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Solicit Reviews Question

About the Solicit Reviews Question

Building a robust catalog of ratings and reviews is important for building your business’s reputation and drawing in new customers. You can make it easier than ever for customers to amplify their voice by letting them leave a review on a trusted source – such as Google, Facebook, or G2 – from right inside a Qualtrics survey.

As a condition of using this feature, you agree to comply with our Terms and Conditions.

Qtip: This feature is not included in all CX licenses. If you are a CX customer interested in this solution, please reach out to your Account Executive or XM Success Manager.

Getting Started

To use this feature, your survey needs to be on the simple layout. See more about what features are compatible and how to switch to this layout on the linked support page.

If you are soliciting Google reviews, it can help if a Brand Administrator creates a reputation management project and successfully connects it to the Google app before following the next steps.

Adding the Solicit Reviews Question to a Survey

In order to solicit reviews from right inside a Qualtrics survey, you need to add a special kind of question, then set it up so it connects to the correct review page.

Qtip: If you are adding this functionality to an existing survey, keep in mind that the Solicit Reviews question is where respondents will enter their review. Content they enter into other questions in the survey will not be pulled into their review unless you use autofill.

Create a survey or select an existing one.
Set this survey to the Simple layout.
Return to the survey builder.
Click Add new question.
Select Solicit reviews.
Under Review app or service, choose the service where you’d like survey respondents to be able to post reviews. Select one from the following:
- Better Business Bureau (BBB)
- Google
- Facebook
- G2 Crowd
- Consumer Affairs
The next step varies based on the company you chose.

Next Steps: Google

Google Reviews are divided by location, so you need to specify the location your respondents should leave a review for using a place ID. See how you can find these IDs in Getting Place IDs.

You can also set up autofill, which helps the respondent carry other survey response content into the review website of choice.

Next Steps: Better Business Bureau (BBB), Facebook, G2 Crowd, or Consumer Affairs

Add a link to your company’s profile on the chosen website. This determines where your respondents are redirected when they click the link shown in the preview.

You can also set up autofill, which helps the respondent carry other survey response content into the review website of choice.

Autofill Review Content

Autofill will take a review that the respondent typed in a Qualtrics survey and automatically fill it into the third party company’s review platform. It can be useful if you’ve already asked the respondent for their thoughts, and want to make it easier for them to carry these over into a more official review of your company.

Qtip: Respondents have a chance to edit their review on another platform before they submit it. This means the response they added to the survey and the review they left on a corporate site may not exactly match.

Survey Design

This section has some basic guiding principles on how to format your survey to work with autofill functionality.

User responses work best in the form of a text entry question. Note that the format of the text entry question is up to you.

In the case of Google reviews, you can also map a star rating from the survey. Since you cannot use slider questions with the simple layout, we recommend using a multiple choice question. This can be phrased as a number scale, a satisfaction question, or whatever you’d like. Make sure the recode values are correct for each choice and maintain a 1-5 scale.

Make sure any questions you add that you want to carry into the review are on a separate page from the solicit reviews question. Learn more about how to add page breaks.

Autofill Setup

Create a solicit reviews question and set it up.
Under User response from, find your text entry question.
Select the full, exact question text, e.g., “Please provide feedback on our company.” Do not select the option that says “Question Text.”

Qtip: If you are collecting Google Reviews, you can also set a star rating. Look for the question you want to map to your star rating and choose Selected Choices Recode.

Getting Google Place IDs

Google uses Place IDs to identify unique locations in their database. For each location you add to your organization in Google Reviews, there will be a Place ID.

Qtip: We highly recommend using this method, especially if you have multiple locations.

Make sure you’ve created a reputation management project and connected Google as the source.
Open your reputation management project.
Click the options.
Select Export Google Place IDs.

This will export a CSV file with all of the Place IDs inside it.

Qtip: You can also manually search for individual IDs using Google’s documentation. This method works well for an organization with a small number of locations, but is not recommended if you have multiple locations.

Mapping Google Place IDs to Locations in the Survey

You can only assign one Google Place ID to one question at a time. However, you can assign Place IDs dynamically using embedded data and piped text.

If you have the Place ID saved as embedded data, you can add the piped text for this embedded data in your question. This field can be named whatever you want, but we recommend something like “GooglePlaceID.”

But how do you save the correct Place ID to this embedded data field? You could pass it through a URL if users are coming from a specific website. You can save it in a contact list if you know what locations specific customers prefer ahead of time. You could use supplemental data if you have a lot of locations but they are managed at a transactional level rather than customer profile level; see Using Supplemental Data to Set Google Place IDs for more details.

You could also ask for a location right in the survey and assign it an ID, by doing the following:

Add a multiple choice question where respondents choose a location.
Make sure the multiple choice question and the solicit review question are in different blocks. The multiple choice question should come before the solicit reviews question.
Go to the survey flow.
Add a branch between the location question and solicit reviews question blocks.
Edit the condition so that one of the locations must be selected.
Inside this branch, add an embedded data element.
Add a field for the Google Place ID.
Qtip: You can name this field whatever you want. We recommend something like “GooglePlaceID.”
Set this field equal to the Google Place ID for this location.
Example: In step 4, we said only people who chose the Boston location should go down this branch. We set the GooglePlaceID embedded data equal to the Place ID for our Boston location.
Duplicate the branch so you have as many branches as you have locations.
Edit the condition and the GooglePlaceID for each branch so each branch covers a unique location.
Example: We have 5 locations, in the cities of Boston, Seattle, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and New York City. We would make 5 branches, one for each of the locations just listed.

