Features

Your multimodal survey questions can be any of 17 different types including multiple choice, multiselect, scale, yes/no, comments, date, time, currency, number, digits, full name, full address, ZIP code/postal code, state/province, city. All of these question types work equally well over both the web and the phone. For phone surveys specifically, you can also transfer your respondents to another phone number from anywhere in your survey. Finally, one advanced question type is a web service query that allows you to integrate your survey with your back office data in real-time.

There are four ways to customize the look-and-feel of your web survey. First, you can choose from one of our pre-made stylesheets. Second, you can upload your own CSS stylesheet for use by your survey. Third, you can use Plum Survey's built-in stylesheet editor to control fonts, colors, alignment, and other layout details. Finally, you can upload your own logo as well as directing your respondents to the URL of your choice when they've completed your survey.

Each question in your survey can be individually tagged as a optional or required. Respondents will be offered a means of skipping past optional questions. Required questions must be filled in or answered before the proceeding to the next web page or proceeding to the next phone prompt for web or phone surveys respectively.

Your survey can be configured so as to restrict respondents to only answering once for any given phone number or IP address. This prevents attempts at ballot-box stuffing. However it may also prevent multiple respondents who share a phone number or Internet access from being able to participate in your survey if one of their fellow sharers has already done so.

Our surveys validate to current web standards, ensuring compatibility with the widest possible range of internet technologies today and in the future. Web surveys are accessible from browsers both current or old, with or without Javascript, including the text-only browsers found on some mobile devices and screen readers for disabled users.

Any multiple choice or scale question response can be set to skip to any other page within your survey. Use this capability for menu-like behaviors and custom survey branches.

Your survey's summary report can be configured to include map charts of the United States that highlight the states that your respondents selected. You can also include a table that lists the top 5 or top 10 states that were selected by respondents in your summary report.

You have the option of creating a "thank-you" page at the end of your survey by adding your own HTML code for your page in the "Outro message" textbox for your survey's settings. This "thank-you" page would then appear to respondents after they complete your survey.

You can redirect your respondents to a URL of your choosing by entering a web URL in the "Exit link" textbox for your survey's settings. You also have the option of redirecting your respondents immediately upon completion of your survey, after a short delay upon completion of your survey, or by having your respondent click on a link to your web URL.

Connect your survey to your live backend databases using SOAP. Dynamic authentication, branching, and real-time update from your survey are now a possibility.

You can deliver your web survey out to respondents by sending them a special URL for your survey once you finished creating it. This web URL can be copied and pasted from the management interface into e-mail. You can also embed the survey into your web site or directly into html-mail by referencing the URL in an iframe.

You have the option of assigning a phone number from your account for your survey so that respondents can call into that phone number to take your survey. You can also use our "Outbound Call Campaign" feature to send outbound calls of your survey to respondents listed in your campaign contact list.

You can use our contact manager to create or maintain a list of respondent targets. There, you can enter or update contact information  (whether it be for their home, work, or cell numbers) or even upload contacts from a spreadsheet. You also have the option of creating groups for your contacts for better organization.

Your phone respondents have the option of inputting their responses for your survey by speech instead of by DTMF key presses.  You're no longer limited to just collecting digits from your respondents. You can collect complex data like the respondent's name and address.

Our "comments" question type allows for you to record open-ended responses from respondents over the phone. Think of it as a way of recording a voicemail message from anywhere in your survey.

For unrecorded audio in your survey, you have the option of selecting from a wide variety of text-to-speech voices in your survey's settings interface. We offer up to 26 different voices from various text-to-speech engines that allow you to select the gender and language that you prefer for your text-to-speech voice.

The languages offered for the text-to-speech voices are: US English, US Spanish, UK English, and Mexican Spanish.

You can upload your own prerecorded audio files to replace the text-to-speech phrases for your phone survey. These audio files can be up to 1 MB in size supporting formats like u-law, PCM, .wav files, and most properly encoded mp3 files.

You can allow your respondents to take your survey by adding an iframe of your survey on your website. Once you have created and deployed your survey, this iframe text can be copied and pasted into your HTML code for your website.

The number of questions you can add to your survey is unlimited. You can add as many or as few questions as you desire for your survey.

You can track individual responses from your respondents as soon as they complete a survey. For outbound call respondents, you can track the response status of your respondents to see who has completed your survey and their responses.

Once you have received responses for your surveys, you can generate summary reports with tables and charts that reflect the number of respondents that chose a particular response. The tables will tell you the exact number and percentage of respondents who chose a particular response. There is also a pie chart and bar chart to reflect these percentages as well.

By selecting this feature for your summary report, you can view statistical data such as the mean, median, standard deviation, and minimum and maximum value given for the question types: "Scale", "Currency", "Number", and "Digits". Histograms can be viewed for the question types: "Currency", "Number", and "Digits".

Selecting this feature for your summary report will allow you to view how respondents answered a particular question over time. You'll be able to conduct logitudinal studies of your sample population.

You can filter how you want to view responses in your summary report by date and by response. Filtering your responses by date allows you to set a specific time frame with the month, day, and year for the responses you want to view. Filtering by response allows you to filter responses by the response method, the caller ID or IP address, or by a specific response value for a question.

You can download responses in CSV format into a spreadsheet directly from our site. You also have the option of using our web service to export these responses in CSV format into a database so you can automate this process.

Instead of creating a survey from scratch, you can use start with one of our pre-built survey templates, clone it, then modify it to suit your needs.