Seeking Advice: Declining Survey Response Rates & Link Trust | XM Community
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Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of this community regarding a challenge I'm facing with our customer experience program.

We've noticed a drop in our survey response rates year-over-year, even though key factors like our target audience, survey length, timing, and incentives haven't significantly changed.

One potential factor I'm considering is whether there's a growing general distrust among recipients about clicking on links in emails, perhaps due to increased awareness of phishing and security concerns. We're definitely not phishing, but it's possible people are becoming more cautious overall.

 

​@JamesScutt and I are curious to know: 

  1. Are others experiencing similar declines in survey response rates?
  2. Do you suspect link distrust is playing a role?
  3. What strategies or alternative methods (beyond standard email links) have you found effective for boosting response rates? (e.g., Has anyone had success with vanity URLs, short links, QR codes in emails, embedding the first question, in-app surveys, timely pop-ups, or other approaches?)

Any insights, experiences, or creative solutions you could share would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Amanda

Hi ​@AmandaGlynn 

Thanks for highlighting this - you're spot on. Lots of us in customer experience are facing the same drop in survey responses. It really feels like people are a little more wary of clicking email links these days, and that's understandable with all the security worries out there.

Ive tried lots of things in the past, like putting the first question right in the email, using QR codes, and shorter, branded web addresses. In-app surveys and well-timed pop-ups were showing some promise too.

It'd be good to hear what else people are trying and what experience others have of this in their own organisations.

We would live to gear your thoughts/words of wisdom? Any advice that could help?

Hello Everyone,

Here are some ideas we’ve used in order to increase response rates and build trust in the email body

  • We initially had our “Start the Survey” button too far down in the messaging, so an individual on their phone would have to scroll down before finding it. We moved that to right after the welcome message where we placed the individuals First/Last Name
  • We list 2-3 brief examples of how our leadership has heard specific experience feedback has changed or is in the process of changing our care delivery based on the feedback from our patients.
  • We have placed our main email and a phone number for people with questions to contact us. 
    • I will be notified when a patient has asked if the email is legitimate, in these cases, I try and reach our personally to the individual who asked if the invitation was legitimate or not

It's reassuring (in a weird way) to hear someone else is dealing with this. I've seeing the same drop-off in in survey responses, and it's definitely got me scratching my head.

 

It does feel like people are more cautious about clicking on anything these days, i know i am, and I can't really blame them with all the phishing scams out there.

 

We did experiment with a few of the things suggested. Putting the first question directly in the email seemed to help a little for a while, and we're also playing around with QR codes. I'm finding that anything we can do to make it feel less like a random, suspicious link seems to help.

 

I've also found that including a really clear "this is why we're asking" section in the email helps. And I've even started including direct contact information in the invitation, so people can easily verify that it's a legitimate survey. It's a bit more work, but it seems to make a difference.

 

I'm really interested to hear what others have tried too! It feels like we're all in this together, trying to figure out how to get people to trust us enough to give us their feedback.

 

Thanks for starting this discussion.

I agree with what’s been said.  My personal and professional emails have been getting some very sophisticated phishing emails that make me hesitant to open links and surveys and I do believe this can impact response rates.

Most of the surveys I send are geared toward students, which are notoriously hard to get responses from.  I’ve had more requests lately to provide a QR code.

We have a “report phishing” button, and before every survey we notify IT to be prepared for a surge in reports. We added my personal contact information to the bottom of the invitation for those qho had questions and it did seem to help a bit, but I think the overall distrust in an invitation coming from an external org is to be expected these days. We have a branded custom domain from qualtrics and we worked with IT to make sure the domain was added to our internal firewall list so our emails don’t have the “External Email” banner at the top. Again, these things helped but I believe overall our employees are just more suspicious of clicking on a link. Our biggest help came from our communications. We now launch an offical communication announcing the survey to the group before we send out the invitations so they have the reassurance that it is legitimate. I hope some of that helps. 

Our response rates seem to be fairly consistent. We use site intercepts that pop up on desktop or mobile browsers, with branding that is consistent with the look and feel of our websites which helps with authenticity. I think that the key is making sure that the messaging comes across as actually coming from our organization, with a limited request for feedback (e.g., not a long survey), and agree with the feedback here about the importance of showing that we are listening to feedback and acting on it.

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