Intercom Surveys allow you to seamlessly capture customer insights. The responses collected can be used to power actions and workflows to create a more personalized customer experience and drive business growth.
Designing a survey is fast and easy, let’s get started.
Create a new survey
First, go to Proactive Support from the main menu and click + New message in the top right corner.
Then, choose Survey as your content type.
You can also choose to start with a pre-made template by picking this content type from the left sidebar.
Choose a format
Next, decide if you want a Small format or Large format survey and click “Save”.
Note: Small format surveys can be used to get a quick response from customers, such as a Star rating. Large format surveys allow you to give your survey some context with an Intro screen and are great for more detailed responses, such as Multiple choice. Learn how to optimize your survey format for your use case here.
Then, give your survey a title. For example, if you’re designing a survey to capture new users’ roles and experience, you could call it “Onboarding: Roles + Experience”.
Survey settings
In Survey settings, you can send your survey from any teammate, or hide the sender entirely. You can also enable/disable a few other customizations:
Add an Intro screen (large format surveys only) - this lets you set expectations and provide customers with some context before they begin the survey.
Allow customers to dismiss the survey - use with caution! If this is disabled, customers will continue to see the survey until they complete it, they no longer match the rules, or the survey gets paused by you.
Show customers a progress bar (large format surveys only) - this lets customers see how much of the survey they have completed
Tip: It's often a good idea to send a survey from a teammate to make it feel more personal. However, if you're looking for honest feedback, in our experience it can be a good idea to hide the sender.
Next, select the platforms (Web, iOS and/or Android) you want the survey to be delivered on:
Note: You can choose to deliver your survey to web only, mobile only or across both web and mobile platforms. If multiple delivery platforms are selected, the survey will be shown on whichever platform your customer visits first. For example, if all three platforms (Web, iOS, Android) are chosen and your customer first opens on your iOS app, they will receive the survey on iOS and will not receive it on Web or Android. Learn more about creating and sending a survey on mobile.
Add questions and steps
Next, go to Step 1 and choose the type of question you want.
NPS® - to capture customer sentiment.
Numeric scale - to help you measure your query.
Star rating - to gather a rating out of 5.
Emoji rating - to capture customer sentiment.
Dropdown / list - to allow customers to choose a best fit.
Short text entry - to collect short custom responses.
Long text entry - to allow for long custom responses.
Multiple choice - to present customers with several options to choose from.
See a full overview of all supported question types.
Tip: What you see on the right in your survey composer is an example of how the question will look to your customers.
Simply, click the default question on your survey preview to edit the copy.
Use Questions settings to manage:
Question type - You can change your question type here.
Answer options - Create labels for the answer options customers can select from when using question types such as Dropdown / List.
Placeholder text - Customize the placeholder text a user sees before giving their response to explain what you're asking them to do. If you only need them to choose one option, you could say "Select one..."
Make answer required - Keep this ticked if the user must answer the question before they can proceed to the next step. This ensures you collect the information you need. Leave this unticked if their response is optional and not integral to the purpose of the survey, such as asking for any additional feedback.
Store answer to a user attribute - This allows you to create and track facts about your users based on their responses. For example, you could track data about the users who found it difficult to set up their account. Then, you could send a follow-up email targeted to these users asking if they would like any additional help. Learn more about storing responses as user attributes.
You can add more questions to the same step by clicking “Add question” and another question will appear below. Or, if you want to add more steps with different questions, click the “+” above the survey preview to add another step.
Once you’ve added all your questions, click on “Thanks” to personalize your thank you step.
You can also choose to send customers down different paths in your survey based on how they respond to questions. Find out more about using branching logic here.
If you want customers to take action after completing the survey, you can add a link that directs them where to go next. For example, if you’ve created an onboarding survey, you might take them to a page where they can find tips for getting started.
Customize
Surveys can be customized and personalized to visually match your brand and look native to your product. Here are several ways you can customize your survey:
Colors - Select your survey background and button color to match your brand.
Sender - Choose whether to add a personal touch by showing a sender avatar (small/large format) and company name (large format).
Intro - Add an intro screen to give your customers context about what the survey is about upfront (large format). This lets you set expectations so customers are more likely to complete the survey. For example, you could add “This survey takes 3 mins.”
User attributes - Adding user or company attributes can make the survey feel more personal and specific to each customer. Learn more about including user attributes here.
Text formatting - Options to format your text (bold, italics, links, and headers) are available and can help you highlight an important part of your text. For example, you could use bold to ask “What is your favorite feature?”
Tip: Add emojis, images and GIFs to lighten the mood! 😍🎉🤩
Note: It is not possible to add attachments to a Survey
Preview
Check out how your survey will look and behave for customers before setting it live by generating a live preview.
You can see how the survey appears on a blank page or on a page in your product by entering the URL that you would like it to appear on:
Explore how the survey behaves by answering the questions. This won't impact the response stats.
Tip: If you have added branching logic, it’s a good idea to reset the preview and test out all possible paths in your survey.
Send or share your survey
Next, you’ll be able to trigger your survey to send automatically, or share it with a link in and outside your product.
"Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld."
Customer experience on web
Customer experience on web
This is how a large format Survey looks for users on web:
This is how a small format Survey looks for users on web:
Response validation
There are two types of validation that end users may experience when completing a Survey:
Response required: If the user tries to progress to the next step of a Survey but haven’t submitted answers to all required questions.
Incorrect answer format: When answers are saved to an attribute, we will validate that the response format matches the attribute type that it is being saved to. For example, a text entry response that is being saved to an attribute where the attribute type is numeric will validate that the answer submitted is a number.
Similarly, if the answer is being stored to one of Intercom's email or phone number attributes, the answer submitted must meet their respective validation requirements.
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