Feedback responses

Feedback responses (previously known as Rapid responses) are responses sent from the Responses Form report and Responses Feed module to close the loop with respondents. When clicking the Respond button on the Responses Form report or the Responses Feed module, you are presented with a list of one or more templates to use, where the contents are populated when authoring the message. For more information, see Respond to feedback.

Feedback responses templates available under the Respond button

You can create:

  • Smart response — Feedback response that generates personalized and contextually appropriate response using generative AI, inline with the company's established standards and communication preferences. It simplifies the response drafting workflows, elevating the Closed Loop Feedback (CLF) process and allowing frontline personnel to foster meaningful experience relationships.

    Restriction: This feature is part of a generative AI feature set available to customers with the requisite subscription agreement. Once the agreement is signed, feature entitlement is automatic after 5-7 business days. Activation may require additional configuration work. For more information, contact Medallia Support.
    Restriction: This feature is not available on Medallia GovCloud. For more information, contact your Medallia representative.
    Important:

    Smart Response Version Upgrades

    As part of Medallia's version upgrade strategy, any refinements made to the prompt will be incorporated and released as part of the regular release cycle. Smart Responses that have been created in Medallia Admin Suite will automatically receive the latest updates, ensuring they always reflect the most recent improvements.

  • Templates — Feedback response templates manually created to:

    • Email — Reply to feedback coming from surveys and other signals.
    • Messaging — Use when responding to Medallia Conversations feedback.
      Restriction: This functionality is currently in Beta. During this early access period, clients in the Beta program can learn about, try out, and test this feature, and they can provide feedback about it. This stage allows Medallia to refine the feature's design before its general availability. Be aware that functionality may change before then.
    • Social Review — Respond to feedback from Medallia Social Feedback.

To use and access Feedback responses, see Access Shared assets.

Feedback response screen

Feedback response screen lists all the available responses for that particular company instance. By default, responses are sorted by the last modified date and can be filtered by Type, Channel, Program, and Status.

Layer 1 1 2 3 4 5

  1. Filters

  2. Search bar

  3. Details pane

  4. Details pane tabs

  5. Details pane menu

Details pane

Click a response to reveal its details pane, which shows:

  • Details tab — Summarizes the most important information of your response, such as:

    • Status — Determines when to use this response and connects it to an existing program. For more information, see Display order.

    • Type — Whether the response is a Smart response or a Template.

    • Channel — Whether the response is used to respond to general feedback, Social Feedback, or Medallia Conversations.

    • Priority — Only for Templates. Priority number given to the setting. For more information, see Display order.

    • Branding — Only for Smart responses. Whether the Smart response has Branding settings.

    • Created — Date and user that created the template.

    • Last modified — Date and user that last modified the template.

    • Show Smart Response when or Template when — Displays a template or a smart response on All Feedback Responses or Specific Feedback Responses. When you select the latter option, Add Conditions modal is displayed to build conditions.

  • Used In tab — Experience programs where the feedback response is being used.

Details pane menu

ClickMore vertical icon the details pane menu to:

Edit Smart response / template details
Modifies the Smart response or template name, content type, and advanced settings (only for Templates).
Activate/ Deactivate Smart response/ template
Whether to use an Smart response or template, or not to respond to feedback. Deactivating a Smart response or template changes its status to Inactive.
Duplicate
Creates a copy of the Smart response or template.
Delete Smart response/ template

Deletes the Smart response or template.

Feedback response settings

By default, Feedback response templates have some settings that apply globally to all templates. Click Settings icon settings to view and/or modify:

Email options

Important: Experience Cloud automatically uses the From domain related to the return-path domain configured for Email masking.
Enable CC for Feedback response
Users can add other Users (and external email addresses) to communications with a respondent.
Add sender's email to CC for Feedback response
Users can automatically add the sender's email address in the CC line of the response, which is signaled when composing a response. If not selected, the sender's email is not automatically populated and may be input manually.
Make Signature settings editable by users
Users can view or edit the Signature settings. If not selected, Experience Cloud automatically populates the Name and Email fields with the user's First name, Last name, and Email fields. Ensure that all users that can use a Feedback response have a valid value for the Email field (e_email).
Require Email field for Feedback response

The Email field (e_email) must have a value for the Respond button to appear.

Hide email addresses from "View Read by Others"
Email addresses do not appear in the View Read by Others dialog.
Private Mode in Feedback Response

Respondents cannot see who has been copied on the response or read any of the responses sent by those on the CC line. Select this when discussing issues with colleagues in private before following up with the respondent.

Specify field used for Feedback response by role
Selects one or more field(s) to replace Email field (e_email) for different roles. By default, the Email field is used. For example, for the Store Manager and District Manager roles you might need to use Contact email field instead of Email.

