The Conversational WhatsApp Survey feature allows you to send surveys directly within WhatsApp, where your respondents can answer questions through an interactive chat experience. Ideal for collecting real-time feedback, this method lets users respond conversationally without ever leaving the WhatsApp platform, making the survey process smooth, familiar, and engaging. You can distribute these surveys either ad hoc or by setting up automated triggers. This article guides you through the ad hoc distribution method.

Business Use Cases

A conversational WhatsApp survey distribution is simply one way of conducting WhatsApp surveys. Let us take a look at the use cases:

• Gathering event feedback through a Conversational WhatsApp Survey: Organizations can collect feedback after events (such as workshops, webinars, and conferences) by using conversational surveys via WhatsApp, which allows participants to respond directly in the chat. This method offers a comfortable and easy experience that boosts engagement and improves the quality of responses. The surveys are crafted to be concise, interactive, and designed to encourage participation. This straightforward approach leverages WhatsApp’s informal, highly engaging environment, enabling quick and honest feedback while providing organizers with immediate, actionable insights to evaluate and enhance future events.
  Participants can complete the survey entirely within the WhatsApp chat, without being redirected to another application or website, ensuring that the interaction is intuitive and smooth. The chat-like structure of the survey resembles a natural conversation, leading to significantly higher engagement and quicker completion rates.

A Standard WhatsApp survey distribution is one approach to conducting surveys on WhatsApp, and it shares the core value of all WhatsApp surveys, such as accessibility and wide reach. However, a conversational WhatsApp survey offers additional advantages over the standard method. It provides a seamless user experience, allowing respondents to complete the survey directly within the WhatsApp chat without needing to open an external link or switch platforms, which makes the process more intuitive and reduces friction. Additionally, it leads to higher engagement rates, as the conversational format feels more like a natural chat, increasing the likelihood of prompt and complete responses.

Prerequisites

In order to access the WhatsApp distribution, you must have access to the following View and Edit Distribution permissions at the Survey Level.

Setting Up Adhoc Conversational WhatsApp Survey Distribution

Let us have a look at detailed steps:

• Go to Distribution tab and select WhatsApp distribution.

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• Select Conversational Survey Distribution.

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• Go to Distribution Details page and fill in these details:

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  1. Distribution Name: Add a meaningful name to the distribution.

  2. Distribution Description: Add a meaningful description.

  3. Click Next.

• Go to Distribution Settings details.

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  1. Conversation Timeout: The period after which the survey is no longer accessible to respondents is defined as the Conversation Timeout, which starts counting down immediately after the final reminder is sent. Once this timeout period expires, participants can no longer open, attempt, or complete the survey, effectively closing it and preventing any further responses.

  2. Partial Response: Toggle to enable partial response. When enabled, both completed and partially finished surveys are saved and shown in the response tab, allowing you to review and analyze them. When disabled, only fully submitted surveys are recorded; any partially completed responses are automatically discarded.

     Note: Partial responses will only be saved after the survey has timed out.

  3. AI-Powered Conversations: Activate the AI-powered responses feature. Turning on this toggle allows the AI to reformulate survey questions in a more human and conversational style. When enabled, the experience resembles that of conversational surveys, where the questions are dynamically adjusted according to the answers given to previous questions.

     For open-text responses, the AI will generate follow-up questions based on the predefined goals set in the survey builder.

     Note: When disabled, survey questions appear exactly as they were defined in the survey builder, without any conversational reframing, dynamic adjustments, or AI-driven enhancements.

  4. Response Custom Field: You have the ability to pre-fill any response field in the survey for all replies that will be collected through the survey link distributed. This feature aids in analytics and care processes. You can set up multiple fields by using the plus icon.

  5. Click Next.

     Note: Every survey question that is compatible with WhatsApp is automatically converted into the appropriate WhatsApp assets, enabling a fully interactive conversational survey experience. To ensure accurate responses, default validation messages are automatically applied to each question type when an invalid input is detected. Currently, these messages cannot be customized via the UI. For example, if a respondent answers an NPS question with a value outside the 0–10 range, a validation message will appear. Below are the default validation messages applied for such cases.

     Question Type	Default Validation Messages
     Single-Select MCQ	Invalid selection. Please reply with the number corresponding to your chosen option.
     Multi-Select MCQ	Invalid selection. Please reply with the numbers of your chosen options, separated by commas.
     NPS (Net Promoter Score)	Invalid response. Please reply with a number between 0 and 10.
     Rating Scale	Invalid rating. Please reply with a number corresponding to the rating scale provided.
     Slider	Invalid input. Please reply with a number within the specified range
     Text	Invalid input. Please enter a valid text response.

• Go to Reminder Template settings and fill in the details:

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  1. You can enable or disable survey reminders with a toggle at the top.

  2. Message Header: This is the message header shown to the respondent (max 60 characters). You can also choose no header, audio, video, or document.

