Choose the correct touchpoint type & survey questions according to your use case

Before getting started with Hello Customer, it's important to think about your use case. What do I want to know, and who do I want to survey? This article will help you out!

IN THIS ARTICLE

1. Define your use case: who and when do I want to survey?
2. How do I want do survey my customers?
1. E-mail touchpoint
2. Ask anywhere touchpoint
3. Website touchpoint
4. In-app touchpoint
3. What do I want to know from my participants?
1. Choose your metric
1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
3. Customer Effort Score (CES)
2. Extra questions
1. Yes-or-no question
2. Multiple and single choice question
3. 0-10 question
4. 1-5 question
5. Open text question
3. Extra information about your participants
4. Let's get started!

1. Define your use case: who and when do I want to survey?

Hello Customer is mainly a Voice of the Customer tool, so in most cases, you will survey your customers. But even then, it's important to think, Who are my customers?

• B2C: My customers are end-consumers. They buy a product or service from my company for their own use. We are all end-consumers: when we go to the supermarket, when we take a plane, when we buy a new phone, etc.
• B2B: My customers are other companies. These companies buy your services or products to help their customers. Hello Customer is a perfect example of a company with B2B customers: we sell our platform to other companies to help them improve.

However, you're not limited to your own customers. You can also survey other people. Some examples:

• Your own employees, because happy employees make happy customers.
• People who were about to buy something from your company but, in the end, didn't. For example, people who filled their online basket in your online store but abandoned it; people who tried some clothes in the fitting room but didn't buy them, etc.

Once you know who you want to survey, you also have to decide when to do so. Some examples:

• Any moment in the customer journey: after reading a newsletter, after abandoning an online shopping cart, after buying a product or service, after contact with the customer care center, etc. These are all examples of a transactional survey—a survey after someone comes into contact with your company.
• At a fixed moment in time, for example, every six months, we want to know how our customers are doing. This is a relational survey; in this case, it is not necessary that the participant has recently interacted with the company; you are more interested in the general experience and loyalty of the customers.

Once you've defined your use case, it's time to think about what exactly you want to know from your participants and how you want to reach them.

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2. How do I want to survey my participants?

Now that you know who and when you want to send out surveys, you need to decide on the best method to reach them. In the Hello Customer platform, we call this touchpoints. There are several options:

• E-mail touchpoint
• Ask anywhere touchpoint
• Website touchpoint
• In-app touchpoint

2a. E-mail touchpoint

An e-mail touchpoint can only be used if you know the e-mail addresses of the people you want to survey. For example:

• Your customers with a loyalty card
• People that are subscribed to your newsletter
• Your own employees

Make sure to only survey participants who gave consent to be surveyed! Of course, people are always able to unsubscribe once they receive a Hello Customer survey.

You can also add other things you know about the people you want to survey to our platform. That is what we call "metadata", which is extra information about your participants. This can be really handy for your further analysis. Examples are:

• How many pieces did they buy?
• What was the total spending?
• Characteristics like age, gender, and country they live in
• The store they visited
• The person they had on the phone when they called customer service

In an e-mail touchpoint, you upload your participants, including their metadata. This can be done in several ways:

• Manually upload an Excel or CSV file or add one participant directly to the platform.
• Drop an Excel or CSV file on our FTP server. The file drop can be automated on your side and connected to your CRM system. You can, for example, make a file every day of people who bought something in one of your stores that day. Files dropped on our FTP server are automatically picked up.
• Add participant(s) via our API. This can also be automated and connected to your CRM system.

The system automatically sends out surveys to your participants, and if they answer the survey, you will be able to see it directly on the platform.

There are a lot of options to customize your e-mail touchpoint:

• Optionally, send out a reminder after a few days to people who have not answered the survey yet.
• Set up a quarantine period in which participants will not receive multiple surveys.
• You can choose the design of the invitation mail, add your own logo, customize the text, etc.

All details are discussed in the manual to set up a touchpoint.

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2b. Ask anywhere touchpoint

An ask anywhere touchpoint is an ideal option if you do not know the e-mail addresses of the people you want to survey, for example, because you want to survey an offline interaction. Basically, if you set up an ask anywhere touchpoint, you generate an URL where your participants are able to access your survey.

This URL can be spread in several ways:

• Put it behind a QR code.
  • This can be handy if you want to survey, for example, people who visit your shop but don't buy anything. Put a QR code in the fitting rooms or at the exit.
  • It can also be handy to use for customers who do not have a loyalty card: print it on your receipts, put it at the checkout, etc.
• Put it in the signature of an e-mail. When you, for example, want to survey people who reached out via e-mail to you, this can be a good way to collect their feedback.
• If you want to send out e-mails from one central system, you can make an invitation e-mail yourself and put the URL of an ask anywhere touchpoint in the e-mail.

