Use Advanced Setup to create an SMS (text message) survey

Overview

When creating an SMS survey, choose the Advanced Setup option if you want to use the advanced functions, such as landing pages. This should also be used by users looking for a higher degree of audience segmentation.

Things to know

• This article covers the Advanced setup for creating SMS surveys. See the articles on Recommended Setup and Default Setup if you prefer to use those templates.

• SMS surveys are sent to all phone numbers listed in the Customer Record.

• SMS surveys are sent only during the day. Daytime hours are from 8 AM to 9 PM. Any surveys triggered outside these hours are sent to customers the following morning.

• ServiceTitan doesn't recommend using Advanced Setup because it might lead to a decrease in the number of generated reviews.

Enable Advanced Survey Setup

To create an SMS survey using Advanced Setup, you must first enable the Advanced Survey Creation feature.

1. Go to the top toolbar and click Settings .

2. From the side panel, find Marketing Pro > Reputation Management.

3. Select the Advanced Surveys tab.

4. Turn on the Enable Advanced Survey Creation toggle. Now, you can go to Reputation to create advanced surveys.

Create an SMS survey using Advanced Setup

1. Go to the navigation bar and click Marketing .

2. From the side menu, click Review Generation.        

   Note: You can create surveys from the Monitoring page in Marketing.

3. Click Create Survey and then select Advanced Setup.        

   Note: To have the option to create an SMS survey using Advanced Setup, you must first enable the Advanced Survey Creation feature from Settings . If this isn't enabled, you won't see this option.

      

4. Click Next. The Advanced Survey Setup screen opens.

There are six steps you need to complete to send an SMS survey to your customers:

• Step 1 Overview: Add detailed information for your SMS survey.

• Step 2 Segment: Set the Business Units for the SMS survey.

• Step 3 Prompt: Set the SMS text message asking the customers to answer the review. Also, set up a follow-up SMS text message if the customer doesn't send a review.

• Step 4 Rating: Set the SMS text message asking the customers for internal feedback for reviews that fall below your set rating threshold.

• Step 5 Review Sites: Organize the sites in the order from where you want to receive SMS surveys.

• Step 6 Review and Submit: Finalize and start the SMS surveys.

Step 1: Overview

In this step, select the Survey Type, Survey Name, Event Trigger, and whether you want your review links to appear on a landing page. If you use a landing page, you can also choose to receive internal feedback.

1. Select SMS Survey for the Survey Type and enter a Survey Name. 

2. If you want to display your listing links on a landing page, select Landing Page. You'll customize the Header and Body Text for your landing page in Step 5: Review Sites.

3. If you want to receive internal feedback in addition to the reviews on the listings, select Internal Feedback.        

   Note: Activating the landing page and internal feedback for your survey will likely decrease your review volume.

4. Click the Trigger dropdown and select an event trigger. Options include:        

   • Job Complete: Select this trigger to automatically send the default review request when a job is finished. This is selected by default.

   • Manual Request: Select this trigger if review requests should be triggered manually instead of sent automatically.                 

     Note: Only one default review request is sent per job. If a manual trigger request is sent, then an automated Job Complete survey can't trigger for that same job. If you enable the Survey Resend feature, a second survey will be sent automatically after a set number of days if the customer never clicked the first one.

5. When finished, click Continue. The Segment step opens.

Step 2: Segment

In this step, create a unique audience segment for the survey. The criteria for this segment cannot overlap with any other survey segments.

For example, if Survey A targets commercial customer types with a sold threshold of $1,000 or more, you cannot create another survey targeting customers with a sold threshold of $2,000 or more. This is because the sold threshold criteria overlap.

1. Select the individual Business Units to which the survey applies.        

   Note: To add more Business unit options to send review requests, edit your location in Marketing Pro > Locations. Select additional units and save changes.

2. If you want to make changes to a location, click Manage Locations.

3. To better target audiences, select Advanced filtering. This activates the filters in the Segment step.        

   Note: Adding filters decreases the number of targeted customers. This may decrease review generation volume.

