Social Feedback data quality

When something changes about a source, unit, or rival, certain actions need to be carried out to ensure that the data in Medallia Experience Cloud remains accurate and consistent with the social sources. In some scenarios, all issues are sorted out automatically, though other scenarios require manual actions.

Sources and feedback issues

The following scenarios reflect common issues that may arise for sources and social feedback:

A URL is not registered in Experience Cloud

Click Report an issue and paste the source URL to add it directly to the unit. Once submitting the URL, it appears as Pending/Pending verification for approximately 24 hours, until Social Feedback collects feedback associated with the source. Each unit can only be assigned to a single URL per source.

Tip: Attempting to add a source might return the following error message: The URL you entered already exists for a different unit. If you believe this URL belongs to your property, please contact Medallia Support. A URL can only be tied to one property on the social database.

This error might occur when a single property is tied to multiple locations (for example, a hotel can have a restaurant, casino, etc.) but has only one TripAdvisor URL for all of them.

It can also occur when updates are not sync between Experience Cloud, the social database and the STR data base (in the case of hospitality).
Some feedback is missing on Experience Cloud
Click Report an issue and provide as much details as you can of the missing feedback (such as starting date, number of reviews, reviewers name, etc.). This triggers a case for Medallia Support to investigate.
Remove feedback from Experience Cloud

For most sources, Social Feedback deletes the original feedback (and their management response, if any) from Experience Cloud within the next 15 days after it is removed from their sites. Rival feedback is removed within the next 2 months and half after removed from their sites.

If any site-removed feedback prevails in Experience Cloud, contact Medallia Support including the survey ID.

Note: Outage time does not count when removing feedback from Experience Cloud.
Note that feedback from these sources cannot be removed:

For Google, Social Feedback cannot guarantee that reviews deleted in Google are correctly deleted in Experience Cloud since Google Places API do not support it.

Feedback is from a different unit
Click Delete icon delete next to the URL to delete it. If DELETE the historical record of review from this source is selected, all historical feedback collected from it is also junked. Social Feedback changes the status of the source URL to Inactive. To replace the URL, click Add URL to enter the correct URL match for the unit. This URL is verified manually by Social Feedback before is added, so there is no URL assigned to that unit until verified.
Feedback number in the source site doesn't match feedback in Experience Cloud
Besides displaying feedback from their own sites, certain sources also collect and publicly show feedback from other similar sources, such as in the case of Cars.com that also displays reviews left in DealerRater together with its own reviews. Social Feedback automatically filters out feedback from other sources in the following cases:
SourceWhat is filtered out
AgodaReviews left in Booking.
BookingReviews moderated by Booking.
Cars.comReviews left in Dealer Rater.
ElongReviews left in other sites.
Expedia Reviews left in Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Wotif.
Facebook groupsSome posts and comments may be filtered out if Social Feedback cannot determine the sentiment (positive/negative).
Facebook Posts & CommentsPosts and comments from the page owner; some posts and comments may be filtered out if Social Feedback cannot determine the sentiment (positive/negative).
Hotel.comReviews left in Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Wotif.
IkyuReviews left in Yahoo Travel.
InstagramSome posts and comments may be filtered out if Social Feedback cannot determine the sentiment (positive/negative).
OrbitzReviews left in Expedia, Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Wotif.
TravelocityReviews left in Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, and Wotif.
TripadvisorReviews whose score is 0 and those without content date.
TwitterTweets from the account owner; some posts and comments may be filtered out if Social Feedback cannot determine the sentiment (positive/negative).

Unit issues

Below are some common scenarios of how units may change over time and which changes require a manual action:

A unit is deactivated in Experience Cloud
After a unit is deactivated, all feedback tied to this unit is junked, including historical feedback. Experience Cloud no longer collects feedback for it. For more information, see Disable Social Feedback.
A unit is edited in Experience Cloud to change its brand, name or address.
The unit is likely to cause sources to alter the URLs used for the unit. To re-trigger the discovery of external source URLs:

  1. Switch into the a role without dynamic filtering (multi-select filters) enabled, such as Social Implementer role, also called InternalAdmin (Social).

  2. Navigate to Social Feed Links by Unit > Existing Links screen.

  3. Unmatch this unit to re-trigger unit mapping and source discovery.

If you are a customer or partner, contact Medallia Support to re-trigger the discovery of external source URLs.

