When designing surveys in CFM, it’s important to choose question types with your reporting requirements in mind. The question type you select not only shapes the respondent experience but also determines the out-of-the-box (OOTB) metrics and dimensions available in Analytics and Reporting.

A common issue occurs when Matrix questions are used for multi-statement ratings, such as CSAT-style or rating-scale surveys. While this setup works well for survey creation and response collection, reporting teams may later find that expected metrics, such as statement-level or overall CSAT scores, are unavailable because Matrix questions are treated as multi-statement MCQ grids in analytics rather than rating questions. This often leads to additional effort after deployment, such as creating custom metrics, redesigning reports, or rebuilding survey questions. This article helps you start with your reporting objectives and choose the most appropriate question type to ensure the analytics and insights you need are available from the outset.

Business Use Cases

Use this guidance when you need to choose a question type based on the analytics and reporting outcomes you want to achieve.

• Measure Customer Loyalty (NPS): Use NPS Rating when you need industry-standard NPS reporting, including NPS Score, Promoter/Passive/Detractor segmentation, benchmarking, and trend analysis. Avoid using Rating Scale for NPS surveys, as it does not generate NPS-specific metrics.

• Measure Overall Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Use CSAT Rating when you want to track overall satisfaction, calculate CSAT scores, analyze satisfaction distributions, and identify dissatisfied respondents for follow-up.

• Analyze Satisfaction Across Multiple Attributes: Use Multi-Statement CSAT Rating when you need statement-level CSAT scores and comparisons across service attributes such as response time, agent knowledge, or resolution quality. Avoid using Matrix questions for satisfaction measurement, as they do not generate CSAT-specific analytics.

• Collect Ratings Using Custom Scales: Use Rating Scale when you want to measure opinions, perceptions, or satisfaction using custom scales and focus on average ratings and response distributions rather than CSAT calculations.

• ​Compare Ratings Across Multiple Features: Use Multi-Statement Rating Scale when you need to compare feature, product, or service ratings side by side and analyze average scores for each statement or attribute.

• Measure Effort or Intensity on a Continuous Scale: Use Slider when you want respondents to provide numeric scores on a continuous scale, such as customer effort, likelihood, or intensity, and need average values and trend analysis.

• ​Identify High-Effort Areas in a Process: Use Multi-Statement Slider when you want to evaluate effort across multiple process steps and identify bottlenecks or high-friction experiences.

• ​Collect Structured Contact Information: Use Single-Line Text when you need validated inputs such as email addresses, phone numbers, or other structured data for operational use and follow-up activities.

• Analyze Open-Ended Customer Feedback: Use Multi-Line Text when you want to perform sentiment analysis, identify themes, extract key phrases, and generate text-based insights from customer comments.

• Categorize Respondents: Use Single-Select Multiple Choice when you want to classify respondents by attributes such as department, region, product, or customer segment and use those responses for filtering and segmentation.

• ​Measure Feature Adoption and Usage: Use Multi-Select Multiple Choice when respondents can select multiple options and you need to understand adoption rates, usage patterns, or feature combinations.

• Prioritize Features or Initiatives: Use Rank Order when you want respondents to rank options by preference, importance, or priority and analyze which items are valued most.

• Analyze Categorical Responses Across Multiple Items: Use Matrix when you need to collect and analyze categorical responses across multiple statements, such as adoption frequency, usage behavior, or yes/no selections. Matrix is best suited for categorical analysis—not satisfaction or rating-based reporting.

• ​Gather Visual Feedback: Use Heatmap when you want respondents to interact with an image and identify areas of interest, confusion, or concern through visual click analysis.

• ​Collect Supporting Documents or Evidence: Use File Upload when you need respondents to submit screenshots, images, receipts, or supporting documents for operational review and follow-up workflows.

Choosing the right question type from the outset helps ensure that your surveys generate the out-of-the-box (OOTB) metrics and dimensions needed for reporting, reducing the need for custom metrics and manual workarounds. It enables faster dashboard creation by ensuring standard widgets, filters, and drill-downs work as expected, while also maintaining consistency in analytics across surveys over time. By aligning question types with reporting requirements before deployment, you can avoid costly survey redesigns after go-live and accelerate implementation by minimizing post-deployment fixes and reporting rework.

Prerequisites

You would need access to View and Edit permissions for Response and Analytics under the CFM App.

Business Use Cases

• Measure Customer Loyalty with NPS: Use an NPS Rating question when you want to measure customer loyalty using the industry-standard Net Promoter Score methodology. For example, asking "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?" on a 0-10 scale allows you to calculate NPS scores, segment respondents into Promoters, Passives, and Detractors, track trends over time, and benchmark performance against industry standards.

• Measure Overall Satisfaction with a Single Question: Use a CSAT Rating question when you want to measure customer satisfaction through a single satisfaction statement. Questions such as "How satisfied were you with your recent experience?" enable automatic calculation of CSAT scores, average ratings, and satisfaction-level distributions to help you monitor overall customer satisfaction.

