Decision making is heavily based on customer data. To achieve this, we need to measure results to improve overall customer experience. However, professionals must choose the right online survey tool with the right features. These features act as the building blocks for effective survey distribution, data collection, and analytics. Each feature plays a crucial role to enhance the accuracy of data collected. In this blog, we will discuss these features in detail.

What is A Survey Tool?

A survey tool or a survey maker is a digital tool used by CX teams to collect customer data. The main task of a survey app is to help create, design questions , distribute and analyze customer feedback. In a tech savvy world, most respondents will be happy to answer surveys in a digital format. A digital format is compatible across any mobile device- android or iPhone systems.

For example: if an organisation wants to capture responses from their Gen-Z audience, the platform should target multiple digital touchpoints. This includes survey channels of WhatsApp messenger, Facebook messenger, social media networks, website chatbots and AMP emails. Automating, collecting and analyzing is a big part of bringing a high completion rate to come to a considerable conclusion.

Why Do Companies Need An Online Survey Software Tool?

Most organizations know that collecting and analyzing data is far easier with an online survey software tool. Organization decision-makers must understand the capabilities and functionalities of available tools to choose the right survey tool.

It allows them to opt for a suitable survey maker and conduct individual surveys. However, it’s difficult for most business leaders to sift through the crowded market of survey tools to find which one is the right fit. 

• A survey maker platform is ideal to capture customer interaction across various digital touchpoints, understand negative and positive customer interaction and minimize pain points.
• It is a sensible method of collecting usage data, sharing feature upgrades, gathering community opinion and getting satisfaction metrics.
• Companies can view dashboard information and get detailed insights on churn risk, conduct sentiment analysis, and assess user complaints.
• Companies can track the metrics of internal support teams and monitor online reputation round the clock.
• Survey automation prevents manual handling of the entire CX process! Real time insights can help you gather trends and patterns and enable stakeholders to make key decisions.

An online survey maker usually has a good user experience. Thanks to its ease of use, the modern day marketer need not have any coding experience. The survey making process should be devoid of cognitive effort and manual data handling. Some of the best survey tools offer accurate data analysis, reliance on AI and sentiment analysis. 

What are the key features to look for in a survey software tool?

• Easy to customize questionnaire templates.
• Customer satisfaction metrics of NPS, CES, CSAT scores.
• Survey distribution via WhatsApp messenger, Facebook messenger.
• Tracking customer data in real time.
• Survey automation using AI.
• Open ended and closed ended question types.
• Easy-to-navigate user interface.
• Automatic translation and multilingual question templates.
• Customer journey mapping tool.
• Multimedia question format.

Better CX: Essential Features for A Survey Software Tool

If marketers are looking for cost-effective questionnaire tools, there are essential features to consider. These features should empower the customer support team, enhance customer experience and offer relevant and robust functionality for customer relationship management. Here are some of the essential features to consider.

1. Easy to customize question templates:

An online survey platform will have the facility to provide two important things- pre designed templates and the templates that can either be customized or the ability to curate feedback templates from scratch. This allows marketers to curate questionnaires without any technical expertise. This is a great way to avoid cognitive heavy lifting while curating a survey design for the target audience. With available questionnaires, both closed-ended questions and open-ended questions, marketers can avoid manual errors, have better survey logic placements and create conversational questions that bring high survey responses.

2. Standard customer satisfaction metrics (NPS, CSAT):

Customer satisfaction metrics are standardised and a common method of bringing in candid feedback. These satisfaction metrics are CSAT scores or customer satisfaction score, NPS or net promoter score , CES or customer effort score. These key customer satisfaction metrics can also be shared via in-app surveys or via various distribution channels. This brings us to the next point of distribution channels.

3. Digital touchpoint survey distribution (email, in-app, Facebook messenger):

To get a high response rate, it is crucial to take feedback from customers at a place where they are mostly active- on virtual platforms they frequently use. This includes surveys and Facebook messenger, website based chat bots, social media platforms (including X , formerly known as Twitter) , in-application surveys and interactive AMP email platform. Customer feedback collection can only be fruitful if there is a high response rate. With a low response rate, you run the risk of curating reports that may not truly represent your customer base. Using a multi-channel approach, you can diversify your feedback collection and have maximum survey data at your disposal.