A new unit is added to Experience Cloud
The discovery of source URLs is triggered automatically if all units are active. If all units are not active, ensure the new unit belongs to a Unit group activated for Social Feedback.
Check the URLs are mapped in 4-6 weeks after unit is created to ensure source discovery is complete (URLs can take time to get created on source sites). To re-trigger the discovery of external source URLs:

  1. Switch into the a role without dynamic filtering (multi-select filters), such as Social Implementer role, also called InternalAdmin (Social).

  2. Navigate to the Social Feed Links by Unit > Existing Links screen.

  3. Unmatch this unit to re-trigger unit mapping and source discovery

If you are a customer or partner, contact Medallia Support to re-trigger the discovery of external source URLs.

Rival issues

The following scenarios reflect common issues related to Rivals:

A rival is missing from the available options when building a Nearby Rival list
Contact Medallia Support to create a canonical property in the Social Media server for the desired rival.
Data about a unit is changed on the STR database (hospitality only)
The mapping between the unit on Experience Cloud and on the Social Media database is broken, but the mapping and rediscovery of external URLs is triggered automatically.
A unit is removed from the STR database (hospitality only)
The mapping between the unit on Experience Cloud and on the Social Media database remains, and feedback is still collected from external sources.
Rival collection not being 100% accurate
Due to restrictions outside Social Feedback, Rival collection might not be 100% accurate since it is not possible to obtain all feedback from all rivals of all sources.

Checking changes in data

The Importers that bring data into Experience Cloud can proactively check for any differences between the data being imported and that associated to the unit. This is useful for companies with many units that it's hard to keep track of changes.

To check for changes, build a JavaScript transform inside the importer script that sets a Yes/No Data field associated to each Unit indicating when the field has changed from what is associated to the unit.

The example below checks for changes in the address field. If the imported data has an address field that differs from the address that's associated with the unit, the value of u_location_change_yn is set to 1. You can then set an alert and investigate each time this happens.
<output-column>
<input-column heading="Address" />
<target-field fieldId="u_location_change_yn" fieldName="Location Change Flag" requiredness="OPTIONAL" type="ENUMERATED">
	<enumerated-field-parse-options mappingKey="SEQUENCE_NUMBER" />
	<javascript-transform>
		<![CDATA[
			var oldValue = original.street;
			var newValue = value;
			if(oldValue != newValue) {
			 	return '1'; 
			} else {
				return '2'; 
			}
		]]>
	</javascript-transform>
</target-field>
</output-column>

For more information, see JavaScript in Experience Cloud.

Auditing data collection coverage

To ensure that Social Feedback is collecting data for all the company active sources, audit data collection to validate units are correctly mapped to social sources as follows:

  1. From Company > Units > Units, click Download in Excel on the upper right corner to download the Units report.

    Click "Download in Excel" on the units screens.

  2. Open the Excel file and filter on the is_active column to records with a value of true. If you use multiple Unit types, use the relevant Unit group filter to restrict the data set to location-based units.

  3. Create a Dashboard leveraging the Custom Module Review Site Data Collection Health Check, which shows the number of units for each social source.

    1. From your Dashboard, click Add module

    2. At the bottom of the list of modules, click Create New Custom Module

    3. Click Load XML From Template.

    4. Search and select Review Site Data Collection Health Check.

    5. Click Save.

      Adding a custom module by Loading XML from template.

  4. Compare the Total number of units returning for each source to the total number of active units for social
, taking into account:

    • Geography-specific sites, like Ctrip.

    • If you are using the multi industry model, different sources will apply to different types of units.

  5. If there is insufficient coverage for a particular source, navigate to Social Feedback screen. Scroll down to find ReportSourcesForActiveUnits, select Confirm, and click the button to generate a URL audit report. This sends an email report with an attachment listing URL matches for each unit in the company.

    ReportSourcesForActiveUnits button and Confirm checkbox selected to get the report

  6. For the source of interest, contact Medallia Support requesting URL discovery for the source(s) with insufficient coverage:

    • Include the relevant Unit report downloaded in step 1 and the URL audit report.

    • If requesting multiple Social Feedback sources, reference the tier/priority of the sites for prioritization.

  7. To evaluate coverage for a particular unit, create a Dashboard leveraging the Custom Module Property Data Collection Health Check as instructed in step 3. This module shows the number of social sources for each unit.