Data: it can be a confusing and intimidating concept, but it really doesn’t have to be. You have customers, and those customers have names and email addresses – and there you have the basis of your data feed. Theoretically, you could start surveying based on just that information, but that would be a missed opportunity. You want your data feed to be as rich as possible to optimize your analysis of the survey results. And crucially, you should be surveying the right people.



Who should you survey?


First things first – you are surveying individual contacts, so try to avoid “info@office.com” email addresses. For each customer you should have multiple contacts and ideally you should have contacts at different levels of the organization: operational, tactical, and strategic/C-level.


Read more about the importance of surveying different contacts within one organization in our blog post Why "Voice of the User" is not "Voice of the Customer" in B2B.


 

What information should you include in your data feed?


Your data feed should allow you to:


1. Identify the individual contact you are surveying so that you can personalize the survey invitation and get in touch with a contact based on their survey response. 


Relevant fields:

  • Customer number
  • First name
  • Last name
  • Email address
  • Phone number (for SMS surveying, the format should not contain 00 or +. Example of a UK phone number: 442012345678)
  • Language (see Language codes)
  • Country (see Country codes)


2. Identify who that contact is inside their organization so that you can gauge their influence and by extension the weight of their opinion.


Relevant fields:

  • Job position
  • Job level (accepted values: A (Strategic e.g. CxO), B (Tactical), C (Operational), or U (Unknown)

 

The Job level will allow you to see, on an Account level, what roles in the organisation have been surveyed, if they responded, and what NPS score they selected.

 






3. Identify the type of organization, and how important they are to you.


Relevant fields:

  • Account
  • Account number / ID

 

Uploading the company that each contact belongs to allows for very useful analytics:


 


 




4. Identify who owns the customer inside your organization – who is the feedback for?


Relevant fields:

 

You’ll be able to filter the results by this information, and compare results from different segments:

 





5. In order to send the correct campaign, you will likely set up your recipient filters by touchpoint.

 

Relevant fields:

  • Touchpoint (example values: Relationship, Support, Implementation, Product, Post Demo)

 

 

There are various ways to get your survey records uploaded to CustomerGauge:

In-App Upload 
Integration Hub

API



File Size: Please ensure your Data file size for API's is not greater than 2MB and for In-App Upload in not greater than 20MB.


File Formats: Data can be uploaded in CSV, XLS or XML format. 



Sample data files


To get started with uploading data, you can download a sample file that's based on your system's fields and labels.

To download this file follow these steps:

  1. Go to "Setup" → "Import Data";
  2. Click the "Upload File" button;
  3. Click the "Download Data Structure", followed by the type of file you would want a sample for.  Choose Transactional Data for Automated Campaigns. Choose Historical Data is data from a previous NPS programme - find out more about it in the Import Data FAQ.)



This will download a file with the system's default data structure and some test data in it - use this sample file to create your own customer records.




Additional format tips when preparing your data for upload:

  • Email field – this is a mandatory requirement for the invite. You can load this data but the records with no email will be rejected. It’s best to remove those before you load.
  • Datetime field – NB: this needs to be yyyy-mm-dd.
  • Mobile number field – the format for this needs to be country code + number, no leading “0”. So (for AU) 0416040566 -> 61416040566.  For the UK it will be 44xxxx etc. If you’re not using SMS for survey invites you could really remove this from your load if it’s too hard to clean up.
  • Missing values – except for the mandatory columns it is possible to miss values if you don’t have them. Customer/IDs will just get blanks in their records


Data Import (Advanced)


Will you be uploading a lot of data, or very frequently? In that case, you might want to try a different upload method, like API or an automated integration with your CRM. Have a look at the dedicated information on alternative upload methods here:


CustomerGauge's RESTful API set (Developer Documentation)

Automated Integration

SFTP upload method


Of course, you can always set up any of the above methods of data upload at a later stage - and use our regular Import Data feature for now to get yourself live and on your way!