Integrating Your Surveys with Salesforce

Surveys. They’re a fact of life when working in a nonprofit organization. Too often they are just obligatory -an afterthought. That doesn’t always have to be the case. In fact there are several tools available to support all of your surveying needs. When designed and carried out properly, your organization’s surveys can assist you in better service delivery to your clients or constituents, improving your various trainings, and creating meaningful volunteer opportunities.

There seem to be endless survey tools available to an organization looking to get some feedback on any and all of its operations. What should an organization on Salesforce.com consider when seeking a survey tool?

First things first: Your survey tool should integrate with Salesforce. Let me ask you this: Why wouldn’t you want your surveying integrated with Salesforce? The tool you’re using is free, you say. Yes, Survey Monkey is technically free, but it is definitely costing you staff time. It is likely the case that you joined Salesforce to eliminate your data silos. Survey information is data – valuable data that should be stored in your Salesforce.com database.

What role do surveys play in your organization? How often do you use them? What are your reporting needs? If surveying and feedback are an integral part of your business processes, your organization should definitely consider investing in your survey tool. Like most things in life- you get what you pay for. Are you the occasional surveyor with limited reporting needs? You can probably get away with a more basic tool with limited reporting and integration.

Ready to integrate your surveys into Salesforce? Great! I have compiled a few surveying tools and broken down the basics for you here:

CLICK TOOLS

Cost: Starts at $12,995 per year, nonprofits receive a 50% discount on all packages

Website: http://www.clicktools.com/sfdc.html

Support: Yes (from our experience the support is not very good)

Key Features:

Allows multiple pages, no size limit
Allows branching and conditional fields
Pre-populate information from Salesforce
Can use native Salesforce email delivery or a third party email tool
Can link to survey from any site with a link, button, or popup
Can create or update information in Salesforce standard or custom objects and fields
Allows you to build forms, not just surveys
Advanced reporting
Can save a partially completed survey
Salesforce Chatter integration

Things to consider:

Cost of the app vs. Survey needs of your organization

FORM ASSEMBLY

Cost: $59/month/user; 20% nonprofit discount

Website: www.formassembly.com/nonprofit.php

Support: Yes, but no phone support

Key Features:

Collects information from web-based forms
Allows for end-users to upload files
Allows information to be captured on any custom or standard Salesforce object
Updates information in Salesforce
Allows end-users to save the survey
Great for basic survey and customer/client feedback

Things to consider:

Form Assembly comes with very basic analytics, you might need to design your own reports
See more information about FormAssembly in this blog post: https://cloud4good.wpengine.com/announcements/how-to-integrate-online-forms-with-salesforce-com/

GET FEEDBACK

Cost: Free for nonprofits (https://getfeedback.com/npo)

AppExchange Listing: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3000000B4lIxEAJ

Key Features:

Create Engaging Mobile-Ready Surveys with Ease
Distribute Surveys via Email, Workflow, or any Email Marketing App
Save all Responses in Salesforce

Things to Consider:

Conditional logic and salesforce mapping logic is limited

SURVEY FORCE

Cost: Free

AppExchange Listing: http://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000003I2gDEAS

Support: No

Key Features:

Send surveys with native Salesforce email and Sites
Great for basic surveys

Things to Consider:

There is no support for this app, so if you experience problems it’s up to you and the message boards
Allows information to be captured ONLY on Contacts or Cases