The only way to discover whether your customers are happy with what you offer is by asking them, and what better way to do it than with Salesforce Surveys?
While that may sound obvious, not all companies take the time to truly listen to their customers. And even if they do, they rarely focus on asking pointed questions – they just throw generic yes/no questions out there and hope for solid responses. Spoiler alert: they usually don’t get any.
So, if conducting in-person surveys doesn’t appeal to your team, but you still want to get priceless insights, online surveys are the way to go. And Salesforce Surveys are a simple yet powerful way to create user-friendly and branded surveys. Whether you’re working on a one-off customer satisfaction rating or want to poll customers for NPS over time, you can send and manage them without leaving your Salesforce org.
This ultimate guide is here to walk you through the features, benefits, use cases, examples, and best practices – and how to get actionable, profitable data from your customers.
What Do Salesforce Surveys Offer?
Whether you’re using Salesforce Developer, Enterprise, or Unlimited editions, you can create and send out an unlimited number of surveys. But that’s just the beginning!
From buttons to fonts and even the opacity of your background, every aspect of each survey is fully customizable. With your branding being one of your biggest differentiators, you shouldn’t accept anything less than that. Add your logo and edit questions to fit into your brand voice.
Every survey is also fully mobile responsive. This allows you to create engaging, easy-to-use, and on-brand surveys with a simple editor to collect feedback – no matter which device your customers use.
You can select different question types to gather the data that suits your needs. After you add a question, specify the responses that participants can choose, including the following:
- Radio
- Multiple choice
- Text
- Rating
- Date
As responses start filing in, you’ll be able to analyze the data right inside the Salesforce Surveys application. No need to switch tabs!
What’s In It For Your Business?
At the heart of conducting customer surveys is driving better business operations. If you need to streamline your team’s workflow while making smarter decisions, the following benefits of Salesforce Surveys might be the perfect fit.
Let’s start with the #1 benefit: it’s a tool native to Salesforce. There are many survey tools out there, from HotJar to SurveyMonkey to CrazyEgg. They’re all great options, but better business ops are all about optimizing your processes. And there’s no better way of achieving that than centralizing information as much as possible, so you don’t waste time trying to track it down.
The next benefit is customer insights. If you understand your customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points, you become practically invincible. Say goodbye to guesswork! Use the feedback to improve your products, services, and overall customer experience.
Finally, Salesforce Surveys can be a lead-gen powerhouse. By capturing survey responses within the Salesforce platform, you can identify potential leads and track their engagement with your brand. This information is major for creating personalized marketing campaigns and nurturing leads throughout the customer journey.
Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. It all starts and ends with them. Shaping your business decisions around what they want and need – instead of what your team thinks they need – is the shift every business needs.
How to Set Up and Customize Your Surveys
Getting your surveys ready is easy. Just follow these steps:
Enable Salesforce Surveys
First, access Salesforce Setup by clicking the Setup option in the upper right corner of your Salesforce dashboard. Once there, use the Quick Find box to type in “Survey.” Now, click on “Survey Settings” and make sure to enable Surveys for the entire organization.
Assign Survey Profile
Next, assign profiles to users in your team and give them the ability to create and send surveys. To do this, go back to Setup, enter “Users” in the Quick Find box, click on Users, and choose the user. Assign an appropriate profile, such as System Administrator or Marketing User.
Configure Sharing
Moving on, access Setup again, and this time, enter “Sharing” in the Quick Find box. Click on “Sharing Settings” and make the necessary edits.
Set Permissions
This step allows survey creators to view all responses while keeping participant details confidential.
Get Ready to Launch!
If you plan to send surveys to external customers, consider setting up an Experience Cloud site to allow public access. For internal surveys, simply enabling Salesforce Surveys is enough.
As soon as you enable Surveys, you’ll get Customer Satisfaction and Net Promoter Score surveys added to your org right off the bat, so you can start testing your surveys in seconds.
Making the Most Out of Your Surveys
Afraid that your survey questions will be a waste of time? They won’t be – not if you build them strategically.
To get started, define your survey goals and target audience. Once inside the survey builder experience, you’ll see three paradigms: Build, Send, and Analyze.
As you build your survey, you can toggle between the style panel (where you’ll be customizing every aspect of your survey visuals) and the question builder view, where you can choose between different types of questions.
To make the most of your surveys, remember:
Don’t feel limited to one type of question only. You have plenty of different question styles to choose from, so mix and match! Yes, keep the survey goal in mind, but don’t forget that switching things up keeps the experience interesting and encourages completion.
Customize properties. Make questions required or allow descriptions in case you’d like participants to include more details. You may not get many responses, but one detail-rich answer may be all you need.
Keep your surveys short and focused. People have limited attention spans, so respect their time. Ask only essential questions to avoid unnecessary complexity, increase response rates, and ensure higher-quality data.
Add logic jumps to your survey. This will help you provide a personalized experience to survey participants by showing only the most relevant pages and questions.
For example, suppose you’re the owner of a virtual fitness platform and want to optimize the user experience by personalizing your surveys. You decide to ask a specific question (“Tell us if you had any problems during the virtual workout.”) only to people who didn’t rate their workout experience very highly, like 3 stars or less.
Additionally, you can add a part about “Equipment Concerns,” but only for users who gave a lower rating, like 2 stars or less. Those who gave a higher rating could skip directly to the Fitness Progress Assessment page.
This way, you can ensure that participants only find questions relevant to their experiences and concerns.
Before making your survey live, take a moment to test it. Save the survey, hit preview, and observe how questions and pages change based on participant responses.
Lastly, don’t forget to analyze the survey data and take action. The insights you gather are only valuable if you act on them. Identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement, and implement changes accordingly. Listen to your customers and adapt your strategies. That’s how you win!
What Can You Use Salesforce Surveys for?
Customer satisfaction is the overarching use case for any survey. That said, there are plenty of other use cases you can rely on.
Consider a company that recently wrapped up a training session. They’re keen on understanding its effectiveness, so they use Surveys to gather feedback. Questions may include, “Were the training materials clear?” and “How relevant was the content?” It’s a structured approach to gauging experiences and making the materials even better in the following training round.
Now, let’s think about a business gearing up to launch a new product or service. They turn to Surveys for market research, asking potential customers about their needs and preferences. Questions could be, “What features do you value?” or “Any thoughts on our upcoming offering?” This is a great way to tap into smarter value propositions and steer your development in the right direction!
Your Customers Know Best – Listen to Them!
Salesforce Surveys are a powerful solution for gathering feedback, conducting market research, and driving business success. Some of you probably didn’t even know you had it in your toolkit, but now you do!
So, if you want to send out response-worthy surveys every time, bookmark this guide and check out the Trailhead Learning Center.
Once you master customer surveys, you’ll master listening to your customers. And in this day and age, where attention is precious, it’s the most valuable skill anyone in business could have today.
