Journey of a record

Medallia Experience Cloud is an end-to-end experience platform that collects responses from multiple signals, processes them, and reports individual and aggregated responses that are then used to drive accountability and actions across the business, based on experience feedback.

Diagram showing overview of the Medallia processes

Signal data comes to Medallia via four main paths or journeys. The lifecycle of a single record can be mapped to one of these journeys.

Email-to-web surveys

In this journey, Medallia sends survey invitation emails according to the imported invitation data. Medallia tracks the survey status from delivery to completion and owns the survey process from end to end.

  1. The first step in the email-to-web journey is the delivery of the invitation data from the Client IT team to Experience Cloud.

    This can happen via an SFTP, S3-compatible protocol, or an Import API request to Medallia.

    Diagram showing the import of raw invitation data into Medallia

  2. When the invitation data is received by Experience Cloud, the data is ingested into an Auto Importer processor. In this journey, Medallia is in charge of sending the survey via email. For this reason, the Auto Importer operation mode is set to SEND_INVITES. This operation mode creates the surveys, generates survey URLs, and sends email invitations.

    Records that are not discarded by the Auto Importer due to data quality or validation rules undergo Sampling. At this stage, the record can have either of these e_status field values:

    • READY_FOR_SE — The record successfully passed through the sampling stages and is ready to be transferred to the Survey engine, where the survey ballot is created, and then the Broadcaster delivers the invitation.

    • NOT_SAMPLED — The record was discarded during the sampling process due to quarantine, opt- out, or other business-defined filtering rules.

      For information about Survey status (e_status), see Survey status (e_status).

  3. The Survey engine generates the survey ballots and invitation emails for all the records that have been selected after sampling. The Medallia Broadcaster delivers the invitation emails to the survey taker's inbox.

    Diagram showing how survey invitations are generated and sent

    As soon as the invitation data is imported via the Auto Importer, records are created in the database tables. When a record is discarded by the Auto Importer, it is not added to the database. Records are discarded due to rules that search for invalid data formats and duplicate records.

    Note: We often conceptualize the Medallia Experience Cloud database as a single relational database table, but — in reality — it is more complex. This explanation of the changes to the database record simplifies several concepts to help you better visualize how the records are created and updated.

    At this point, the record has been created in the database along with some initial A-fields and E-fields values.

  4. Next, we move into the completion stage where the survey taker completes the survey sent to their email address.

  5. Once the survey taker has submitted the survey, the response is returned to Experience Cloud for storage and subsequent reporting.

    Diagram showing customer receiving the survey, completing it and submitting their responses

  6. Experience Cloud receives the response from the survey taker and updates the existing record in the database.

    Diagram showing the data being processed and visible in dashboards and used to generate alerts

    The responses from the survey taker are returned to Experience Cloud and added to the record in the database. Experience Cloud does not create a new record but simply adds the information to the existing record created earlier in the process.

  7. Once processed, the data is visible in Medallia Web reporting dashboards and modules and is used to generate alerts.

  8. At this stage, the response has been completed and stored in the database. As the survey response is received and stored, Medallia validates the response data against alert conditions and — should a response meet a condition — generates alert notifications.

    Alert conditions are typically based on receiving a specific value, or range of values, for a particular question.

  9. Experience Cloud generates alerts when a response meets an alert condition. Employees responsible for closing the loop with customers are notified via Medallia mobile app or via email.

    Initially the alert has the status of NEW and the employee proceeds through the alert life cycle by opening the alert and responding to the customer (alert status of IN PROGRESS) and, finally, closing the alert (alert status of CLOSED). When employees do not close and alert within a specified period, the alert status proceeds to OVERDUE and ESCALATED.

    The a_alert_status field tracks the status of any alerts that were generated.

    Note: The use of OVERDUE, RESOLVED, ESCALATED depends on the organization's configuration.

  10. Data records may be appended using a data append process. Data append allows clients to append transactional or customer information to existing signal records. This additional data is used in reporting.

    The additional information is sent to Medallia by SFTP Feeds or Web Feeds.

    Experience Cloud uses the existing record identifier to update the record rather than generating a new record and sending a new survey.

Web surveys

Web survey journeys utilize Medallia to generate personalized survey links according to the imported invitation data. However, the delivery mechanisms are either external vendors: platforms such as Adobe Marketo and Oracle Responsys, or Medallia's feeded, message-based survey conversations. Medallia does not actively deliver or track survey invitations but does receive invitation data directly via our own hosted survey processes.

