Chapter 34. Voice of the Customer

Voice of the Customer is a feature newly introduced to Dynamics CRM that allows users to make surveys. It allows for direct interaction and feedback with customers.

Voice of the Customer allows CRM users to easily create surveys that can be filled out by either anonymous users or named customers. The results obtained can then be analyzed in CRM. This solution uses Azure behind the scenes to allow external users and anonymous users to see and complete surveys.

With Voice of the Customer you can using surveys anonymously via Twitter or Facebook, or you can publish results via iFrame on your organization’s website. When using specific (or non-anonymous) surveys, Voice of the Customer creates specific links that are tied to the CRM GUID for a contact and can be sent directly to individuals.

As shown in Figure 34.2, you see a list of the CRM Online instances and a link to see the solutions that are installed. Click the pencil icon next to solutions for the selected instance.

Now you see a list of preferred solutions you can install (see Figure 34.3). Depending on the license, you may see different solutions than are shown here. Select Voice of the Customer and click Install.

The installation may take some minutes to complete. When the solution is installed, you can see it by going to the Dynamics CRM web interface and selecting Settings > Solutions > Customization, as shown in Figure 34.4.

After the solution is installed, you need agree to the terms and conditions and then click the Enable Voice of the Customer button, as shown in Figure 34.5.

Once the solution is enabled, you see the options Trigger Response Processing and Open Configuration Entity, as shown in Figure 34.6.

You also see a new menu option in the site map, as shown in Figure 34.7.

From here you can make the necessary configuration changes.

These three main entities related to the Voice of the Customer solution are the most heavily used:

Survey

Survey Response

Response Outcomes

1. Navigate to Voice of the Customer > Surveys in the navigation bar. You can then see any active surveys you have in the system, as shown in Figure 34.9.

2. Click +New to create a new survey. A new blank survey opens, as shown in Figure 34.10.

3. Enter the name of the survey in the Name field, which is the only required field that’s not prepopulated, and then click Save.

The survey entity has three different forms, each with a unique purpose:

Survey

Designer

Dashboard

As shown in Figure 34.11, you can use the form selector to switch to the Survey Designer, which is shown in Figure 34.12.

Short answer—This type of question requires a single line of text for an answer.

Long answer—This type of question requires multiple lines of text for an answer.

Rating—This type of question requires a rating as an answer. You can change the images to be stars, smiles, or flags. For the star type you can change the number of items from 0 to 12.

Single response—This type of question requires a single response from a predefined list of answers.

Multiple responses—This type of question requires multiple responses from a predefined list of answers.

Date—This type of question requires a date answer, showing a calendar control to the user.

Descriptive text—This is a description or instructions rather than a question that requires an answer. It is displayed as fixed text and does not allow user input.

Numerical response—This type of question requires a number as an answer. This type of questions blocks the letter keys so users can only enter numbers here. You can allow decimals or whole numbers by setting the Number Type field. You can also set minimum and maximum numbers for validation.

Ranking—This type of question requires multiple responses from a predefined list of answers and allows the user to order the selected responses.

Net Promoter Score—This type of question asks for scores, such as “How likely is it that you would recommend [us/this product/this service] to a friend or colleague?” and present a slider control with steps from 0 to 10, where 0 means “not at all” and 10 means “extremely.” This type of question is good for managing scoring.

Customer Effort Score—This type of question asks for scores, such as “How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?” and present a slider control with steps from 1 to 5, where 1 means “very low” and 5 means “very high.” This type of question is good for managing scoring.

CSAT—This type of question asks for scores, such as “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with [us/this product/this service]?” and present a slider control with steps from 1 to 5, where 1 means “very dissatisfied” and 5 means “very satisfied.” This type of question is good for managing scoring.

Smiles rating—This type of question asks for scores, such as “Select the face that best describes your relationship with [Organization/ Product]?” and present images showing different type of emotions, like satisfied, very satisfied, bored, and annoyed. This type of question is good for managing scoring.

List of rating—This is a list of questions that require ratings using stars, sad to happy smiles, neutral to happy smiles, or flags (red, yellow, green).

Single rating in columns—This type of question requires a matrix of radio buttons to answer questions row by row, with only one option selected per row.

Multiple ratings in columns—This type of question requires a matrix of check boxes to answer questions row by row, with the possibility to select one more than one check box per row.

Fixed sum—This is a list of questions that require numbers as answers and shows a total of the responses entered. It also provides validation to ensure that the sum of the numbers entered matches the total expected.

Upload file—This type of question allows the user to upload/attach a file to the response. It validates the file type allowed as well as the maximum upload file size.

