right Salesforce-connected data collection and survey solution, you can store these images in Salesforce as Files or Attachments, and attach them to the account associated with the survey.
Benefit: You get a better picture (literally) of your customer feedback and more visibility into their issue, not to mention the ease of having supporting files stored right there in Salesforce.
Example: This can be used for satisfaction surveys on an e-commerce site after a customer has purchased a product. If the customer was satisfied with a purchase, you might want them to upload a picture showing the product in use that you could use for marketing.
Alternatively, if they were unhappy, a file upload could allow them to send a picture of a damaged or incorrect product, allowing your customer service reps to correctly address the problem. Either way, having these images stored in Salesforce helps you centralize information related to a survey response.
3. Send Partial Survey Responses to Salesforce
Tip: It’s likely that a lot more people will start your survey than finish it. If your survey forms aren’t optimized for this possibility, you could miss out on a lot of great customer information. Some survey tools allow you to send partial survey results to Salesforce, meaning you still get information stored in your account.
Benefit: You’ll still be able to gather insights, as there will be some results even if your customers don’t complete the whole survey.
4. Send Links to Survey Forms Through Salesforce Email
A Salesforce email containing a prefill link to a survey.
Tip: The more integrated your systems are, the less you have to jump between them to get work done. Sending your survey forms through Salesforce (as a link in a Salesforce email or email template) is just one more way to make things easier on yourself. (Bonus: With a solution like FormAssembly, you can send prefilled links to standalone forms or to the first form in a multi-step workflow.)
Benefit: With just a link (prefilled or not), you can send survey forms through Salesforce for easier, quicker survey administration.
Real-Life Example: Clore Social Leadership is a nonprofit that offers leadership development programs and sends out invitations for people to fill out feedback surveys by Salesforce email.
5. Centralized Customer CRM Review
A custom object containing feedback results.
Tip: Store feedback results in a single custom object that ties back to the account, contact, or any other objects you have set up in your Salesforce environment.
Benefit: This allows anyone in your organization from any department to see what is going on with your customers’ interactions at various touchpoints, and head off potentially awkward or negative interactions. For example, you wouldn’t want your Customer Support Managers asking for a renewal right after a negative support issue, would you?
6. Account Health Status
Quick snapshot of customer feedback in Salesforce.
Tip: Collecting your feedback and storing it in a custom object allows you to roll up that data and present it on the Account page in real-time. Combine this with custom images in Salesforce and you have a mini dashboard that’s instantly updated and accessible by all. Flexibility in the timeframe you display is up to you (e.g. monthly, yearly, rolling 90 days, etc.)
Benefit: You (and others in your organization) gain customized, real-time visibility into the status of your account health.
Example: Tips 5 and 6 might be especially helpful if your executives need quick updates on survey results and don’t want to hunt around in your systems for that information.
7. Automate Your Feedback Closed Loop Process
A Salesforce task related to a low customer survey score.
Tip: Use a survey solution that allows you to apply logic to your mappings to create tasks or update Chatter posts. This practice ensures that survey results are linked to action and don’t just sit in Salesforce forever.
Benefit: Let’s be honest – most companies don’t do a very good job of acting on the feedback they receive. Automating this process allows you to incorporate this into your feedback strategy and makes it easy for employees to follow with the appropriate response.
Example: There are many ways to put this tip to use. Have a task created in Salesforce when you get a bad survey score for someone to follow up; update a Chatter post with different messages, one for a great score and another for a negative score; or identify potential case studies for marketing by creating a task or opportunity when you get a perfect score or glowing reviews.
Final Thoughts
However you look at it, it’s a smart decision to integrate your survey forms with Salesforce – not only to improve the customer experience, but also to streamline internal processes in line with best practices. Try one of the tips above to make your Salesforce surveys that much better and more successful.
Learn more about FormAssembly by checking out our listing on the Salesforce AppExchange where we currently have a 4.7/5 star rating with 370+ reviews. Try FormAssembly free today!
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