Set Customer Voice Survey Variables using Dynamics 365 Marketing

It is about time we send a personalised customer voice survey, with all the variables you could ever dream of with the power of Dynamics 365 Marketing!

Sending Dynamics 365 Customer Voice surveys via Dynamics 365 Marketing is possible today already, as this post by Megan V Walker wonderfully explains. Unfortunately it is not possible to set any survey variables (except first name and last name which is taken from the contact record)… until now!

This post is going to be using the ‘Real-Time Marketing’ functionality of Dynamics 365 Marketing. Check out my previous blog for some info/links and detailed steps on creating Dataverse triggers (it will help you here).

Create a Survey

Let’s set up a simple survey which will be sent to the customer when an opportunity is closed, asking for some feedback on their experience. We will personalise the survey content to include some details about the opportunity using the Customer Voice variables and also data we might later want to report on in context of the survey feedback. For example who the customer service representative was to chart their results for performance monitoring and feedback.

Create a Custom Trigger

Create a new event trigger called ‘Send Survey’. Add the attributes you want to pass, ensuring you include one called ‘SurveyURL’ and set that to string. The rest are optional but just to give you an idea of other things which might be useful later I also added The name and email of the customer success manager plus some details about the opportunity too.

Make sure your trigger is now showing as ‘Ready to use’

Create a Marketing Email

The marketing email needs to contain the survey link - so we will be sure to add a button here - There is the option to use ‘Survey’ at the link type but like I mentioend earlier - this won’t allow us to set any of the customer voice variables.

Setting the button to a URL type, then add in the Survey link to using the ‘SurveyURL’ attribute of the ‘Send survey’ event trigger.

Rather than sending the email from a generic comms email address, why not send it ‘From’ the Customer Success Manager, plus any replies can be redirected straight to them too!

When marking the email ‘Ready to Send’ it will show a warning about the ‘From address’ containing dynamics expressions but don’t worry - its all ok!

Create a Journey

The journey will be simple for this example but the possibilities of what else you could do after this are huge. Maybe a survey reminder? Or a thankyou? Or an escalation for a low NPS response. The journey will be ‘Event-based’ and triggered using the ‘Sent Survey’ trigger we just created.

We could add some conditional branching using the trigger attributes too - maybe we need to send a different email when the opportunity is lost or won - you have the power!

Publish the journey and lets go build a trigger

Create a Cloud Flow

We are going to create the flow to send the survey as if we were going to send it via Power Automate. For a more detailed example of how to do this check here.

Trigger the survey and Expand

The survey will be triggered when an opportunity is closed. Using ‘Get record’ combined action with $expand allows us to get all the information from the Opportunity, Contact and User records to be able to populate all our survey variables.

Create survey invitation & set variables

Be sure to use the ‘Create an invitation’ action here (rather than send) because we want the sending to happen in Dynamics marketing using our magical journey and beautiful email template. Plus all the insights that come along with it!

Trigger the ‘Send Survey’ Marketing Journey

Ensure you map the ‘Invitation Link’ from the step above to set the ‘SurveyURL’ variable on your trigger

P.S. if you are a bit confused here - go read my previous blog for some info/links and detailed steps on creating Dataverse triggers.

Send a Personalised Survey from Dynamics 365 Marketing!

Let’s trigger the journey by closing this opportunity as won.

The journey is triggered - sending the marketing email with the unique URL to the customer

The survey is opened using the button on the marketing email, the survey is fully personalised to the customer with details about their customer success manager contact details and their outcome.

The survey variables are all captured in Dataverse with the response

So send surveys from any trigger, set any variables you need and personalise the experience to your hearts content. The time to reap the benefits of both Dynamics marketing and Customer Voice is NOW. It’s amazing what ideas can come from a quick teams call with my good friend Ashraf Omar once again - he’s a flippin’ genius!

Sending Dynamics 365 Customer Voice surveys via Dynamics 365 Marketing -> https://meganvwalker.com/sending-d365-customer-voice-survey-requests-via-d365-marketing/

Create custom Dataverse triggers for Dynamics 365 Marketing - without a developer! -> https://www.ameyholden.com/articles/real-time-dynamics-marketing-custom-triggers-dataverse

Sending Customer Voice surveys with Power Automate https://www.ameyholden.com/articles/sending-digital-applications-customer-voice-power-automate

Using Expand in Power Automate https://www.ameyholden.com/articles/expand-query-lookups-power-automate