Marketing features

While the primary use of surveys is to gather performance data that helps you motivate and coach your team, you can also use Medallia Agent Connect to drive sales, improve customer loyalty and increase brand awareness.

  • Sharing to social networks
  • Following in social networks
  • Redirecting customers
  • Referrals

To drive the best results, you can use one marketing option at a time. You can, however, switch between marketing features as often as you like. Enable, disable, or switch between marketing features on the Marketing setup screen.

Sharing to social networks

Share functionality encourages your customers to share their positive service experiences in Twitter and Facebook. While you can choose to offer sharing in either Twitter or Facebook, Medallia encourages you to offer sharing in both, since this gives you the highest opportunity to drive shares.

Work with your marketing team to suggest language for your customers to share over social channels. Customers can customize this language before they post, but having a compelling suggested language helps to increase share rates, and enables you to control messaging more closely. Suggested language typically falls into two areas:

  • Brand building — Messaging that highlights the great service the customer received, including the name of the Team Member that helped the customer. This type of messaging helps to reinforce your focus on service excellence, and ensures potential customers are familiar with your brand.
  • Driving sales — Messaging that includes a discount code or a link to special offers, which help drive leads to sales.

Marketing configuration for social sharing

Complete the following steps to configure social sharing in Agent Connect:

  1. On the Marketing screen, click the Share to social networks field to enable this functionality.
  2. Turn the Twitter field On.
  3. In the Handle field, enter your company's Twitter handle.
  4. In the Text field, enter default text for the tweet.

    Customers can edit this text before sending the tweet.

  5. Turn the Facebook field On.
  6. In the Share link field, enter the URL you want embedded in customers' shared Facebook posts.
  7. In the Hashtag field, enter a hashtag you want included in Facebook posts.
  8. In the Quote field, enter the text you want added to customers' shared Facebook posts.

    Customers can edit this text before posting.

  9. Click Save.

    The Thank You page of your survey now includes links to share on social networks.

The following image shows an example of social sharing in Facebook:

Example of sharing on Facebook

Custom referrals in social sharing

Optionally, work with your Agent Connect Client Success Manager to use custom referral codes when sharing in social networks. For example, you might want different referral codes for specific customers.

  1. Update the customer data you send to Agent Connect to include a specific custom_id referral code for each customer.

    For example:

    {
      "customer": {
           "name": "Jane",
           "email": "janecustomer@example.com",
           "custom_id": "JANE83"
      },
      "channel": "phone",
      ...
    }
  2. Ask your Agent Connect Client Success Manager to enable this feature.

    When the feature is enabled, the Share to social networks box on the Marketing screen includes a new Referral codes tab.

  3. On the Referral codes tab, configure social sharing just as described in LINK, above, and include the %extCustomerId% variable in the text you wan to share.

    This variable inserts the custom_id referral code appropriate for the customer.

Following in social networks

If your marketing team is focused on increasing your social followers, select the Follow option. While you can choose to enable following for either Twitter or Facebook, Medallia encourages you use both, since this gives you the highest opportunity to increase your followers.

Consider the following best practices when using following in social networks:

  • Consider your marketing objectives when developing your social strategy. For example, you might be trying to acquire new customers, build your brand, improve customer loyalty, and so on.
  • Test different social messages regularly to maximize your share rates.
  • Track results using SC tracking links or codes.
  • Consider incorporating hashtags that are associated with specific campaigns, promotions, or taglines your company is currently highlighting. Rotate these hashtags as needed to keep your message fresh.
  • Encourage your social team to like and respond to as many posts as possible to amplify the impact.

Marketing configuration for social following

Complete the following steps to configure social following in Agent Connect:

  1. On the Marketing screen, click the Follow in social networks field to enable this functionality.
  2. Turn the Twitter field On.
  3. In the Handle field, enter your company's Twitter handle.
  4. Turn the Facebook field On.
  5. In the Facebook Page URL field, enter the URL of your company's Facebook page.
  6. Click Save.

    The Thank You page of your survey now includes links for customers to follow your company on social networks.

Redirecting customers

Using the redirect feature in Agent Connect, you can drive sign-ups to your loyalty program, or push your latest special offers and promotions.

Marketing configuration for redirects

Standard redirect configuration

  1. On the Marketing screen, click the Direct traffic back to your site field to enable this functionality.
  2. Select a Link type.
  3. Do one of the following, depending on the Link type you selected:
    • If you selected Text, enter the link Text you want customers to see in the Thank You page of the survey.
    • If you selected Image, click Upload, and then select an image you want customers to click in the Thank You page of the survey.

      Make sure your images use a standard Interactive Advertising Bureau "medium rectangle" size of 300x250 pixels. For best results with other sizes, use a 6:5 ratio, such as 180x150 pixels.

  4. In the Link to site field, enter the URL you want as the destination for customer clicks.
  5. Optionally turn On the Include generic tracking field.

    Use this option only if your company URL does not include tracking tags that attribute new traffic back to this source. Work with your company marketing team to determine whether your URL includes tracking.

  6. Click Save.

    The Thank You page of your survey now includes a link (as text or an image) that redirects customers to your website. For example:

    Thank You page with a text redirect

Advanced redirect configuration

As an advanced configuration, you can update the link and text of your redirect on a per-survey basis. This gives you an enhanced ability to target customers with relevant marketing actions specific to them at the end of a survey. For example, you might want to redirect customers in one region to a different website than customers in another region.

To use this option, begin by updating your API integration to send the correct link marketing text on a per-survey basis. Send requests to the Agent Connect endpoint at https://api.stellaconnect.net/v1/requests using the following format. The required updated fields are near the bottom, in bold.

{
  "customer": {
    "name": "Jane",
    "email": "janecustomer@example.com"
  },
  "employee": {
    "custom_id": "522743",
    "email": "paulagent@blancapeak.com"
  },
  "channel": "chat",
  "ext_interaction_id": "5000f00001ClBXZ",
  "external_url": "https://na63.salesforce.com/5000f00001ClBXZ",
  "do_not_send": true,
  "tags": [
    "product-defect",
    "return",
    "vip"
  ],
  "brand": "blancakids",
  "language": "en",
  "country": "us",
  "custom_properties": {
    "marketing_text": "Click here to join our loyalty program!",
    "marketing_url": "https://www.example.com"
  }
} 

On the Marketing screen in Agent Connect, set the following fields and then click Save:

  • Make sure the Link type field is set to Text.
  • If you are using customized text, in the Text field enter %custom_properties.marketing_text%.
  • If you are using customized links, in the Link to site field, enter %custom_properties.marketing_url%.
  • Make sure the Include generic tracking field is Off.

Friendbuy referrals

Agent Connect is integrated with Friendbuy, software that helps drive customer referrals. If your company uses Friendbuy, you can include a referral widget directly on the Thank You page of your Agent Connect survey.

Important: This functionality requires that your company is using Friendbuy FirstGen, and that you have created a Friendbuy widget for use in Agent Connect. For detailed information about integrating Friendbuy with Agent Connect, see Friendbuy.

Marketing configuration for Friendbuy referrals