Relationship Survey invitations can be emailed to your customers by CIOPulse using the Automated Survey Series function.

However, if you'd rather these emails were sent by your own email system, you can run Relationship Surveys manually.

With a manual Relationship Survey, you enter some basic information about the survey into the Portal and then run a mail-merge (usually) to send survey invitations to a list of your customers.

This article describes that manual process.

Before running a relationship survey, you need to provide CIOPulse with some basic information about it. Each time you run another relationship survey (e.g. a year later, or for another project), you will need to repeat these steps.

 2. Select 'Survey Series'

3. Select 'Manual Series'

4. Click 'Add Manual Survey Series'

5. Enter a Series Name and Series Code for the Series and click 'Save and go back to list'

6. Select 'Main Menu' and then Select 'Relationship Surveys'.

7. Here you will find a list of any Relationship Surveys that you have already run. You can use the pencil icon at the far right to edit an existing survey (e.g. to rename it), or delete it (provided no surveys were ever received).
8. Click 'Add Relationship Survey' to set up a new Relationship Survey.

9. Enter these five fields:
   1. Survey Name: A short name that describes this survey. For your information only.
   2. Survey Code: This is a unique code assigned by you for this particular relationship survey. When you issue relationship survey invitations to your customers, the hyperlink for the survey will include this Survey Code in the rsid parameter. CIOPulse will then associate survey responses with this particular survey. The Survey Code must not contain spaces or any special characters (e.g. no ampersands). No two surveys can have the same Survey Code.
   3. Survey Series: Pick a Survey Series from the drop-down list.  The results of Surveys in the same Survey Series can be compared with each other. If this Survey does not belong to Series, choose 'No series'.
   4. Invitation Count: Use the Invitation Count field to tell CIOPulse how many people have been invited to complete the survey so that a Response Rate can be calculated.
   5. Close Date: Your Net Promoter Score for the survey will be calculated based on all surveys received up to and including the Close Date (GMT). Surveys received after this date will not be included in any Net Promoter Score calculations.

10. Click 'Save and go back to list'.

The survey invitations that you send must include a hyperlink to the CIOPulse relationship survey. Your survey URL can be found in the Portal under View your URLs.

Your relationship survey URL will look similar (but not exactly like) this:

https://survey.cio-pulse.com?stc=djTP6A&cid=C123456&sgid1=Fin&sgid2=NSW&rsid=Sep17&bun=IT

The survey URL contains a fixed prefix (e.g. https://survey.cio-pulse.com?stc=djTP6A) followed by a number of parameters that pass important information through to CIOPulse.

Each parameter name begins with a & (except the first, which is prefixed with a ?) and is followed by = and the parameter value. For example, &cid=123456 tells CIOPulse that the unique code for this respondent (customer) is 123456.

Parameter names must be in lowercase. The order of the parameters does not matter.

These two parameters are mandatory:

• rsid Relationship Survey Code. A code of your choice for this survey iteration, e.g. if you run these surveys annually, you might use &rsid=sep17 for this year and &rsid=sep18 for next year etc.  Relationship Survey Codes must contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), hyphens and underscores. Spaces are not allowed. You must set up this Relationship Survey Code in the Portal before you issue survey invitations. This is described above.
• bun Business Unit Name. The name by which your business unit is known to your customers, e.g. IT, ITS or HR. This is used in the wording of the surveys themselves.  Spaces and ampersands have to be replaced with "%20" and '%26" respectively (without the quotes). e.g. if your business unit is called "I M&T", your URL will include &bun=I%20M%26T.

These three parameters are optional. If you do not wish to use any of them, do not include them in the survey URL:

• cid Customer ID. A unique identifier for the customer, e.g. their full name (including spaces, apostrophes and hyphens), email address or employee ID.  This will enable you to associate each survey response with a customer so that you can follow-up with a particular concern or get clarification on their feedback. If you prefer your survey responses to be anonymous, you must omit this parameter or specify &cid=anonymous. If more than one survey is received for the same cid, only the latest will be retained.
• sgid1 Segment Code 1. The unique code representing a meaningful grouping of customers for your organisation, e.g. location. Segment Codes must contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), hyphens and underscores. Spaces are not allowed. You setup the list of Segments, and the unique code for each, in the Portal. This is described here: Manage Customer Segments.  CIOPulse will calculate a Net Promoter Score for each of these segments, e.g. London, Sydney, New York. If you don't want to use Segment Code 1, you can exclude this parameter or hardcode it as &sgid1=NONE.
• sgid2 Segment Code 2. The unique code representing a meaningful, alternative grouping of customers for your organisation, e.g. business unit. Segment Codes must contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), hyphens and underscores. Spaces are not allowed. You setup the list of Segments, and the unique code for each, in the Portal. This is described here: Manage Customer Segments.  CIOPulse will calculate a Net Promoter Score for each of these alternative segments, e.g. Finance, Marketing, Manufacturing. It will also calculate a Net Promoter Score for each combination of Segment 1 and Segment 2, e.g. Finance/London, Finance/New York, Marketing/London, Marketing/New York etc. If you don't want to use Segment Code 2, you can exclude this parameter or hardcode it as &sgid2=NONE.

Here's an example Word 2016 workflow for preparing and running your mail merge.

1. Setup your list of Segment Codes (the value you will use in the sgid1 and sgid2 parameters) and the Relationship Survey Code for this survey (the value of the rsid parameter) in the CIOPulse Portal.
2. Create an Excel spreadsheet with the list of survey recipients and your CIOPulse relationship URL. See below for a sample Excel template. The survey URL in this template will not be correct for you. For your survey URL, see here.

3. If you are not using sgid1, put "NONE" (without the quotes) in each cell inst
4. Triple-check that each customer's name, email address and unique survey URL are 100% correct!
5. Save and close the spreadsheet.
6. Create a new Word document.
7. Select Mailings/Start Mail Merge/Email Messages.
8. Select Mailings/Select Recipients/Use an Existing List.
9. Locate the Excel spreadsheet containing the list of recipients, click Open and then hit OK on the Select Table dialog box.
10. Write and format the email body as required.
11. Select Mailings/Insert Merge Field to insert the customer's name.
12. Position your cursor where you want the survey hyperlink to be.
13. Select Insert/Quick Parts/Fields/Hyperlink and click OK. You will see "Error! Hyperlink reference not valid" and that's normal.
14. Press ALT+F9 to show the hyperlink code. You should see: {HYPERLINK \* MERGEFORMAT}
15. Insert your cursor immediately after HYPERLINK and type space, quote quote so that you have this: {HYPERLINK "" \* MERGEFORMAT}
16. Insert your cursor between the two quotes.
17. Select Mailings/Insert Merge Field and select your url merge field. You should now see this: {HYPERLINK "{MERGEFIELD url}" \* MERGEFORMAT }
18. Press ALT+F9 to hide the field code.
19. Replace the text "Error! Hyperlink reference not valid" with something like "click here".

19. Use Mailings/Preview Results to check your template, especially the survey hyperlink.
20. Save the Word document.
21. To send your survey invitations, select Mailings/Finish & Merge/Send Email Messages and choose 'email'.
22. Enter your email subject line, e.g. "3 minute survey - help us be the best IT team you've ever had".
23. Click OK to send your survey invitations.