Storing feedback in Salesforce

We are often asked for help in defining, once feedback is captured in Clicktools, how and where it should be stored in Salesforce. Whilst each organization is different, the following guidelines may help.

There are three main approaches and each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages:

1. Add custom fields to standard object.

Advantages:

• Easily incorporated in to standard page layout 
• Doesn’t impact custom object limits (doesn't apply to Unlimited)
• Powerful reporting options.

Disadvantages:

• Difficult to track multiple responses
• Difficult to track responses over time (if multiple responses)
• Information (even blank) is stored for every object.

Recommended use: When only one piece of feedback is collected for an object, e.g. case/support surveys. In this example, we would recommend extending the case object to include the feedback. Another examples could be a win/loss survey. General satisfaction surveys should not be generally stored using this approach as you would be naturally limited to storing the 'latest' response. If you are not implementing this survey for a large number of instances of an object (e.g. only 1 in 50 cases are being sent a survey) then you should consider option 3.

2. Shared custom object for all feedback.

Advantages:

• Easily trend information over time
• Minimises the number of custom objects required
• Enables multiple surveys per object and ‘cascading’ feedback.

Disadvantages:

• Potential for lots of empty spaces in an object
• Object can become complicated very quickly if multiple questions/surveys are used to populate the object
• Less powerful reporting (as with any custom object)
• Difficult to display usefully as related lists.

Recommended use: When collecting answers to the same questions from multiple surveys (e.g. Recommendation, advocacy and loyalty questions may be asked in many operational surveys and these can go in to one common object). We would not recommend using this approach to combine different questions from different surveys and we would also recommend avoiding using "Question X" type labels for different answers to different questions.

3. Dedicated custom object for each type of feedback

Advantages:

• Easily trend information over time
• Minimises the number of custom objects required
• Enables multiple surveys per object and ‘cascading’ feedback.
• Only uses space when required
• Can be displayed usefully as related lists.

Disadvantages:

• Custom object limitations in some editions
• Less powerful reporting (as with any custom object)

Recommended use: Collecting feedback on specific operational issues where multiple surveys will be sent to one or more individual (E.g. Market research, on-going customer satisfaction surveys, customer insight surveys, product design). The decision between using option 1 and option 3 will come down to the frequenct and volume of feedback collected. The decision between using option 2 and 3 will come down to the number of custom objects you want to use.

In reality there is no right or wrong and each organization must find the route that is right for them. I certainly wouldn't view these as mutually exclusive as it is possible that all three methods may be required in some way.