10 Essential questions to choose the right Feedback Solution

Finding the right feedback solution can be more complex than you initially thought. In this whitepaper, you will find 10 clear-cut questions you should seek answers to before making your choice!

Table Of Content

Is this for a ‘project’ or continuous feedback work?
Is the price within budget?
Does the provider take security and data privacy seriously?
How important is on-brand design customisation to you?
Will you measure customer or employee experience (or both)?
Are professional services available?
What are your support needs?
What features are deal-breakers to you?
Will you create your surveys from scratch or use templates?
Are you looking at collecting data or generating actionable insights?

#1 Is this for a ‘project’ or continuous feedback work?

Looking for a feedback solution often starts off with a project in mind, such as collecting customer NPS or performing an employee engagement survey.

Feedback work is, however, very seldom project-based. You need to strive for a continuous improvement cycle to get all the potential value from the feedback you collect. You must follow up to see if you have implemented a meaningful change between measurements. Getting a one-off sample of your customer or employee experience is rare, where the real, impactful insights reside.

Does the solution allow for timeline reporting and combining multiple surveys into one report? Is an API or other means of integration available to enable surveys ‘triggered’ by events in other systems?

#2 Is the price within budget?

Feedback solutions are available at an extensive price span, from a couple of hundred euros per month to tens of thousands yearly. The difference in pricing often comes down to the availability of local language support resources, features in the solution, and ultimately to, what value you look to get out of the solution.

At Questback, we always try to make a return-on-investment analysis of implementing a feedback solution. There are strong measurable outcomes of improving customer or employee experiences. Still, you will need both the right set of features and experienced support from your feedback solution provider to reach those.

Can you see the solution providing a strong ROI on your investment, and are you clearly seeing the value feedback can bring to your organisation?

#3 Does the provider take security and data privacy seriously?

Today there are numerous frameworks and legislation to consider when choosing what feedback solution provider to store your respondent and feedback data. Check with your legal department on current GDPR requirements and if other IT-related questions need to be answered before making a choice.

Does the solution offer storage of data inside the EU?
Does the provider align with GDPR?

#4 How important is on-brand design customisation to you?

Some solutions offer a standardised out-of-the-box presentation of surveys and email invitations. If this is a core value to your organisation, ensure that the solution you choose provides the customisation you need.

Does the solution offer a custom design of emails, surveys, and reports?

#5 Will you measure customer or employee experience (or both)?

Returning to your core feedback need, your chosen solution should have a customised offering for your particular use case. Customer and employee feedback differ somewhat in what features are important (unsubscribe for invitations for customer feedback forms and the ability to use anonymous respondents for employee feedback, for example).

If you want to future-proof your choice, it is wise to go with a solution that can offer both customer and employee feedback collection and allows you to grow your usage as you get accustomed to working with feedback in your organisation.

Does the solution offer both customer and employee feedback capabilities?

#6 Are professional services available?

Working with feedback can go all the way from simple data collection to large and more complex programs, such as comparing the performance of different stores over time or the outcome of experiments between departments.

Even if you are starting with a more straightforward use case, make sure to future-proof your choice by choosing a vendor that offers local professional services to support you as the complexity of your feedback work grows.

Does the provider offer local professional services in design, distribution, and analysis of feedback data?

#7 What are your support needs?

Needing support may not be something you want to think about as you haven’t yet chosen your feedback solution provider. Experience, however, tells us that high-quality and local language support can often be a divider between a great feedback program and one that fails. Make sure your provider is available over email and phone, preferably in your local language – remember that it will most likely not be only you using the service as you implement it in your organisation.

Is local language phone support available?

#8 What features are deal-breakers to you?

Something on the surface as easy as sending surveys and collecting answers can quickly become more complex as you optimise making the most out of your feedback program.

Even though distribution over email, SMS, and QR-code, question logic and the ability to follow up directly with respondents are today essentials in most feedback solutions. You will need to map up your actual needs and verify that the features offered cover these for your first survey projects and the long term. Note that this applies to creating and sending surveys and what you can do with the data in reports.

Do the features offered in the solution cover your long-term needs?
Does the provider have experience working with customers with similar conditions as your organisation?

#9 Will you create your surveys from scratch or use templates?

Most providers offer a standard set of templates to get you going with the baseline questions for many kinds of surveys. The quality of these templates, if they are available in multiple languages and tested in real-life scenarios, is often less obvious. If you do not have significant experience from running feedback programs internally, make sure to choose a vendor with a strong set of ready-made templates.

Are multi-language templates available for your core use cases?

#10 Are you looking at collecting data or generating actionable insights?

Functionally, most offerings available today can efficiently collect data. There is, however, a large gap between collecting data and generating actual and valuable insights that can drive action and change in your organisation. This is often the hardest thing to get a clear picture of and comes down to a combination of the features offered, the supporting resources, and the experience and philosophy of the solution provider.

Generating actionable insights starts with the end first – what kind of knowledge of your organisation or customers do you wish to gain? Then you work backward all the way from what kind of reporting would be needed, how you would ensure the highest possible response rate, to what questions you would need to ask.

Does the provider have the experience to help you gain actionable insights?
Does the solution provide core features such as follow-up to gain insights into individual answers and smart notifications on deviating responses?

Find the right feedback solution: Checklist

Here you have the above questions conveniently collected to guide your decision.

Does the solution allow for timeline reporting and combining multiple surveys into one report?
Is an API or other means of integration available to enable surveys ‘triggered’ by events in other systems?
Can you see the solution providing a strong ROI on your investment, and are you clearly seeing the value feedback can bring to your organisation?
Does the solution offer storage of data inside the EU?
Does the provider align with GDPR?
Does the solution offer a custom design of emails, surveys, and reports?
Does the solution offer both customer and employee feedback capabilities?
Does the provider offer local professional services in design, distribution, and analysis of feedback data?
Is local language phone support available?
Do the features offered in the solution cover your long-term needs?
Does the provider have experience in working with customers with needs similar to yours?
Are multi-language templates available for your core use cases?
Does the provider have the experience to help you gain actionable insights?
Does the solution provide core features such as follow-up to gain insights into individual answers and smart notifications on deviating responses?

Questback

Questback is a leading Feedback Solution and provides satisfying answers to all the questions above. Please reach out to one of our sales representatives to learn more about our offering and see if it’s a good match for your upcoming feedback needs!