The Links Platform

The Links platform generates a URL (link) that you can give to customers, allowing them to access your survey through a variety of interesting channels. For instance, you can include a Survey URL in existing emails, chat messages, or social media posts. You can also generate QR codes to share your survey on posters or on the last slide of a presentation.

In this section

• How the Links platform works
• Setting up the Links platform
• Generating QR codes
• Passing properties via the Links platform
• Deleting survey links
• Testing the Links platform
• FAQs: The Links platform

How the Links platform works

Delighted Links are short URLs that launch your survey. For example, this link (https://delighted.com/t/Bo5cKjF1) will launch the below survey:

Click here to take the survey!

Each link includes the core Delighted web address ( https://delighted.com ) and a unique identifier to your survey ( ex. Bo5cKjF ). This link will not change once it's been set up—even if you adjust the look and feel of your survey!

Embed the link wherever you'd like—hyperlinking text, linking specific buttons in an email, etc.— or post the full URL anywhere you need it. Link platform surveys follow the same flow as other platforms:

1. Score selection
2. Open-ended Comment
3. Additional Questions
   
4. Thank you page
   

You can also generate a QR code associated with each link, which makes sharing your survey on posters, presentations, and other visual media super easy! Read more about the QR code generation in Generating QR codes below.

Links are anonymous by default, so unless you add an Additional Question or pass properties to capture contact information (like name or email), you’ll see Link responses come from an anonymous name like Person (012345678). Once an anonymous response has been captured, it’s not possible to tie it back to the respondent.

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Setting up the Links platform

To set up your survey link, navigate to the Platforms page by clicking “Survey people” and choosing "Set up" under the Link platform. You can then customize your survey (more information about what customization options are available can be found here). Note that once you've set up the Link platform, this button will say "Adjust settings" instead of "Set up."

After customizing your survey, Delighted immediately generates a link (or URL). Click the icon to the right of the URL to copy it to your clipboard.

Preventing multiple submissions

When you create your link, you’ll see the “Prevent multiple submissions” box is checked by default. This feature allows you to control the frequency of submissions via your survey link using cookies.

• If “Prevent multiple submissions” is checked: The customer will only be able to respond to the survey once a month. If they attempt to submit another response, it will override and update their most recent prior response.
• If “Prevent multiple submissions” is unchecked: All responses will be received and saved, no matter how many times the link survey is completed. This is useful for ease of testing purposes—you can test the link as many times as you’d like, without worrying about cookie expiration.

To toggle between the two settings, simply check or uncheck the checkbox. If your survey is live, we recommend keeping “Prevent multiple submissions” checked to avoid the link being “spammed” with responses.

Building unique survey links

You can create multiple links, each with different properties attached, to segment feedback from each link. This is helpful if you’re capturing feedback on all of your customer service representatives, on multiple retail locations, and more!

To create a new link:

1. Click “Survey people” and then choose “Adjust settings” under the Link platform
2. Click “Add a new link” below the list of existing links
   

   

3. Name your link (ideally something to identify which support rep, retail location, or other segment it will be used for, like “Sean M” or “Downtown”)
4. Click “Save and finish”
   

   

To edit the settings associated with one of your links:

1. Click “Survey people” and then choose “Adjust settings” under the Link platform
2. Click “Settings” to the right of the link you’d like to adjust

From here, you can edit the link settings, including the link name.

To edit the link name:

1. Click the gear icon to the right of the link name
2. Type in your new name
3. Click “Save changes”

Using vanity URLs for link management

Keep track of the unique links you’ve made by enabling the vanity URL checkbox.

When Vanity URLs are enabled, the survey names will be appended to the end of the URLs. This will allow you to easily distinguish between each URL so they don’t get mixed up when sharing with team members!

Note: if you change this setting (either enabling or disabling vanity URLs), both versions of the link will work.

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Generating QR codes

Customers can scan your Delighted QR code with their smartphones. Once scanned, they will be redirected to their default browser, which will display the Delighted survey.

To download a QR code for your survey, simply choose your desired file type—PNG or SVG—from the Link platform settings page.

To adjust the size of the QR code, set the Property name Delighted_qr_png_size to the number of pixels for the QR code image (always in square format).

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Passing properties via Links

When a respondent takes a survey with a property associated with it, those properties will immediately be available as filters on your Dashboard. There are two ways to add properties to Links to pass over customer details or other information with your survey responses:

• Setting properties within the platform: Any properties set on the Links platform page will be applied to every response associated with that Link. This option is best used for segmenting your responses between multiple unique links, like for individual customer service reps or retail locations.
• Appending properties to the Link: Appending properties to the end of your Link allows you to set custom properties for every response. This option is best used when passing dynamic information like respondent name or email.

