We all know customer service has a major impact on customer relationships. It makes sense—customers tend to talk to customer service more than any other department, so their experiences and opinions are based largely on those interactions.

Each individual experience affects customer satisfaction and loyalty, and as customers share their stories online and offline, these interactions gradually influence public brand perception too.

Needless to say, it’s smart to measure the quality of customer service, and most companies do. But general customer satisfaction surveys tend to miss the details that impact customer loyalty the most.

Automating CSAT Surveys with Salesforce

When you automate survey distribution, it’s far easier to capture timely customer feedback that can truly benefit your organization.

Today we’ll dig into the most popular use case among GetFeedback for Salesforce customers: sending CSAT surveys automatically when a case is closed in Service Cloud.

If you haven’t yet integrated CSAT with Salesforce, make sure to read our recent post: How to Measure Customer Satisfaction with Salesforce. It covers Steps 1-4 in more detail.

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Create your case closed CSAT survey.

First things first, you’ll design your CSAT survey. Case closed CSAT surveys differ from general customer satisfaction surveys since they’re measuring a specific customer service interaction.

Some case closed CSAT best practices to consider

Keep your survey as brief as possible—3 or 4 questions max.
Make sure your survey design reflects your brand.
Lead with a simple rating scale question: How satisfied are you with the support you received today?
Add a short answer question for customers to elaborate on their score: Please explain your rating.
If you’d like additional feedback, try a general question: Would you like to share any additional feedback on our products or services?
Or toss in the Net Promoter Score question if it feels appropriate: How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?

Try out this live North Face example, which includes 5 questions.

I suggest reading up on CSAT survey best practices to familiarize yourself with the basics. Our Head of Support also details our own approach to case closed CSAT surveys in her post, Why We Changed the Way We Run CSAT Surveys.

Step 2: Create a custom object for your case closed CSAT survey in Salesforce.

Next, you’ll create a custom object in Salesforce to house your survey responses. Here’s an example of our custom CSAT Survey object:

CSAT Survey custom object - CSAT with Salesforce

Your custom object should contain a field for every survey question/answer you plan to save in Salesforce, as well as the data you’re passing from Salesforce to GetFeedback with merge fields (more on those in Step 4).

Creating lookup relationships between objects

Custom objects typically have a lookup relationship with a standard object. Most customers running CSAT surveys will build a lookup from the custom survey object to the case object in Salesforce.

You can think of a lookup relationship as a parent/child relationship between your custom survey object and any other standard or custom object in Salesforce. For example, your customer service team will likely want the custom survey object to have a lookup relationship to a contact, case, or even both.

As shown in the example above, we’ve created a lookup relationship between our CSAT Survey object and the Contact object.

Creating custom fields

In addition to your lookup relationships, you’ll also want to add a custom field for each survey answer you plan to store in your custom object. As you can see above, our CSAT survey object has some custom fields on it, like Date and Score.

If you want to map the CSAT score respondents select, you’ll create a number field, like “CSAT Score.” If you want to store open-ended comments too, you’ll create a text field, like “CSAT Comments.”

Make sure to reference this list of Supported Salesforce Field Data Type Mappings while selecting your fields.

Step 3: Set up your Salesforce survey mappings.

Next up, you’ll return to GetFeedback to create your Salesforce mappings. Within your case closed CSAT survey, navigate to the Salesforce tab and open up the mapping tool. This is where you’ll specify how survey responses map to Salesforce fields.

Salesforce mappings - CSAT with Salesforce

Select “Create a new” record. Then, choose exactly which record you’d like to map responses to.

The mapper will bring up all object names, custom and standard, that you have in your Salesforce org. Select the custom survey object you just created.

Each new survey response will live under whichever object your custom survey object has a lookup relationship with, as long as you’re passing in the correct IDs through your survey URL.

Step 4: Make your CSAT survey “Salesforce-aware.”

Every GetFeedback survey has a direct URL that you can distribute in a number of ways. You’ll find it under Distribute > Share a Link in the survey builder.

distribute survey - case closed CSAT workflow

Adding merge fields to a survey URL

You’ll build on this URL using merge fields, which are essentially dynamic fields you can use in a custom URL or email template to pull in values from a Salesforce record. In this case, we’ll add merge fields onto the end of our survey URL to make our CSAT survey “Salesforce-aware.”

When designing a case closed CSAT survey workflow, the most important merge field is the Case ID, because you want each customer’s survey response associated with a specific case. To create that association, you simply add the case merge field—{!Case.ID}—onto the end of your survey URL, with a question mark between the two.

So, let’s say this is your survey URL:www.getfeedback.com/r/iSt5lMns

Here’s what that would look like with the case merge field tacked on:www.getfeedback.com/r/iSt5lMns?CaseID={!Case.ID}

You might want to associate other data with each survey response too. That means you’ll need to add additional merge fields.

Adding multiple merge fields to a survey URL

You’ll separate each additional merge field with an ampersand (&). Let’s say you plan to track CSAT score by agent. You’d now add the agent merge field—usually {!User.Username} or {!Case.OwnerFullName}—to the end of the URL.