  1. The first step in the web survey journey is the delivery of the invitation data from the Client IT team to Experience Cloud.

    This can happen via an SFTP, S3-compatible protocol, or an Import API request to Medallia.

    Diagram showing the import of raw invitation data into Medallia

  2. When the invitation data is received by Experience Cloud, the data is ingested into an Auto Importer processor. In this journey, Medallia is not responsible for sending the survey via email. For this reason, the Auto Importer operation mode is set to PUSH_TO_SURVEY_ENGINE. This operation mode creates the surveys and generates survey URLs but does not send survey invitations.

    As with the Email-to-web surveys journey, the invitation records are evaluated for data quality and then undergo Sampling. At this stage, the record has an e_status field value of either:

  3. For each record that passes sampling, the Survey engine generates the personalized survey link.

  4. Experience Cloud sends these URLs to the external delivery system either by a webhook, or a flat file exported to SFTP or S3.

    Note: Since Medallia does not deliver any survey invitation emails to survey recipients, Experience Cloud cannot track the status of the survey invitation, including delivery bounce or the reminder status.

    To indicate that the record was processed by the Survey engine and survey links were generated, but Experience Cloud did not deliver an email invitation, the e_status value is set to SURVEY_ENGINE_ONLY.

    It is possible for the third-party sender (delivery agent) to send metadata associated with the invitation to Medallia. When this method is used, Medallia administrators typically store the data in E-fields on the signal record table.

  5. At this point, the record has been created in the database along with some initial A-fields and E-fields values. The survey links have been passed to the delivery agent, and the invitations have been sent.

  6. The survey recipient receives the invitation and may choose to decline or complete the survey. When they choose to complete the survey, the response is returned to Medallia Experience Cloud for storage and subsequent reporting.

    Diagram showing customer receiving the survey, completing it and submitting their responses

  7. Experience Cloud receives the response from the survey taker and updates the existing record in the database. Once processed, the data is visible in the Medallia Web reporting dashboards and modules.

  8. As the survey response is received and stored, Experience Cloud validates the response data against against alert conditions and — when a response meets a condition — generates alert notifications.

    Diagram showing the data being processed and visible in dashboards and used to generate alerts

  9. As with the Email-to-web surveys journey, once the survey taker submits the survey and it is received by Experience Cloud, the e_status field is updated to COMPLETED.

  10. Experience Cloud validates the responses against against alert conditions and generates alerts as needed. Medallia uses the a_alert_status field on the record to track the alert lifecycle.

    The post-complete stage initiates and tracks the alert life cycle of a record, it is also the stage when clients conduct the data append process, which adds additional customer or transactional information to the existing survey record. This process does not create new invitations or generate additional surveys.

The use cases for this type of journey are:

  • Feeded survey with Broadcaster replacement — In cases where Broadcaster is replaced by a system such as Adobe Marketo, Medallia creates the personalized survey links for each customer based on the invitation data provided. The surveys are then delivered by the external vendor.

  • Message based feeded web survey — In this case, Medallia receives the invitation data, creates the personalized survey links and Medallia Message based Surveys sends the survey links.

  • Message-based feeded two-way conversation — Medallia receives the invitation data, and Medallia Message-based surveys is used to send conversational style two-way surveys.

Product signals

Unlike the previous journeys, feedback is generated and received by a Medallia product.

Medallia enables clients to capture signals from a number of sources. Product signals group all these sources as a single journey. These include Digital Feedback, Medallia Speech, Medallia Social, and message-based surveys. With product signals, Medallia uses one of its products to deliver the survey directly to the survey recipient: there is no requirement to import invitation data via Auto Importer, nor is there need for Medallia Sampling or the Medallia Broadcaster.

These use cases do not need any invitation payload or flat files to send surveys. They are triggered by the customer's behavior or an API trigger, such as ending a chat or closing a webpage.

In this journey, an organization has implemented a Medallia product on its website or application:

  1. The application or website user triggers the survey through one of the various possible actions, like selecting a Provide Feedback link on the webpage.

  2. The Medallia product is responsible for sending the survey to the survey taker. For anonymous surveys the Medallia Experience Cloud Survey engine generates the survey link, which is sent through the external delivery agent.

    At this stage, there are no records to store in the database.

  3. The survey taker receives the survey within the context of the Medallia product and responds to the questions.

  4. Medallia receives the response from the survey taker and stores the response information in the database. Experience Cloud creates a new record for each response in the database. This is the first time a record is created for this signal.