Messaging options

Restriction: This functionality is currently in Beta. During this early access period, clients in the Beta program can learn about, try out, and test this feature, and they can provide feedback about it. This stage allows Medallia to refine the feature's design before its general availability. Be aware that functionality may change before then.
Messaging Thread expiration date
Number of days that Response thread in Responses Form is valid.
Make Messaging settings editable by other users
Users can view or edit the Signature settings. If not selected, Experience Cloud automatically populates the Name and Email fields with the user's First name, Last name, and Email fields. Ensure that all users that can use a Feedback response have a valid value for the Email field (e_email).

Create and manage Smart response

Roles with Manage Smart Response and Manage Feedback Response Templates and Settings permissions can create and manage Smart Responses. For more information, see the Feedback section listed in Administrative permissions.

Complete these steps to create a new Smart response:

Restriction: This feature is inactive by default. Ask your Medallia expert to file a Feature activation request with Medallia Support.

  1. From Feedback response screen, click New Response.

  2. Under Smart response, select Email.

  3. Enter a name for the Smart response.

  4. Optionally, enter some description.

  5. Configure the Display order.

    Restriction: Rule is only available for Templates.

  6. Select either to show the Smart response to all Feedback responses or for some specific ones. Click Add conditions to build the response rule. For more information, see Logic, rules, and conditions.

  7. Click Continue.

  8. Finish setting up the Smart response on the Smart response editor.

Steps to create a new Smart response under Feedback responses screen.

Manage Smart responses

To modify a Smart response content, click Edit. Click the More vertical icon details pane menu for more options.

Note: To track Smart response performance, usage, and adoption, and to obtain metrics, use the Feedback Response report in the Health Watch BPP dashboard. For more information, contact your Medallia.

Create and manage Templates

Complete these steps to create a new Template response:

  1. From Feedback response screen, click New Response.

  2. Under Templates, select template type: Email, Social review, or Messaging.

    Select a template in the Feedback Response screen

  3. Enter a name for the template.

    New template screen

  4. Optionally, enter some description.

  5. Configure the Display order.

    Restriction: Rule is only available for Templates.

  6. Select either to show the template to all Feedback responses or for some specific ones. Click Add conditions to build the response rule. For more information, see Logic, rules, and conditions.

    Adding conditions to build a response rule

  7. Click Continue.

  8. Finish setting up the template on the Template editor.

Manage templates

To modify a template content, click Edit. Click the More vertical icon details pane menu for more options.

Display order

Display order determine when to use a response.

When a record matches multiple responses with the same rule, the response with the highest display order (the lowest number) is used. The display order number is not set directly; instead, the number is determined by the relative position to the other responses. If you change the position of one response, the order number of all other responses is subject to change to ensure that there are not two responses with the same order number.

Custom instructions

Custom instructions are guidelines you give to an LLM to tell it what you want. Think of it as giving directions to a helpful assistant:

Important details to keep in mind

  • Medallia does not validate the quality of the AI-generated responses for custom instructions crafted by the end users.

  • Adding new custom instructions influences the quality of the AI-generated responses. Thus, we encourage thoroughly validating AI-generated responses before activating Smart responses to ensure they align with your desired outcomes.

Recommendations for custom instructions

Apply the below design principles when crafting a new instruction:

  • Sentence structure

    • Write direct, clear and precise instructions.

    • Target one specific behavior per instruction.

    • Begin instructions with action verbs ("include," "omit").

    • Include concrete examples in parentheses following each directive ("9 out of 10").

    • Avoid using tentative language ("should," "might," "consider").

    • Avoid using use ambiguous terms (" "try to," "generally").

    • Avoid using subjective qualifiers ("inappropriate," "reasonable").

Validation checklist for custom instructions

Below are a few points to take into account to assess the efficacy of your instructions:

  • Binary — Can be evaluated as clearly followed or violated (e.g., Yes/No).

  • Specific — Targets identifiable text patterns or behaviors.

  • Actionable — Provides clear guidance on what to do vs avoid.

Tips and best practices

Below are a few recommendations on how to use Feedback responses to get the best results.

Smart responses

  • Create a single Smart Response to cover all your use cases.

    However, if you operate multiple brands or line of businesses, you might need separate Smart Responses. In such cases, set up one Smart Response per brand or line of business, or experience program, as needed, for better organization and effectiveness.

  • Key parameters considered to generate Smart Response:

    • Main score, as configured in the Responses Form report and Responses Feed.

    • Comments, as configured in the Responses Form report and Responses Feed module.

    • Title of the user responding to feedback if and as configured in theSignature settings.

    • Company name, Description, and Instructions as configured in the selected Smart response.

    • Internal System Prompt for Smart Response.

    • Presence/Absence of e-mail and phone in the employee signatures.

  • Generally, Smart Response output remains unchanged. However, it may generate different responses for a given feedback if two or more requests hit Medallia Experience Cloud server at a given time. Do not regenerate responses by refreshing the page as most should be unchanged, unless the load to the server is high.

  • To track Smart response performance:

Templates

  • When using the HTML editor, the HTML template must contain the variable $MARKUP_BODY$ which pipes the content of the response contained in the Plain text tab.