Qtip: Make sure the name of the Google Place ID embedded data in the survey flow exactly matches the one in the piped text of the solicit reviews question. That means using the exact same spelling and spacing.

Qtip: You don’t have to set Place IDs based on a question in the survey. For example, you may already have location data saved as a separate embedded data field. In that case, you could use the location values to set Google Place IDs. Set up a branch for each location and set the appropriate embedded data underneath it.

What happens when there is no Google Place ID

If some locations or respondents don’t have a Google Place ID, the solicit reviews question will not display correctly. It is better in these cases to hide the solicit reviews question from the respondent.

Add display logic to your solicit reviews question. Add a condition based on the embedded data “GooglePlaceID,” and select “Is Not Empty.” This means the question will only display if the Google Place ID has a value.

What Survey Takers See

This section will cover what survey-takers see once this feature has been set up correctly.

Better Business Bureau (BBB), Facebook, G2 Crowd, or Consumer Affairs

If you choose any of the review apps or services listed above, respondents will see their logo. Beneath this will be a link to review your company at the profile link you provided. This link will open in a new tab.

If you included autofill, respondents will see the autofill content. There will be a button to copy the text and another to open the profile in a new window.

Survey-takers in either scenario will not complete the survey unless they return to this tab to submit it.

Google Reviews

If you choose Google, respondents who have third party cookies enabled will see a widget where they can select a star rating and type out their Google Review right inside the survey.

Before they write anything, the respondents will be warned:

Your posts will appear publicly with your profile name and picture.
Your posts will appear on Google services across the web, like Maps and Search, and on third-party sites and apps that use Google services.
Your posts must comply with Google’s policies. Read more.

Respondents are free to edit, cancel, or post their review. If the respondent decides to post the review, one of two things can happen:

Respondent has third-party cookies enabled on their browser: Common for Chrome and Android. Respondents can submit the review right inside the survey, then proceed with the rest of the survey.
Respondent has third-party cookies disabled on their browser: Common for Safari and iOS. Respondents who click the “Open” prompt will be redirected out of the survey to Google to submit their survey (as is shown above for the other review apps).

Understanding the Impact of Soliciting Reviews

The solicit reviews question saves some information to help you understand the impact of having this review functionality in your survey. This is saved under the solicit reviews question itself, so you can view this by displaying columns on Data & Analysis or by exporting data.

The following is a list of possible statuses. Remember that if this solution is set to Google Reviews, an embedded widget appears, whereas if you select another company, this question will redirect respondents to another page. See What Survey Takers See.

Empty Value: For all review apps. The respondent has third party cookies enabled on their browser and skipped the question without taking any action.
Redirect Used: For review apps other than Google, the question was displayed and the respondent clicked to redirect. Since there is not a way to track actual completion once a respondent leaves the Qualtrics platform, it is open whether the respondent proceeded to leave a review in another window or not.
Submitted: For Google Reviews only. The Google widget was displayed and the respondent posted a review. They had third party cookies enabled, so they were able to use the solicit reviews question to leave their review without leaving the survey.
Fallback Used: For Google Reviews only. The redirect-based solution was displayed and the respondent clicked to redirect. Since there is not a way to track actual completion once a respondent leaves the Qualtrics platform, it is open whether the respondent proceeded to leave a review in another window or not.
Cancelled: For Google Reviews only. The Google widget was displayed, but the respondent hit “Cancel” instead of “Post.”
Error: For Google Reviews only. The Google widget was displayed, but an issue was detected that prevented the respondent from leaving a review.
Qtip: The question does not record the origin of the error. You may want to check that the Google Place IDs are set up correctly in your survey.
Fallback Shown: For Google Reviews only. The respondent saw the question, but has third party cookies disabled, so they see the redirect option instead of the ability to leave a review right in the question. They did not click the redirect.

Other Best Practices

Publicly reply to reviews

Publicly responding to reviews boosts your customer service satisfaction and your public perception, whether it’s to thank a customer for taking the time to share their positive feedback, or to ask for more details so issues can be resolved.

If your company is already responding to reviews, we recommend ensuring they are aware and staffed for the new volume you’ll receive by using this feature. If you are not already responding, Qualtrics makes it easy to start using the Online Reviews widget.

Only ask certain respondents for reviews

You can decide which respondents you want to ask to leave reviews by adding display logic to the solicit reviews question.

Example: Your survey includes a question asking respondents if they’d like to contact your team to escalate an issue. Immediately asking these customers for a review could yield a poor experience, such as multiple teams who saw the complaint reaching out separately to help the same respondent.

Warning: Only asking for reviews from respondents who gave positive feedback is not permitted. See our Terms and Conditions and Blog Post for more details.

Terms and Conditions

By using the Solicit Reviews question type, you agree to solicit reviews in accordance with applicable law, including Section 5(a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. § 45). You agree that you will not only solicit reviews that are positive. You also agree to comply with the terms and conditions established by the respective review site.