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Surveys, responses & channels

This page explains the chain from a survey you send to the response you read back.

Surveys​

A survey is the questionnaire you put in front of customers. Surveys are created and managed under Configure → Surveys. Each survey has a name, its questions, and the channels it's distributed over.

Questions​

Questions are the individual items inside a survey. Davies CXsmart supports a range of question types, including:

  • NPS — the 0–10 "how likely are you to recommend us" question that drives Net Promoter Score.
  • CSAT — a satisfaction rating.
  • CES — a customer-effort rating.
  • Rating — a general numeric scale.
  • Single choice — pick one option from a list.
  • Free text — open comment boxes, which feed sentiment and topic analysis under Verbatim.

Numeric questions (NPS, CSAT, CES, rating) drive the headline scores; free-text questions drive verbatim analytics.

Responses (transactions)​

A response is one customer's set of answers to a survey. You may also see responses called transactions — the two terms mean the same thing.

Every response carries useful context alongside the answers:

  • The survey it belongs to.
  • The channel it came in on.
  • The agent it's attributed to, if any.
  • The date it was received.
  • An overall sentiment (positive / neutral / negative), rolled up from the customer's free-text answers.
  • Any custom data passed in when the survey was sent (for example, an order reference).

You browse responses in the Response Console and open any one of them in the response detail drawer.

Channels​

A channel is the route a survey took to reach the customer. Davies CXsmart supports:

ChannelShown asDescription
onlineWebA survey completed in a web browser.
emailEmailA survey delivered by email.
smsSMSA survey delivered and answered by text message.
ivr_inboundIVR InboundA phone survey where the customer called in.
ivr_outboundIVR OutboundA phone survey where the system called the customer.
embeddedEmbeddedA survey embedded directly into another web page or app.

You can filter almost any Analyse screen by channel — see Using filters.

Complete vs partial responses​

Every response has a state:

  • Complete — the customer finished the survey. Complete responses count towards all analytics.
  • Partial (also called in-flight) — the response is still being built up. This happens with conversational channels like SMS and IVR, where answers arrive one at a time, and with multi-page web surveys saved as the respondent progresses.
  • Expired — a partial response that was abandoned and timed out.

:::important Why this matters Analytics — NPS, CSAT, volume, sentiment — count complete responses only. Partial responses are visible in the Response Console (and in the live In progress panel there) so you can watch conversations as they happen, but they don't move your scores until they complete. Expired partials are dropped from the live view automatically. :::

The Response Console shows a State column and can pulse a live indicator for conversations still in progress, so you always know whether you're looking at finished feedback or a work in progress.

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