Choosing the Right Survey Platform for Salesforce

The world of customer feedback and survey platforms within the Salesforce ecosystem has undergone significant evolution in recent years. Choosing the right survey platform for Salesforce depends on your business needs. Businesses now have numerous options for selecting a survey platform that seamlessly integrates with Salesforce. However, with many offerings boasting similar features and benefits, making the optimal choice can be challenging. In this context, Tectonic focuses on the key criteria that genuinely matter, citing essential factors while disregarding unnecessary ‘bells and whistles.’

1. Salesforce Native Is a Must for the Right Survey Platform for Salesforce:

In the earlier days of Salesforce AppExchange, some solutions claimed integration with Salesforce CRM, but suffered issues like buggy integration caused data sync delays. Modern survey platforms built on Salesforce Lightning offer a different experience, eliminating integration complexities and transforming the way customer insights are collected and acted upon.

Benefits of Choosing a Salesforce Native Solution:

Seamless Data Management: Direct ties between survey data and customer records within Salesforce streamline data management, facilitating informed decisions based on comprehensive customer insights.
Real-time Insights: Conducting surveys within Salesforce enables gathering real-time feedback, allowing quick responses and adjustments to address emerging trends or concerns.
Data Security and Compliance: Native solutions ensure data remains within the Salesforce environment, benefiting from Salesforce’s robust security measures and compliance with various standards and regulations.
Efficiency: Managing surveys within the same platform as customer relationship management enhances team productivity by eliminating the need to switch between different tools.
Personalization: Access to customer data in Salesforce enables tailoring surveys for specific segments, creating a more personalized and relevant experience.
360-Degree View: Native survey data contributes to a comprehensive understanding of each customer’s journey and preferences, fostering meaningful interactions and informed decision-making.
Actionable Insights: Integration of survey data with Salesforce’s reporting and analytics capabilities simplifies deriving actionable insights. Use customer feedback, driving continuous improvement and innovation.

2. Features to Look For When Choosing the Right Survey Platform for Salesforce:

When evaluating a customer feedback management system or the right survey platform for Salesforce, consider features in three key areas:

Great User Experience:

User-Friendly Interface: Intuitive design for survey creators and respondents.
Progressive Profiling: Don’t require respondents to give you the answers to the same questions over and over again.
Mobile Responsiveness: Surveys should seamlessly adapt to smartphones and tablets.
Customizable Design: Options for customization to match organizational branding and data collection needs.
Flexibility: Versatility to create surveys aligned with diverse objectives.

Painless Data Management:

Automated Data Mapping: Streamlining the process of creating and updating Salesforce records based on question responses.
Audience Segmentation: Ability to segment the audience for targeted surveys.
Multi-Channel Distribution: Support for various distribution channels, including email, web form, mobile, social media, and SMS.
Response Management: Features for categorizing, tagging, and tracking responses.
Customizable Scoring: Creation of custom scoring rules based on survey responses.

Analytics and Scalability:

Real-Time Reporting and Analytics: Robust tools for quick insights from survey data.
Sentiment Analysis: Utilization of NLP techniques to analyze open-ended text responses for sentiment.
Multi-Language Support: Support for multiple languages to cater to a global audience.
Cost, Scalability, and Support: Consideration of budget, scalability, and the level of support offered by the platform vendor.

Choosing a native solution for surveys and forms-based data collection within Salesforce is crucial for the operational benefits it brings to Salesforce users. Besides Salesforce native integration, organizations should seek features aligned with unique needs, ensuring a great user experience, and facilitating painless data management.

There are multiple built-in options with the Salesforce ecosystem, survey tools in the AppExchange. There are also third party integrations with pre-built Salesforce APIs. Forms and surveys have multiple use cases.