By default, a survey has three pages:

Welcome

Page 1

Complete

While you can add questions to any of these three pages, the submit button is located before the last page, which by default is Page 1, so if you add questions on the last page (Complete), the user won’t be able to submit the answers. Also, you cannot remove either the first page (Welcome) or the last page (Complete) as at least two pages are necessary for each survey. You can add new pages between the Welcome page and the Complete page, and you can change the order of the pages—but only the ones that are between the Welcome and Complete pages; you cannot change the placement of the Welcome and Complete pages.

To add a new page, click the page icon on the bottom-left corner, under the page list (see Figure 34.13).

To remove a new page, select the page you want to remove and then click the trash icon at the bottom-right, under the page list. The trash icon is not available for the Welcome and Complete pages.

When you create a new page, you are presented with the New Page form, as shown in Figure 34.14.

The Advanced tab is collapsed by default, but you can expand it if you want to change the page type and order (see Figure 34.15). This is useful if you deleted the Welcome or Complete pages by mistake and want to create a replacement for that page.

After you enter the name of the Page on the New Page form and click Save & Close, you end up in the Survey Designer, as shown in Figure 34.16.

If you want to change the name of the page, you select the page and then mouse over the page title.

There are two ways to edit both pages and questions:

Quick edit—Quick edit allows you to make inline changes such as changing the name of the page or the question without leaving the Survey Designer. Figure 34.17 shows the icon for the quick edit option.

Form edit—If you want to change a more complicated attribute of the page or the question, you then have to click the default edit icon, which is shown in Figure 34.18.

If you change the name of the page with quick edit, you see two icons to the left, for saving your changes and for discarding them, as shown in Figure 34.19.

The pages have sections. There is one section by default on each page, but you can add more sections if you want. Inside the sections you can add questions.

You can also use pipes (User, Product, Service, Customer, Location, Date Time, Other 1, and Other 2), which are found in the rich text control toolbar and are useful when you’re sending a survey to a contact using the snippets.

From here you can also set whether you want the question to be required, enter a tooltip, and map the response to a known field like First Name or Last Name (which is useful if you created a lead in the survey options so you know what response should be mapped to the Lead field).

The question form has a Validation tab where you can add validations such as the max length of the text entered or use a regular expression, which is useful if you are asking the user to enter a valid email address or URL (see Figure 34.21).

You can add new or existing response options here. To create a new response action, click Add New Response Action (see Figure 34.23).

The response actions are intended to be used in conjunction with the response conditions when you use a response routing, as discussed later in this chapter, in the “Response Routing” section.

You need to select one of two scopes, client or server. Depending on the scope, you may have to set different type of fields.

These actions are available for the client scope:

Show

Hide

Skip To

End Survey

Chain Survey

Toggle Visibility

Depending on the action selected, you will see different fields related to the action that you have to complete. For example, the Show action requires you to set the page and section and, optionally, the grid or question.

For the Server scope, you must select one of the following response outcome types:

Complaint

Low Score

Distress

Unsubscribe

High Score

Contact Request

Follow Up

NPS Increase

NPS Decrease

Facial Expression Increase

Facial Expression Decrease

It is highly recommended that you change the default Header Text field because it is prepopulated with default text that is visible on every page. It is also recommended that you upload a logo of your company to make the survey look more professional.

To add a logo, click in the Logo field. If you haven’t yet uploaded a logo, before New to go to the New Image page (see Figure 34.25).

Enter the name of the logo and click Submit (see Figure 34.26). CRM automatically completes the image title and alternate text with the name you entered before. The custom Icon tab is now expanded, allowing you to upload an image that will be stored in Azure data storage.

Click Browse, select the file from your local hard drive, and click Submit (see Figure 34.26). After you successfully upload the image, you must set the image format in order to see a preview of the image which in the Preview tab, as shown in Figure 34.27.

Once you have set the header title and the logo, the users will see a survey header like the one shown in Figure 34.28.

In addition to changing the header text and logo, there are a few other recommended fields to set:

Runtime Title—This sets the page title that is displayed in the browser tab name.

Redirect Text—This is the text that shows in the event that the user is redirected to another page.

Privacy Policy Text—This text appears in the footer of the survey to the left—but only if you set the Privacy Policy URL field.

Survey Email Text—This text appears in the footer near the Privacy Policy Text—but only if you set the Survey Email field.

Redirect URL—This is the URL to which the page should be redirected.

Privacy Policy URL—This is the URL you want the users to navigate to when they click the privacy policy text you set in the Privacy Policy Text field. If you leave the Privacy Policy Text field blank, you cannot set the Privacy Policy URL field, so make sure you also set that field when setting this field.

Survey Email—Enter the email address of the person you want to be contacted. Remember to set the Survey Email Text field as well when you use this field. Leaving the Survey Email Text field blank shows “Contact survey owner” text by default in the email.

You can also change the labels of the Next, Previous, and Submit buttons if you like.

Before letting users fill out the survey, you need to publish it by clicking the Publish button on the ribbon. After the survey is published, you can test it by clicking the Test button.

