GetFeedback, a platform that gives users without strong technical skills the ability to create surveys that appear professionally designed, has launched an updated version with nine new features.
Users can select from a number of different languages; add logic to surveys that, for example, changes the survey questions in real time based on how users respond; personalize surveys; and add custom URLs.
Kraig Swensrud, founder of GetFeedback and former CMO at Salesforce.com, said the company was initially launched around the idea that many companies were constantly reaching out to their customers to try to understand what they think and feel but ultimately coming up empty.
"We had over 100,000 customers and we used every product. We were seeing internally that our open rate on mobile devices was a little over forty percent at that time," Swensrud said.
Swensrud said that many companies' response rates were dropping because items presented in some formats didn't fit a mobile screen and weren't "branded or engaging." Companies also need to take into account that customers' attention spans are different when they're on the phone than if they're sitting at their desk.
"I thought, "This is the experience that we're giving to our customers?" Swensrud said. "We're preaching the cloud, and something has to change. Maybe there's technology out there that can do this in the area of product, marketing, and customer support, but there basically wasn't."
Swensrud said he thinks of this as solving what he calls a 10-year innovation gap in this customer survey software market. "That's why I left Salesforce to start this company."
The next generation of GetFeedback includes options such the ability to create surveys in different languages and translate them to survey recipients using English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Dutch, Danish, and Turkish.
Another feature is deeper integration with Salesforce, which enables mappings and responses to be saved directly into Salesforce. Customers can also use a custom brand control, or white labeling; and custom integration APIs, which let companies automatically get survey responses from third-party systems.
GetFeedback.com Spring'14 is available to the company's customer portfolio, which includes Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Oracle Responsys.
Swensrud said that if companies took a deeper look into their own data, the use of mobile would be a standout as a way to engage in better customer relationships.
"Now over fifty percent of surveys are opened," Swensrud says. A few years ago, he adds, that wasn't the case. "Companies are just catching up with the fact that their customers are walking around with phones. Now they're just realizing that half of all communications that we're sending them are being opened on their Androids and iPhones. This is going to grow, so we better change how we operate our company. We're giving you the ability to take that upgrade. Also, it's not just upgrading the survey software but upgrading your entire customer service engagement process."