Flex surveys

Flex surveys is a best practice to optimize response rate by offering survey takers the option of answering additional questions. Survey takers are presented with a short version of the survey, which they can submit directly, or they can choose to visit the next page and provide more information.

This method reduces survey abandonment rates and increases responses for your most important questions, while still providing complete data from those survey takers that are willing to invest more time on the survey. This type of survey is specially useful for capturing data from detractors that aren't engaged enough to answer a large number of questions and would have otherwise dropped out.

Tip: If your company uses survey data to determine compensation or to make investment decisions, keep in mind that replacing regular surveys for Flex surveys might have an impact on overall scores. Consider performing an A/B test (or parallel test) to determine what impact the flex survey will have on the captured metrics.

In the example below, respondents are presented with a short survey and then another question that invites them to answer more questions. If they choose No, the survey is submitted and they are taken to the “Thank-you” page. If they choose Yes, they are taken to additional survey pages.

Multiple choice question (Likelihood to recommend) answers trigger either a "Thank-you" page or an additional page.

Important: Survey takers who indicate that they would like to continue with the survey have to complete all of the additional questions and click Finish on the final page for the survey to be completed.

Create a flex survey

To create a Flex survey:

  1. Click a new survey and add a new page to it.
  2. In this page include all of the main questions that you want all survey takers to answer. Include another question that invites survey takers to answer additional questions either on other pages or later on in the same page.
    Tip: Take into account these wording suggestions for Flex surveys (with Yes/No Choice sets):

    • Thank you for your responses so far. Are you willing to take a few minutes to answer some additional questions?

    • Thank you for your feedback. If you have the time we’d love to know even more. Would you be willing to answer additional questions?

    • Thank you for your feedback. If you have a few more minutes, we would like to provide additional insight into how ________ can improve your future experience. Would you be willing to answer a few more questions?

  3. On the page configuration pane, set Button label to Next.

  4. Optionally, if the extra questions that you only want to ask to those survey takers that agreed to answer more are displayed in subsequent pages, create a one or more additional pages in your survey. For each of these pages with additional questions, add some Page logic to depend on the result of the question that invites survey takers to answer more questions. For example, the Rule on your additional pages might be as follows: Client additional questions = Yes (q_client_additionalquestions_yn = 1).

  5. Optionally, if the extra questions that you only want to ask to those survey takers that agreed to answer more are displayed later on the same page, add some Display logic for each of these questions. For example, the Rule on your additional questions might be as follows: Client additional questions = Yes (q_client_additionalquestions_yn = 1).

    Note: If, on opening the survey, the answer to the flex question is No (null or false), the button shows Finish instead of Next. To say Next, either need preset its value to Yes (true) or set up the conditional questions so they are Yes (true) for null.

  6. Add an End page to add a "Thank-you" page. Do not add Page logic as this page is shown to all respondents.