  3. Header Body: This is the main body of your message, with a maximum limit of 1,024 characters. You can use emojis, as well as text formatting like bold, italics, and strikethrough in the Knowledge Base (KB). In the bottom-right corner of the box, you’ll see the Sprinklr AI+ feature, a generative AI assistant that can help review and improve your content.

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  4. Message Footer: The WhatsApp footer includes a default, editable unsubscription message containing the keyword 'STOP'. While it's not mandatory to proceed, including an opt-out option is strongly recommended to respect respondents' privacy and ensure compliance with regional regulations.

  5. Survey Link Button: You can customize the link button text that redirects recipients to the survey. By default, it is labeled 'Give Feedback'.

  6. Reminder Frequency: Set the reminder repetition frequency to Does Not Repeat, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Choose the interval for sending reminders (e.g., every X days, weeks, or months), and specify how many times the reminder will be sent in total.

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• Scheduling Distribution

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  For ad-hoc distribution, you can choose between two options: 'Schedule' or 'Send Now'.

  1. Schedule: This option allows users to schedule the distribution for a specific date and time. For example, you may want to send an event feedback survey two days after the event ends. Simply enter the desired date and time, choose the sender account, and select the recipients.

  2. Send Now: This option allows you to send the distribution immediately after the configuration is completed and saved.

     Enter the sender account and choose your recipients, these can be individual profiles, profile lists, profile segments, or profile samples.

     For guidance on selecting recipients based on your needs, refer to the linked articles for more detailed information.

     The system automatically detects and skips duplicate profiles from the selected sources by default.

     Note: When importing profiles for WhatsApp recipients into the audience profile, always specify the channel name as 'WHATSAPP_BUSINESS,' regardless of whether the recipient uses WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business. This consistent channel naming across platforms is essential for proper WhatsApp profile imports. Using 'WhatsApp' instead of 'WHATSAPP_BUSINESS' can cause issues with WhatsApp distribution functionality. Instructions for importing will be added to the roadmap.

     Note: You can save your progress at any time by using the “Save as Draft” option. Schedule the distribution using one of the available scheduling options. Monitor responses and manage follow-ups through the WhatsApp Distribution Report.

  How to use it?

  • Schedule the distribution using one of the above scheduling options.

  • Monitor distribution metrics from the distribution Record Manager as the respondents start filling the survey and view distribution report.

    Note: Currently, WhatsApp distributions do not have a built-in "test" feature. Since conversational surveys depend on real-time interactions, it is crucial to test them directly within WhatsApp to assess the survey flow, AI-generated responses, and the overall user experience. To achieve this, create a test distribution aimed at a specific test account. This will help you identify and resolve any issues. Once you are content with the configuration, you can duplicate and modify the distribution as necessary before sharing it with your actual audience.

  Key Points to Note

  • When scheduling WhatsApp distributions, ensure compliance with Meta's messaging policies to prevent message delivery failures.

    The first message in any conversation must be a Highly Structured Message (HSM). Once this message is sent, additional template messages can follow. However, if the recipient has not responded within 24 hours, you may only send up to two messages, after which no further messages are allowed without a response.

    Keep this limitation in mind when planning multiple distributions to the same user from the same WhatsApp sender account, as exceeding these limits may result in failed deliveries.

  • You can only have one active conversational survey per WhatsApp profile at a time. If you create a new distribution while another conversational survey is still active for the same profile, it will result in a distribution failure. This restriction helps ensure that survey responses are correctly matched to their corresponding questions. Running multiple active surveys for the same profile can cause responses to get mixed up, leading to inaccurate or unusable data.

  • Translations aren't currently configurable in the UI. For WhatsApp conversational distributions, translations are enabled by default. This means respondents will receive the initial message in all the languages in which the survey is published. To continue, the respondent must select a preferred language by replying to the welcome message, which lists all supported languages. Here’s how the respondent view will appear:

    

  • Default validation messages are automatically applied. Each question type has a built-in validation message that appears when a respondent provides an invalid response. These messages are assigned by default and cannot be customized through the UI at this time.

  • Follow-up questions aren't supported on WhatsApp at this time.

    While follow-up questions work in conversational surveys, they currently aren't supported on WhatsApp due to platform limitations. This is something we're actively working on as part of our roadmap. If you have any questions or need clarification, please reach out to the product team.

  • You can’t pause distributions for conversational surveys. At this time, pausing an active distribution isn’t supported for conversational survey types.

  • Distributing WhatsApp conversational surveys without AI-powered probing isn’t currently supported when goals are configured. If your survey has goals set up and probing is enabled, AI-powered probing will automatically apply to WhatsApp conversational surveys as well, provided the AI-powered toggle is turned on.

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  Best Practices

  • Ask Clear, Focused Questions: Keep questions simple and easy to understand.

  • Keep It Short: Limit survey length to avoid overwhelming respondents.

  • Leverage AI Wisely: Use AI to create a more engaging and conversational experience.

  • Respect Privacy & Compliance: Follow WhatsApp’s Terms of Service; avoid spamming and protect user privacy.

  • Schedule Thoughtfully: Don’t run multiple active surveys for the same recipient at once.

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