It can be handy to add extra information about your participants to our platform for analysis purposes, what we call "metadata". In the URL, you can add all the information you already know: for example, the store where you hung up the QR code, or you can add extra questions to get to know your participants.

An ask anywhere touchpoint is also useful when you want to:

• Upload historical data: we have the option to add answers via an API call or to upload a file directly to the platform with your historical data that you might have collected via other sources in the past.
• Add survey answers from other sources: via an API call, you can add these answers to the touchpoint directly.
• Add public reviews to the Hello Customer platform.

An ask anywhere touchpoint is the most flexible type of touchpoint we offer. Learn how to set it up in this handy manual.

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2c. Website touchpoint

As the name already gives away, a website touchpoint is meant to be integrated into your website. If you set up a website touchpoint on the platform, you get the integration code you need to use to easily add it to your website.

You will need a little help from your developers (there is documentation on GitHub available) to put this code directly into your website, or you can use a tag manager, for example, Google Tag Manager, to choose where and when this survey needs to appear. However, the advantage is that you can still manage from the Hello Customer platform how the survey will look, which questions are asked, how the survey appears (as a pop-up, opened in a new page or embedded) etc.

You have a lot of use cases that can be covered with this:

• Put the survey behind a feedback button on your website so that people who want to give feedback while on your website are able to trigger the survey themselves.
• The survey can appear spontaneously after you have been on a page for a certain amount of time.
• If a website visitor takes a certain action (clicks a link, leaves a page, etc.), the survey can be triggered. This can be handy to survey people who abandon their shopping carts, for example.

With a website touchpoint, it's also possible to send extra information about your participant, in this case, your website visitor, along with the integration code.

Follow this manual to set up a website touchpoint and get the integration code!

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2d. In-app touchpoint

When you want to survey your participants directly from your mobile app, we recommend using our in-app touchpoint. If you set up an in-app touchpoint on the Hello Customer platform, you will get the IDs you need to put in the SDK that is used to put the survey in your app.

We both support iOS and Android, and with this documentation and the IDs you get in the platform when setting up the touchpoint, your app developers will know exactly what to do! After they integrate the in-app touchpoint in your mobile app, the changes you make in the Hello Customer platform to the touchpoint (design and text updates, etc.) will be directly reflected in the app.

The use cases for an in-app touchpoint are similar to those of a website touchpoint, with the difference that it's in your mobile app instead of on your website:

• Put the survey behind a feedback button in your mobile app so that people who want to give feedback while in your app are able to trigger the survey themselves.
• The survey can appear spontaneously after you have been on a page for a certain amount of time.
• If an app user takes a certain action (clicks a link, leaves a page, etc.), the survey can be triggered. This can be handy to survey people who abandon their shopping carts, for example.

With this type of touchpoint, it's again possible to send along metadata (extra information) about your participants, in this case, your app users.

Follow this manual to set up an in-app touchpoint and get the IDs you need for the SDK!

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3. What do I want to know from my participants?

At Hello Customers, we strongly believe in the strength of short surveys. Therefore, our surveys always start with a metric question in combination with an open-text question. In the metric question, people can give a score, and in the open text question, they can explain why they give that score. Our AI engine, ISAAC, will link topics and sentiments to this open text feedback, so you will know exactly what people are happy about and what should be improved. Learn more about ISAAC.

3a. Choose your metric

There are three main metrics available in the Hello Customer platform:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
• Customer Effort Score (CES)

You can use more than one metric in your survey. However, every metric can only be used once in the same survey.

i. Net promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score is a useful method to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty and shows the overall perception of the participants about your company. Therefore, it's a metric that is mainly used in relational surveys, not after a specific transaction, for which CSAT and CES are more useful. To learn more about the Net Promoter Score, we recommend reading this blog post.

Our survey system uses two questions:

• The metric question itself: a 0-10 scale question that asks participants how likely they are to recommend your company to a friend or colleague.
• An open question which allows the customer to freely describe why s/he attributed his mark.

Participants are put into three categories based on how they answer the first question: detractors, passives and promoters. 

• Detractors: participants who gave a score between 0 and 6.
• Passives: participants who gave a score of 7 or 8.
• Promoters: participants who gave a score of 9 or 10.

The Net Promoter Score is calculated by substracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Therefore, it should not be seen as a percentage, but rather as an absolute number lying between -100 and +100.

ii. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a score that measures how happy customers are with a business, product or service. The CSAT is mainly used after a customer had an interaction with your company, for example bought something in your shop. If you want to learn more about this metric, we recommend reading this blog article.

Our survey system uses two questions:

• The metric question itself: a 1-5 scale question that asks participants how satisfied they are with a business, product or service.
• An open question which allows the customer to freely describe why s/he attributed his mark.

Participants are put into three categories based on how they answer the first question: people who are satisfied, people who were neutral and people who are unsatisfied. 