Need an overall refresher on properties before diving in? Head to section 5. Managing People and Properties.

We recommend starting by watching this overview video on passing properties via the Link platform:

Setting properties within the platform

Add properties within Delighted to easily distinguish between responses from each of your unique links. For example, to add properties for a specific location and product:

1. Click “Survey people” and then choose “Adjust settings” under the Link platform
2. Click “Settings” next to the link you’d like to adjust
3. On the bottom of your Link page, click Add a property
4. Under Property Name, type in an overarching category, such as Product. 
5. Under Property Value, enter the individual value you'll be using to filter feedback, such as iPad.
6. Under Property Name, enter Location. 
7. Under Property Value, enter a location, such as San Diego.
8. Click “Save changes” to lock in those properties!

Appending properties to the Link

A common use case for the Links platform is to include the survey in existing marketing emails, to add it to campaigns sent through Salesforce, or to embed it in your support agents’ email signatures. If you're considering dynamically updating properties in the Link (either to pass respondent information or to pass variables supported by the platform where you’re embedding the Link), you'll need to append the URL string with any required details.

There are two key elements to keep in mind when passing that customer data:

• Proper encoding of the URL string
• Correct structure for the name, email, and property parameters

Proper encoding of the URL string

Here are some important encoding tips to keep in mind when creating your appended links:

• The first parameter should start with `?`, while all subsequent parameters should start with `&`. For example: https://delighted.com/t/Bo5cKjF1?name=Sean&email=hello%40delighted.com
• All special characters should be encoded (ex. %40 is how to encode the @ symbol). You might consider using a URL encoder/decoder to help easily grab the correct encoding

Correct structure for the name, email, and property parameters

• Name: "name=sean"
• Email: "email=sean%40delighted.com" (%40 is how to encode the @ symbol).
• Properties: "propertyname=value" (ex. "Purchase Location" set to "Retail": "purchase_location=retail")

Note that capitalization matters for the name and email parameters (they should be all lowercase). For properties, you can pick your own capitalization!

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Testing the Link platform

To test your Link survey, simply copy the link and paste it into your browser to take the survey.

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Deleting survey links

Clean, accurate data is necessary for making widespread decisions based on experience feedback. You can delete old survey links that you don’t use anymore to prevent any customers from accidentally stumbling on a survey that is out-of-date.

To delete a survey link:

1. Click “Survey people” and then choose “Adjust settings” under the Link platform
2. Click “Settings” next to the link you’d like to delete
3. On the bottom right-hand side of the page, choose “Delete this link”

Deleting a link will not delete any responses that you’ve captured with that link already. If someone tries to click on a link that will be deleted, they will be shown a Delighted error page, so make sure to remove deleted links from any of your social media, email signatures, or wherever else they may live!

If you delete all of your links, don't worry! You can simply click “Add a new link” from the Links page or “Set up” under the Link platform from the platforms page.

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FAQs: The Link platform

In this section

• My responses keep overwriting themselves—what's going on?
• How can I get a link for each score?
• Can I embed the Link survey in my email signature?
• Why am I getting an error message when clicking on my survey link?

My responses keep overwriting themselves—what's going on?

If you're seeing a single response that is being continually overwritten, there's a good chance that one of two things is occurring:

• The link being used is for the Comment page as opposed to the original link that Delighted generated. Be sure to only use the URL generated by Delighted and not the URL from your browser after clicking on the link.
• A cookie-related issue is causing responses to overwrite each other because multiple people are responding from the same device.

Make sure you’ve unchecked “Prevent multiple submissions” if you’d like customers to be able to submit a new response more than once a month.

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How can I get a link for each score?

In some cases, you might want to more closely mirror the standard Delighted email experience—which involves capturing the score immediately and then redirecting to the Comment page.

On your Link page, click on "Get individual links for each score" on the lower right-hand side of the page and use the icon to the right of the URL string to instantly copy each URL.

Can I embed the Link in my email signature?

Yes!

Totally possible to do this using the individual score links. For a detailed walkthrough of how to set this up, visit our Email Signature Surveys article.

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Why am I getting an error message when clicking on my survey link?

If you're seeing the error message “We can’t find the page you’re looking for.” when trying to follow a survey link, it was probably deleted.

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