    This is similar to the Email-to-web surveys journey, except that fields like e_status, e_record_creationdate, and e_creationdate all contain values for the first time.

    The e_status value for these responses is set to COMPLETED, since the only surveys sent to Medallia are those in which the survey taker decided to submit the survey.

    For information about Survey status (e_status), see Survey status (e_status).

  5. The data is processed and is visible in the Medallia Web reporting dashboards, Text Analytics processing, and other Medallia Experience Cloud tools.

  6. As with previous journeys, Experience Cloud validates responses against against alert conditions and generates alerts as needed. The a_alert_status field on each survey record is used to track the alert life cycle. This is also the stage when clients conduct the data append process. For some product signals, like Medallia Speech, critical segmentation data is only added to the record during the data append process.

External signals

In this journey, no Medallia products facilitate or send surveys. Experience Cloud is used to ingest data and store records in the database.

This journey includes use cases where Medallia is not the source system for collection activities. The data from these external systems — such as IVR or a Call Center — is imported into Medallia Experience Cloud. Clients ingest historical data from external systems to derive insights from Medallia's reporting and text analytics tools.

The use cases for this type of journey are:

  • Historical data import — Bring historical data into Medallia Experience Cloud for reporting and analysis.

  • External signals import — Bring external data into Medallia Experience Cloud for reporting, analysis, and closing the loop functionalities.

  1. The first step in the external signals journey is the delivery of the historical survey data or the external survey data plus customer information from the Client IT team to Experience Cloud.

    Diagram showing the import of external data or historical data into Medallia

    This can happen via an SFTP, S3-compatible protocol, or an Import API request to Medallia.

  2. When the historical or external survey data is received by Experience Cloud, the data is ingested into an Auto Importer processor. In this journey, Medallia is only in charge of storing the completed responses and customer data. For this reason, the Auto Importer operation mode is set to NONE. This mode imports the records and marks the surveys as COMPLETED by default, because they were completed in a different environment. When using this mode, Experience Cloud does not perform any Sampling operation, the Survey engine does not generate survey URLs or survey invitation emails. However, you can override the survey status for specific cases, such as Text Analytics processing or alert testing, which require records to be imported with a COMPLETION_PENDING status.

    Filed e_responsedate is imported as a data field sent in the invitation data, since the response is collected before it is ingested into Experience Cloud. We recommend using the original response date when mapping e_responsedate in Auto Importer.

  3. Experience Cloud receives the records from Auto Importer and adds rows to the database for each row imported from the file. Each imported record receives internal Medallia values for fields such as a_surveyid and e_status.

    For information about Survey status (e_status), see Survey status (e_status).

  4. After processing, the records are available for Medallia Web reporting, Text Analytics and other Experience Cloud tools.

    Diagram showing available post processing options

  5. At the post-complete stage, the record has been stored in the database. For external data you have the option to configure alerts to allow Experience Cloud to validate responses against alert conditions. Although it is not recommended to generate alerts for historical data since it is highly likely that any issues have already been handled. For historical data, records are imported directly into the COMPLETE status, bypassing alert testing and other post-complete processes.

    The a_alert_status field on each survey record is used to track the alert life cycle.

    For external and historical data, there should be no need to conduct a data append process since all customer and transactional information should have been imported during the first step.

Stages

While records can follow different journeys, each journey moves through several stages based on how the data gets updated in the Medallia database.

Import-invite

In the import-invite stage, the record is first created or imported into Medallia. This is the first stage of many journeys. At this stage, the data sent to Medallia is converted and stored as a record in the database.

Data can be sent to Experience Cloud via SFTP, S3-compatible protocol, and Import API. This data is then processed by the Auto Importer, which validates the data quality and sampling logic, like quarantines and opt-outs.

Once sampling is complete, the record is either disregarded or selected for further processing.

Complete

When the survey receives a response or an already completed record is imported into Experience Cloud, the record is in the complete stage. At this point, the record has associated customer responses and other signal data in the database.

Externally completed data is a result of:

  • Importing historical records.

  • Auto-completing records that were partially completed.

  • Ingesting externally completed records.

Post-complete

Once marked as complete, the record is available for post-complete actions:

  • Data append procedures are used to enrich signal records by importing additional information that is visible in reporting.

  • Alerts triggered from specific record values are created and stored in the database. Medallia Experience Cloud end-users act upon the alerts and close the loop with responders.