4. Select the Customer Type.

5. Select the Contact Type for the survey. Options include:        

   • Customer: Select this to send the survey to the customer contact.

   • Service Location: Select this option to send the survey to the contacts associated with the service location. This is particularly useful for businesses offering commercial services, as it allows you to gather feedback from those who received the service.

6. Select the Job Types and Job Tags you want to include or exclude from the email survey.

7. Select the date range of excluded last review requests.        

   Tip: To avoid inconveniencing customers who received review requests within the specified time range, you can choose to exclude them from the current SMS survey.

8. Add the Sold Threshold Range. 

9. When finished, click Continue. The Prompt step opens.

Step 3: Prompt

1. Turn on the Include Logo toggle to enable viewing your logo in the SMS survey. If the selected BU's location doesn't have a logo, you are prompted to include one.        

   Note: The Include Logo toggle is turned off by default.

2. Edit the message in Message Text.        

   Note: Use merge tags to automatically populate information, such as the customer's first name, by dragging the tag into the message.

      

3. If you don't need to send a follow-up message, click Continue. Otherwise, turn on the Enable Survey Resend toggle.

4. Add the number of days to wait before resending the survey. The survey is automatically resent if the customer doesn't respond to the survey within the number of days shown here.

5. Edit the follow-up survey's message to make it more personal.        

   Note: Use merge tags to automatically populate information, such as the customer's first name, by dragging the tag into the message.

      

6. When finished, click Continue. If you enabled Internal Feedback for the survey, the Rating step opens. Otherwise, the Review Sites step opens.

Step 4: Rating

The Rating step is available only for surveys with Internal Feedback enabled. If you did not select Internal Feedback for your survey in Step 1: Overview, skip this step.

If you selected Internal Feedback, follow the steps below:

1. Turn on the Show Technician Information toggle to include the technician's details.

2. Edit the message in Message Text.        

   Note: Use merge tags to automatically populate information like the customer's first name by highlighting the tag, and dragging it into the message.

      

3. Click Continue. The Review Sites step opens.

Note: You can create alerts with a new type for the number of stars for internal reviews when setting up alerts in Reputation > Alerts.

Step 5: Review Sites

1. For surveys with a Landing Page only, enter the Headline and Body text for your landing page. 

2. Click Delete for any locations you don't want to include in the survey. 

3. (Optional) To add a location for the survey, click Add Location and then select the location from the dropdown. 

4. Decide which review sites you want to prioritize for getting business reviews. Consider factors like a site's popularity in your industry or the ones most commonly used in your area. Based on best practices, we recommend prioritizing Google for generating reviews.
   
   Next, organize the review sites in your preferred order by dragging them within the list for each location. 

5. (Optional) Click Add Site to add new sites for a location. You can have up to four review sites for each location.

6. When finished, click Continue to proceed to the Review and Submit step.

Step 6: Review and Submit

Review the SMS survey information in this step.

• To make changes, click Edit.

• To switch to the Recommended Setup, click Switch to Recommended Setup and then confirm. The Recommended Setup uses settings that have historically gotten the best overall click rate. For more, see Use Recommended Setup to create an SMS survey.

  Caution: If you switch, all the data you entered during the Advanced Setup will be reset.

• If you want to finish the survey later, click Save and Finish Later.

• If everything is correct, click Start Survey.        

  Note: After clicking Start Survey, your SMS surveys are sent as soon as the next job in one of the BUs that you chose is completed.

Pause and start a survey

If you want to stop sending SMS survey prompts for completed jobs.

1. Go to the navigation bar and click Marketing .

2. In the side menu, click Review Generation.

3. Click Pause on the survey you want to pause.

4. On the Confirm Pause page that opens, click Pause. 

Note: To resume sending a survey prompt, click Start on a survey you previously paused.

Want to learn more?

• See Get started with Marketing Pro Reputation Management

• See Manage reviews

• See Manage review requests

• See Create email surveys