• Analyze Satisfaction Across Multiple Service Attributes: Use a Rating Scale question when you need average ratings and response distributions without CSAT or NPS calculations. For example, you can ask customers to rate a product on a custom 1-7 scale and analyze average scores, trends, and rating distributions.

• Compare Multiple Features Using Ratings: Use a Multi-Statement Rating Scale question when respondents need to rate several features or attributes using the same scale. This enables side-by-side comparison of feature performance and helps identify areas that require improvement.

• Measure Effort Using a Continuous Scale: Use a Slider question when you want respondents to provide a score on a continuous range, such as measuring customer effort on a scale from 0 to 100. This allows you to analyze average effort levels and identify high-effort experiences.

• Identify Process Bottlenecks: Use a Multi-Statement Slider question when you need to measure effort across multiple stages of a journey or process. This helps compare effort scores across different steps and pinpoint friction points that impact the customer experience.

• Collect Structured Customer Information: Use a Single-Line Text Field when collecting structured information such as email addresses, phone numbers, or IDs. Validation rules can help ensure data quality, while responses can be exported for operational follow-up activities.

• Gather Open-Ended Feedback for Text Analytics: Use a Multi-Line Text Field when you want customers to share detailed feedback in their own words. This question type supports advanced text analytics, including sentiment analysis, theme detection, key phrase extraction, and experience scoring.

• Categorize Respondents: Use a Single-Select Multiple Choice question when respondents should select only one option, such as their department, location, or customer segment. The responses can be used for distribution analysis and as filters in other reports.

• Understand Feature Adoption: Use a Multi-Select Multiple Choice question when respondents can choose more than one option. This is useful for understanding product usage patterns, feature adoption rates, and common feature combinations.

• Prioritize Customer Preferences: Use a Rank Order question when respondents need to prioritize options based on importance or preference. This helps identify which products, services, or features customers value most.

• Analyze Categorical Responses Across Multiple Attributes: Use a Matrix question when you need respondents to answer the same categorical question across multiple items, such as usage frequency for different features. Matrix questions are best suited for categorical analysis rather than satisfaction or CSAT measurement.

• Collect Visual Interaction Feedback: Use a Heatmap question when respondents need to interact with an image by clicking specific areas. This is useful for evaluating website designs, product layouts, advertisements, or user interface mockups and identifying areas that attract attention or cause confusion.

• Collect Supporting Evidence and Attachments: Use a File Upload question when respondents need to submit supporting documents, screenshots, photos, or other files. This is commonly used for claims processing, product issue reporting, support investigations, and evidence collection workflows.

Choosing the correct question type from the outset helps ensure access to the right out-of-the-box (OOTB) metrics, reducing reliance on custom calculations and configurations. This enables faster dashboard creation, as standard widgets, filters, and drill-down capabilities work seamlessly with the captured data. Using the appropriate question type also supports consistent and comparable analytics over time, allowing you to track trends and benchmark results across surveys. Additionally, proper configuration helps avoid costly rebuilds after go-live by eliminating the need to change question types later, resulting in faster implementation and minimizing post-deployment effort for reporting and analytics teams.

Prerequisites

You would need View and Edit Permissions for Response and Analytics under the CFM App.

Start with Your Reporting Goals

Before creating a survey question, define how you plan to analyze the responses.

Consider the following:

• Do you need a standardized KPI such as NPS or CSAT?

• Do you need reporting at the statement level?

• Do you need averages, percentages, or both?

• Which dimensions will be important for analysis, such as time, region, agent, hierarchy, profile fields, or transaction fields?

Your answers will help determine the most appropriate question type.

Choose the Right Question Type

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Pre-Deployment Validation Checklist

Before publishing your survey, validate that the selected question type generates the metrics and dimensions required for reporting.

1. Create and Test a Sample Survey

   1. Create a test survey using the intended question type and configuration (for example, single-statement or multi-statement).

   2. Publish the survey internally.

   3. Capture a minimum of 10 sample responses to validate reporting behavior.

2. Verify Analytics Fields

3. Validate Drill-Down Functionality

   1. Create a sample widget using the question metric.

   2. Select a data point and perform a drill-down.

   3. Confirm that the expected dimensions are available.

   4. Verify that statement-level analysis behaves as expected.

4. Validate Filters

   1. Apply filters using dimensions such as Statements, Scale Points, and NPS Groups.

   2. Confirm that data is filtered correctly.

   3. Test cross-dimensional analysis, such as CSAT by Region or NPS by Product Line.

5. Validate Dashboard Compatibility

   1. Create sample widgets using the selected question metrics.

   2. Verify compatibility with Profile, Transaction, and Hierarchy fields.

   3. Test date-range filtering and trend analysis to ensure reporting behaves as expected over time.

Best Practices

• Always validate analytics requirements before deploying a survey in production. Identifying reporting gaps early can help avoid costly survey redesigns and reimplementation efforts later.

• Validate question type selection against analytics requirements BEFORE survey deployment using the test procedure outlined in "How to Test" section.

FAQs