Answering pertinent business questions – SAP Hybris C4C surveys

In the last couple of weeks, we learnt about Retail Execution capabilities of C4C and we also got an in-depth insight about how to efficiently plan the visits along with ensuring proper execution of task/surveys (link) . In this week blog we would be elaborating about the key capabilities of C4C Surveys.   

Surveys are an important means to capture business related data of a customer. The information collected provides insightful direction for the next set of actions. C4C surveys are developed keeping in mind the important business scenarios that are used frequently by our customers. It is a simple to use tool but yet it captures the complexity of the business requirements.

Surveys are broadly divided into two major categories – Internal and External Survey.

Internal Surveys are typically filled by the employees of a sales/service organization with reference to a customer. There are various types of surveys that can be designed based on the business needs

• Checklist – This type of survey contains a series of question, based on the answer of which a logical conclusion may be derived.
• Competitor – This survey is used to capture information related to competitors.
• Competitor Products – This survey can be used to collect competitive data for competitor products.
• Products – This survey is used to capture product related data for the organization.

Internal surveys cannot exist on its own. It needs a consumer for its usage. As of now surveys can be used/consumed in the context of a visit, lead, opportunity, service ticket and sales quote.

External Surveys are typically filled by the customer itself. These surveys are mostly used to capture the satisfaction quotient of a target group of audience/customers. One can also trigger a survey based on a business transaction. E.g. upon the completion of a service ticket a satisfaction survey can be triggered to the target audience.

Let’s discuss some of the salient features of the C4C survey. The texts in bold highlights the features that are available.

Flexibility

Varied business scenarios would require different methods of capturing the responses in a survey. E.g. If a merchandiser wants to collect the stock information of the products then the answers should be in quantity and if the technician wants to capture the last serviced date of a device then the answer should be a date field. Hence keeping many such scenarios in mind, the following question/answer types are supported – Amount, Date, Date range, Multiple choice, Quantity and Text. At times it is also required to display some read only fields from master data in the survey, this is also supported. E.g. displaying certain extension fields from product and product list.

The mandatory question checks ensure that the user completes the most important content in a survey. The survey would not be allowed to be completed until and unless the mandatory questions have been completed. In order to make the surveying experience better the branching logic functionality creates a custom path through the survey that varies based on the respondent answers.

There can be many surveys in the system but the availability of the right survey at the right time is the key to capture the relevant information. The Activity planner and the Routing rules provides the flexibility to propose the right survey based on various parameters.

Product surveys are one of the most used surveys and here again the availability of the right set of products during the survey execution is a key. Creating different versions of the same survey for different product list would create large amount of redundant data. The dynamic determination of the products allows the reuse of the same survey in different contexts. E.g. the same survey can have different a set of products for different accounts and sales area combinations.

The user also has the option of defining two types of views for the product and the competitor surveys, the Matrix view and the normal List view. The matrix view would represent all the products and questions in a single window. This is normally the preferred view by the sales rep as this view provides a quick snapshot of the gamut of work that needs to be completed.

The Matrix view provides the option to mass answer a question for all the products at one shot, this functionality really saves time if the sales rep is aware that the answer for a particular question is same for all products. The filtering and sorting functionality at a question level in a matrix view also helps the sales rep to quickly arrive at a right set of products for conducting the survey.

Sometimes the merchandisers/technicians are not able to complete the survey at one go. They would like to save a portion of the survey that is completed and then complete the rest at a later point of time. The Save as draft functionality enables them to do the same.

Surveys are completed based on the consent of the respondent and the surveyor and at times this consent act a document proof for the follow-up business transactions. Survey summary documents can suffice this need. E.g. Sales/service representative can prepare a quotation based on the survey response and can attached the survey summary as a document proof.

Pre-population of the previous survey response helps the user to make a comparison between the current state and the past state of things at a customer premise, thus providing a yardstick in gauging the performance of the customer

The sales rep should clearly understand the question before noting down the responses. In order to aid this the tool tip provides the possibility of providing more descriptive definition of the questions.

Seamless integration

Sometimes it is necessary to seamlessly use the survey results for the the succeeding business transaction. E.g. The stock out situation for certain products can be an indication for creation of a sales order. With the follow-up action functionality in survey the user can enable the proposal of the stocked out products during the creation of sales order. The follow-up action can be based on a particular answer in a survey

Satisfaction surveys can also be triggered to the relevant customer upon successful completion of the service tickets. The combination of survey designing and activation of the relevant work flow rules can help in achieving this scenario.

Often it is required by a third party system to read and write back data to C4C surveys. The A2X/A2A and OData Services can be used for this purpose. This provides flexibility in integrating a third party application with that of C4C surveys

Reusability

In order to capture the right information, it is extremely important to define the right kind of questions in the survey. The question should be defined in such a way that they should be able to capture specific information pertaining to an account and yet be generic enough to be used across multiple accounts. This helps in traceability and reporting of the responses of the surveys. Question bank provides the functionality where the user can create and save the questions so that it can be readily and quickly used to create the desired surveys. The question bank ensures reusability and eliminates the chances of creation of redundant questions.

The versatile design capabilities of C4C surveys also permits the usage of a particular survey in many different contexts based on parameters like Sales area, Product list, target group of accounts, etc.

Quick image capturing

Fact based responses always unveils the truer side of a business situation and what can be more apt than an on spot camera capture. C4C survey helps the user to take pictures to corroborate the responses to a question. Images can be captured at a question level, at a survey level and also at a product level.

Real time reporting

The final step of a survey process is reporting the findings. Reports should be informative, relevant to the target audience, and customizable to the individual or organization’s needs. C4C already have some standard reports to present the survey findings. The data sources that are used to create these reports are quite comprehensive and captures all the elements/parameters of the survey. Customized reports can be prepared using the available data sources

Scores can be given not only at a survey level but at an individual answer options level as well. The idea behind using weights/scores is that one can assign a numerical value to answer choices, which will then be reflected in the reports. Thus providing a framework to derive the efficacy of the objective behind a survey.

As a ready reckoner please find below the list of the features that have been mentioned above.

The final blog on this series is on order process. Please find it here – Enable the end game in retail execution with a simple and expeditious order process