Here’s what your survey URL might look like with both the case and agent fields tacked on:www.getfeedback.com/r/iSt5lMns?CaseID={!Case.ID}&AgentName={!User.Username}

If you’re creating your email template in Salesforce, you can just select merge fields from the dropdown menu provided instead of writing them in manually. Merge field syntax varies among 3rd party email providers though, so be sure to confirm merge field syntax if you’re using another provider.

Step 5: Design your CSAT survey email template in Salesforce.

Your case closed CSAT survey email is the primary component of this workflow. When agents close cases, Salesforce will automatically send the CSAT survey email to the contact on the case.

Distributing a CSAT survey via email

There are two ways to send a CSAT survey over email:

Include your unique survey URL as a hyperlink in the body of the email.
Embed the first question of the survey into an HTML email, so customers can respond without leaving their inboxes.

The first option is pretty straightforward—you just paste the link you created in Step 4 into an email or hyperlink text, like Take the survey!

Embedding a CSAT question into an HTML email is a bit more complex, so we’ll explain below.

Embedding a CSAT question into an HTML email

We recommend embedding your first survey question into your email for a couple reasons. First, it minimizes the effort it takes to respond, which boosts engagement and gives you more accurate data. Second, it looks pretty sweet.

In the example above, each button would link to your unique survey URL, with a slight adjustment that tells GetFeedback and Salesforce which score the customer chose. We’re using smiley faces here, but each one corresponds with a numerical score.

POOR = 1
FAIR = 2
GOOD = 3
GREAT = 4
EXCELLENT = 5

So, here’s what each URL would look like (without the merge fields):

Add the merge fields onto the end of each URL, and you end up with a unique URL for each smiley face:

POOR: www.getfeedback.com/r/iSt5lMns?score=1&CaseID={!Case.ID}&AgentName={!User.Username}
FAIR: www.getfeedback.com/r/iSt5lMns?score=2&CaseID={!Case.ID}&AgentName={!User.Username}
GOOD: www.getfeedback.com/r/iSt5lMns?score=3&CaseID={!Case.ID}&AgentName={!User.Username}
GREAT: www.getfeedback.com/r/iSt5lMns?score=4&CaseID={!Case.ID}&AgentName={!User.Username}
EXCELLENT: www.getfeedback.com/r/iSt5lMns?score=5&CaseID={!Case.ID}&AgentName={!User.Username}

Once your URLs are ready, you can design your HTML email in Salesforce or your 3rd party email service provider. You’ll need hosted images for your response buttons, which you can design or just find online.

Here’s the CSAT HTML template for this example:

To use it, just replace the survey URL with your own and verify the merge field syntax for every field.

Step 6: Create your case closed CSAT workflow in Salesforce.

After you’ve created your CSAT survey email template, you can move onto the Salesforce workflow. Make sure to reference Salesforce’s documentation on creating workflows if you’re not already familiar.

To send CSAT surveys every time a case is closed:

Begin creating the workflow rule for the Case Object.
Set the Rule Criteria to Case: Status equals Closed.
Set the Workflow Action to New Email Alert.
Finally, select the pre-built email template you just designed and set the Recipient Type to Contact.

For more details on creating case closed CSAT workflows—including how to send surveys on specific case closures only—check out our help desk article: Sending out a survey after closing a case in Salesforce

Step 7: Create internal alerts for low CSAT scores.

The ability to act on customer feedback in real time is arguably the most valuable part of the GetFeedback Salesforce integration.

Imagine getting a negative CSAT score from an important customer and having the power to loop in the account manager immediately. You can do that by designing a simple workflow rule in Salesforce.

Again, you can check out Salesforce’s documentation on creating workflows. We’ll cover this specific workflow below.

To create an email alert when you get a negative CSAT score:

Begin creating the workflow rule for your Custom Survey Object.
Set the Rule Criteria to Score less or equal 2 (the score you deem “low”).
Set the Workflow Action to New Email Alert.
Finally, select a pre-built email template and set the Recipient Type for your internal alert (likely the Account Owner or Manager).

In the example below, our Score field is called “case satisfaction” and we’re setting up an alert every time we receive a CSAT score of 2 or less.

This workflow will send an email alert to the customer’s account manager, so they can get in touch with them to resolve the issue.

Wrap-up

That’s it! Once you’ve checked off all the boxes above, be sure to test your survey workflow to verify that everything is working properly. Your survey response should map to Salesforce successfully and initiate the corresponding workflows.

The case closed CSAT survey workflow is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a great place to start as you build out your customer feedback program with Salesforce. Customer surveys ultimately need to drive positive results in order to prove their worth. By designing workflows that breed real action, you can make the most of customer feedback—and create major change in your organization.

Free CSAT Survey Template

Get the Template

Contact us if you’re interested in learning more about measuring CSAT with GetFeedback for Salesforce.

Creating a Case Closed CSAT Workflow with Salesforce

Adam Collins

Automating CSAT Surveys with Salesforce

Step 1: Create your case closed CSAT survey.

Some case closed CSAT best practices to consider

Step 2: Create a custom object for your case closed CSAT survey in Salesforce.