However, to get more details about who responded to a survey, you can use one of the following snippets found on the command bar:

Copy Snippet

Copy Face Snippet

Copy Rating Snippet

Copy NPS Snippet

To find these snippets, click the ... in the navigation bar (refer to Figure 34.29). Clicking any of them copies it to the Windows Clipboard, and you can then paste it into an email activity created in Dynamics CRM. This code is then rendered differently for each recipient of the email, with an URL containing information that can later be used to link the response with the contact who completed the survey.

1. Create a new survey.

2. Enter a name for the survey and click Save.

3. Switch to the Survey Designer (see Figure 34.30).

4. Click the edit button on the Welcome section area by clicking on the pencil, to go to the section form and make edits.

5. As shown in Figure 34.31, enter Welcome in the text box under the General section and use the (Pipe) drop-down to select Customer. The text _CUSTOMER_PIPED_DATA_ is appended to Welcome, as shown in Figure 34.32

6. Click Save and go back to your survey.

7. Publish the survey by clicking Publish.

When distributing the survey, you need to concatenate the piped data with the code snippet generated from the Copy Snippet actions.

To see the piped data on the Welcome page, after you publish the survey, click Copy Snippet, as shown in Figure 34.33.

CRM copies something like the following to the Windows Clipboard:

Click here to view code image

[Survey-Snippet-Start]6f94ea2e-b9e4-e511-80d4-c4346bac03ac[Survey-Snippet-End]

You need to add the piped data between the end of the GUID and before [Survey-Snippet-End]. For example, if you want to send an email to the customer Jim, you need to add the customer parameter with the value Jim, as shown here:

Click here to view code image

[Survey-Snippet-Start]6f94ea2e-b9e4-e511-80d4-c4346bac03ac|customer=Jim
[Survey-Snippet-End]

The easiest way to test this is to go to a contact/lead or an account and send a direct email and copy the snippet into the body of the email, as shown in Figure 34.34.

You can now click Save to generate the link the user has to click to complete the survey, as shown in Figure 34.35.

When the customer Jim clicks this link, he sees a Welcome page with his name on it, as shown in Figure 34.36.

The idea is to create email templates for surveys, so you can make the names dynamic, based on the selected record, when using the code snippet (see Figure 34.37).

You can then use email templates on workflows or you can go to the contacts list, select the contacts you want to send the survey to, and click Send Direct Email to select the email template.

As mentioned earlier, you can use piped data to prepopulate an answer to a question. This can be useful if you have a question that asks for the customer name but you want to let the customer see his name prepopulated and allow him to change it if he wants. For this configuration, you need to edit the question in the question form and expand the Advanced tab. You can then see the piped option set in the Pre-populate with Pipe field, as shown in Figure 34.38.

To test this change, make sure you publish the survey and use the same email template. The customer will see the question prepopulated as shown in Figure 34.39.

Table 34.1 shows the piped variables available and how to use them in your email templates.

For the example shown in Figure 34.40, there are three questions:

Are you satisfied? (single response, yes/no)

Why are you not satisfied? (long answer)

What do you like most? (long answer)

Because the last two questions depend on the response to the first question, you need to create a response routing. You can click the drop-down arrow to the right of Survey to access the Response Routings option (see Figure 34.41).

Click the Response Routings option, enter a name for the new response routing, such as satisfied customer, and click Save (see Figure 34.42).

After you save the new response routing, you can click the + on the Conditions tab to create a new condition. In this case, you select the Are you satisfied? question and the Yes answer; leave Operator set to Selected (see Figure 34.43). Click Save & Close.

Now in the response routing form you need to create a new action, so click the + on the Actions tab and click on New.

Select Client in the Scope field and enter a name for the response action (such as “show What do you like most? Question”). In the Client tab select the survey you are working on, set Action to Show, set Page to Page 1, and set Section to Page 1. Also set the question you want to show (see Figure 34.44).

You need to create another response routing for the “not satisfied” condition and response action much the same way you did for the “satisfied” condition.

To see the different types of actions you can take here, refer to the “Response Actions” section, earlier in this chapter.

The dashboard shows four charts:

Survey Invites Sent by Survey

Total Response Count by Survey

Average Satisfaction Rating by Survey

Score as Percentage All Routes by Survey

You can run any of these predefined reports:

Net Promoter Score

Question Summary

Survey Export

Survey Summary

The Voice of the Customer solution also come with five custom roles that help users administer or design surveys:

Survey Administrator

Survey Designer

Survey Feedback Publisher

Survey Service

Survey User

Responses are processed and retrieved in CRM every 15 minutes. If you don’t see them in CRM after that amount of time, you can retrigger the response processing by selecting Settings > Solutions > Voice of the Customer and going to the Configuration section.