• Satisfied: participants who gave a score of 4 or 5
• Neutral: participants who gave a score of 3
• Unsatisfied: participants who gave a score of 1 or 2

The CSAT itself is equal to the percentage of satisfied customers.

iii. Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a score that measures customer effort in particular interactions. In other words, it measures the simplicity of an experience with a company. CES is extensively used to measure the quality of interactions that require input from customers, such as interactions with customer care teams for example. To learn more about the CES, we recommend reading this blog article.

Our survey system uses two questions:

• The metric question itself: a 1-7 scale question that asks participants how hard it was for them to perform a certain action.
• An open question which allows the customer to freely describe why s/he attributed his mark.

Participants are put into two categories based on how they answer the first question: people who agree and people who disagree. 

• Agree: participants who gave a score between 5 and 7
• Disagree: participants who gave a score between 1 and 4

The Customer Effort Score is calculated by calculating the average of all scores. Therefore, if the score is 5 or higher, people tend to agree that it was easy to handle the issue.

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3b. Extra questions

Although we strongly advice to keep your survey as short as possible, we also believe that it can sometimes be handy to add extra questions to your survey. For example:

• Do people want to be contacted after they filled out the survey? (yes-or-no question)
• How did people came into contact with your company during the last 3 months? (multiple choice question)
• How happy where people with a specific aspect of your product or service? (0-10 question)
• Do people want to add something? (custom question)

Therefore, we offer a range of extra questions that can be added to the survey.

i. Yes-or-no question

A yes-or-no question can be added to your survey when you want to ask a question that can be answered with "yes" or "no". Examples are:

• Do you want to be contacted after you filled out this survey?
• Have you already heard of [brand]?
• Did you think everything was clear during the phone call?
• Did you get the answers you need during the phone call?

You can choose the question text, but the answers of the question will always be "yes" and "no" - of course shown in the language of the participant.

ii. Multiple and single choice question

A multiple choice question can be used when you want to ask a question to your participants where multiple answers apply. Examples are:

• How do you know [company]?
• How can we improve your experience?
• Which tools do you use?
• Which products did you buy?

You can choose the question text and all the answer options. Participants are able to choose one or more answer options. If it's a question that some people will not be able to answer, since, for example, not everyone comes into contact with what you're asking, you can add the option "not applicable".

If you want to have a single choice question, where only one answer per participant can be chosen, you can activate this option within the multiple choice question. Examples are:

• Which employee helped you in the store?
• How many times did you try to contact us before you got an answer?
• In which country do you live?
• Did you experience any issues during the last months?

iii. 0-10 question

A 0–10 question is a scale question and can be used to let participants score something. We recommend this in case you want to score something really specific. If you notice in the ISAAC analysis that a certain topic is scored very badly by some people, you can quantify this finding by adding a 0–10 scale question about this topic to your survey. Examples are:

• I have a good relationship with my colleagues and manager.
• How happy are you with the frequency of the sales visits?
• How satisfied are you with the app?
• On a scale from 0 to 10, how happy are you with the safety measures taken?

You can add a customized question, and you can also choose the label that is displayed for 0 (for example, "Very bad") and 10 (for example, "Very good").

iv. 1-5 question

A 1-5 question has the same purpose as the 0-10 question, but with a different scale. You can use it as well to let participants score something. If you want to get feedback on a specific topic, the 1-5 question is a very good option. Examples are:

• My personal life and work are well-balanced.
• How happy are you with the speed of the Internet connection?
• How user-friendly is the application?
• On a scale from 1 to 5, how easy was it to find information on the website?

You can add a customized question, and you can also choose the label that is displayed for 1 (for example, "Very bad") and 5 (for example, "Very good").

v. Open text question

An open text question is a question where participants can fill out anything they want. Please note that there will be no ISAAC analysis for this question since ISAAC also takes the score on the metric question into account when assigning sentiments to the topics. Therefore, this question is mainly handy to ask for general comments. Examples are:

• Do you have any other comments?
• Is there anything else you want to share?
• Do you have any other questions?
• Is there anything else we can help you with?

You can choose the text of the question. The participants will get an open text field and can fill out anything they want.

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3c. Extra information about your participants

When you do not know a lot of your participants, you can add extra questions in your survey to get to know them better. If you add this type of question to your touchpoint, it will be saved as "metadata" (= extra information about your customer), so we call these types of questions "metadata questions".

There are three types of metadata questions that you can add to your touchpoint, each with a specific function:

• The profile question allows you to ask for more personal information of your customer. This can be handy when you want to get in touch afterwards.
• The team picker question links the answer on the touchpoint to a specific team of your team structure. People can choose the correct store they visited, person they spoke, etc. in a dropdown
• The date question allows you to ask for a specific date. For example, the date the visitor came to your store.

A practical guide about these questions can be found here.

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4. Let's get started

Here you can find a manual to set up a touchpoint from A to Z. Good luck!

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