SurveyMonkey introduced new AI features and tools this week, designed to help HR and customer experience teams gain better insight from surveys.
On Tuesday, the survey platform provider introduced AI Analysis Suite, which combines new functionality with existing AI capabilities. New features include Analyze with AI, a chat-based data analysis feature, and Thematic Analysis, which is currently in beta and can identify and categorize open-ended text responses.
The suite’s existing features include sentiment analysis to sort open-ended responses, and response quality, which uses machine learning to identify poor-quality results.
SurveyMonkey also on Tuesday introduced a new toolkit for creating surveys and forms. HR managers and customer experience teams can use the AI-powered paste and create tool to transform survey questions from a document or email into a questionnaire. Users can also create and customize themes for their surveys with the AI survey and form theme generator tool.
“This is AI that’s helpful with a human-in-the-loop, so they don’t have to spend their day entering survey questions one by one [or] wondering if they’ve got it right,” said Mike Greenberg, director of product marketing at SurveyMonkey. “We are infusing our existing platform with AI, where it makes sense to help … ask questions the right way so that you can get reliable insights on the other side and make a decision faster than you would be able to do with other technology.”
Trying to gather insights from a survey, though, has never been easy, according to Constellation Research analyst Liz Miller.
“What these updated capabilities represent is the ability to ask,” Miller said. Capabilities such as Analyze with AI enable an analyst, marketer or HR leader to ask a question of the data, identify better segments or look at the responses from a different angle, she added.
Tools like these are also low risk for some businesses.
“This brings AI to those businesses that might not be investing in heavy firepower survey and research tools but are deploying surveys and forms to gather insights from customers or employees better,” Miller said. That accessibility to get started quickly and low-risk profile means that organizations of all sizes can use these AI tools, she added.
However, tools like these aren’t foolproof. One challenge is understanding how the datasets align with how the analysis is done, Miller said.
“To understand data and outcomes, you often need to understand your panel,” she said. “You need to understand some of that history and the nuance of people. That could be hard to train.”