4. Real time customer data tracking and analytics:

What is consumer data without real-time analysis? Capturing real time feedback data is the most important way to understand trends, constant patterns, and identify pain points. Stakeholders can visualize information over graphs and charts. They can detect unhappy customers, close feedback loops and gain competitive advantage in the market. An online survey software tool should offer the facility of mapping data, real time and analyzing them as they come through into the dashboard. In-moment feedback and instant tracking is superior to batch processing feedback. Real time mapping allows the support team to attend to detractors, avoid churn risk and minimize online reputation damages.

5. Automation with artificial intelligence (AI):

A survey software tool is not complete without automatic deploying of feedback forms at various digital touchpoints. Survey automation can prevent manual errors and intervention. While applying automation, the surveys can be launched straight into the consumer’s device at certain touchpoints and within a specific duration. There can be add-on facilities such as a gentle nudge to encourage participants to complete a response form.

Artificial intelligence or generative AI tools are an efficient way to analyze data and fast track data collection processes. Merren goes a step ahead and provides an AI Survey Builder that can instantly build fresh survey questions using introductory data from clients.

6. Qualitative and quantitative types of questions:

While building your own questionnaire to collect customer feedback, a tool can have the facility for skip-logic, survey logic and branching segregation. A drag-and-drop interface makes it easier for anyone to create a questionnaire without any coding know-how. With this facility, any marketer from a beginner to a professional can curate custom made questionnaires.

A survey software tool will offer multiple response collection facilities, a variety of question types, rating tools and various customer satisfaction metrics. Find features that can offer survey logic facilities, closed-ended questions and open-ended response formats alongside. A well-equipped CX platform can also capture multimedia responses from any messenger application.

7. User-friendly interface:

A survey software tool with a user-friendly interface is helpful for marketers to navigate through the software. They can create customizable questionnaires, analyze, assess and change the format from time to time. A robust software will have a CX dashboard with every data stored along with systematic workflows in place. This also includes facilities for clients to opt for various distribution channels to publish questionnaires, analyze results, create reports and download customer data. Clients can also demo test their questionnaires and have a live preview of your survey before you publish it.

8. Multilingual surveys and automatic translations:

People are more willing to participate when they see a survey in their native language. A survey software tool can have the ability to translate questionnaires into multiple languages efficiently. With google APIs, the translations are accurate which makes their feedback forms more relatable for the target audience. Multi-lingual surveys are one of the essential features to collect feedback from customers globally. Using this facility, the response rates are higher, more accurate and respondents are more than willing to answer messenger based feedback forms.

9. Customer journey mapping tool:

There are various ways to choose the right kind of a journey mapping tool for your organisation. An additional facility would be the customer journey mapping tool . This facility can deploy feedback forms instantly or at a certain time period. A customer journey mapping tool should also have the ability to capture candid responses and capture data not only by plain text but also by multimedia formats. One good component of a conversational survey is to seek responses in media rich format (audio, video, photos). This brings us to the next point of a multimedia format of responses.

10. Collect responses with multimedia format:

Humans are expressive in nature. To obtain media rich feedback, offer a facility that can collect customer responses in multimedia format. This includes audio, video, photos and pdf documents. Bringing media rich responses makes data collecting methods more vivid and realistic. Using multimedia for response collection, there are greater chances to understand the emotions, behaviours and preferences and pain points of the customers.

An Easy-To-Use Survey Software for The Modern Day Marketers

The main goal of launching a survey is to obtain a high response rate, keep the questionnaires compatible with multiple devices, have conversational surveys and analyse data swiftly. Marketing professionals must look for these facilities that can upgrade their CXM abilities within the organisation. It is equally important to equip the customer support team with robust tools that can upgrade their customer service arsenal.

Conclusion

These are the few features that will enable marketing professionals to conduct serious market research, increase feedback completion rate, analyze data automated and make competitive decisions. Discover Merren as an alternative to Survey Monkey, Mailchimp, Qualtrics and Google Forms.

To create conversational surveys and conduct effective market research, sign up for a 14 day free plan with Merren. Enjoy our free version without any credit card and upgrade for a super fast customer feedback collection experience.