On-the-go with Forsta: A guide to our mobile solutions
What was the very first thing you did this morning? Think back to the moments before your morning coffee and maybe before you even got out of bed. Don’t remember? Perhaps this will help. For many of us, 50% of smartphone owners to be exact, the very first thing we do every morning, is grab our smartphone. And it doesn’t stop there. The average person then proceeds to check their mobile device at least 46 times per day!
There’s no denying that mobile has become a huge part of our lives. We use mobile devices for virtually everything – from playing games to enhancing our work productivity. And this is a fact businesses and researchers simply cannot ignore!
Perhaps, however, you are still not convinced that mobile has a place in customer experience, employee engagement, and market research. Well, think again! According to Greenbook, 64% of participants in the 2020 GRIT Report were using mobile-first surveys to conduct research.
Whether you want to collect feedback from your customers, conduct a market research project, or better enable your employees, mobile accessibility needs to be a primary consideration and Forsta is here to help!
Why Forsta?
Forsta provides businesses and research organizations a powerful, end-to-end solution, from panel management and sampling to reporting and data visualization and all the analysis in between. It caters to every data collection method, including web, mobile, face-to-face interviewing (CAPI), phone (CATI), social media, and integrates with external business systems.
But it doesn’t stop there! Once the data collection and analysis are complete, Forsta’s action management helps businesses manage and resolve customer issues fast. Our comprehensive suite provides the most complete, feature-rich, and robust set of tools available – all in one place! Leveraging a comprehensive platform like Forsta makes it easy for you to drive organizational improvements and rapidly scale your programs to meet your unique business needs.
Best of all, Forsta makes many of the most important aspects of the platform accessible from mobile devices to help you increase response rates and drive employee productivity.
Still not convinced? Read on for a tour of Forsta’s mobile capabilities.
“Forsta’s mobile solution has helped us to solve very specific market research challenges and, quite simply, our decision to invest in Forsta was the only logical choice to make.”
MIZUNO TOSHISADA
Managing Partner, SurveyMy
1. Consumer-facing mobile solutions
Providing respondents with convenient mobile options to submit their feedback is imperative to driving increased response rates. As mobile continues to dominate people’s everyday lives, survey participants expect to be able to provide feedback when and where it suits them – using their device of choice.
More than half
of the world’s web traffic now comes from mobile phones
84%
of the world’s population have smartphones
65%
of consumers’ digital time is spent on mobile devices
SMS
Did you know 97% of mobile subscribers will read an SMS (text) message within 15 minutes of receipt and 84% will respond within 1 hour. People are clearly responsive when it comes to SMS!
With Forsta, you can send short SMS surveys that provide an engaging and efficient channel for collecting feedback. They can be conducted as follows:
- Inbound SMS allows customers to send in-the-moment feedback. For example, you can provide a short text code on receipts or advertisements so customers can come to you.
- Outbound SMS lets you easily send text message surveys to your desired respondents.
This channel is ideal for:
- Accessing hard-to-reach customer groups
- Enabling customers to provide in-the-moment feedback3
- Reaching employees in the field or at key moments for the organization
“Aurora has been able to harness Forsta’s ability to support the mobile channel: in one particular project we achieved a dramatically improved response rate by conducting the survey onsite in addition to using a traditional email/web approach.”
USTIN ALDERSON
Managing Director, Aurora Market Research
Emails are one of the most common methods for delivering a web survey invitation. That said, it’s important to note that 54% of all email is opened on a mobile device.
Forsta provides a powerful wizard for creating and sending customized e-mails to respondents. Respondents access the surveys through a link within the email.
You can leverage:
- Personalized links: specific to the user
- Open links: lets you easily send text message surveys to your desired respondents
- Externally augmented dynamic open links: initializes an interview with repopulated respondent data from an external source
- Shortened links: like open or personalized links – just shorter
Considering the likelihood that survey respondents will open your email survey invitations on their mobile device, it’s imperative that your invitation links lead to Forsta’s mobile-optimized web surveys.
QR codes
A QR Code (Quick Response Code) is a machine- readable black and white matrix that stores information, such as a URL, behind the scenes. When a respondent scans the code with their mobile device’s QR code reader, it can launch a mobile-optimized survey.
Similarly to inbound SMS surveys, QR codes from Forsta can be displayed on receipts, posters, or advertisements enabling customers to provide feedback in a way that is familiar and convenient.
QR Codes are excellent for soliciting in-the-moment feedback from:
- Shoppers in a store
- Restaurant patrons
- Hotel guests
- Consumers of print advertising
Mobile apps
Applications, or apps as most of us call them, have revolutionized the mobile industry! While mobile-optimized websites are still viable and even preferred in some cases, today 90% of people’s mobile time is spent using an app. That said, apps cannot be ignored!
In addition to the many obvious app uses, like playing games and connecting on social media, mobile apps are also a great way for researchers and businesses to collect feedback. For this reason, Forsta has developed mobile applications to support your research and feedback needs.
Mobile App SDK
Already have your own app? No problem! Forsta’s Mobile App SDK allows you to embed feedback collection into your mobile apps with a completely seamless look, feel, and unmatched flexibility. This means that you are in complete control over how surveys within your app look and behave. There are virtually no limitations!
Best of all, your mobile developers will be delighted working with Forsta’s Mobile App SDK. We’ve designed this SDK to be fast, easy, flexible, and lightweight with minimal footprint impact on your existing app.
Mobile App SDK
Maybe you aren’t sure that respondents will download an app to take a survey. We thought of that too! So, we developed a clever way to direct your respondents to your app. With Forsta’s AskMe, the respondent will receive a single link to download the app and survey together through a Smart App Banner. What’s AskMe and what’s a Smart App Banner, you ask? Read on!
AskMe App
AskMe is a mobile survey app that allows for unlimited downloads and makes it easy for respondents to complete your surveys whether they are one-time-only or on-going studies, such as an audit or diary study. This app can be branded according to your business needs and is backed by the power of Forsta’s platform, the world’s leading technology for multi-channel feedback and research. And best of all, AskMe works offline! This provides the user with a responsive and consistent in-survey experience regardless of the quality of their Internet connection – even if they contain multimedia information like photos or videos.
Want to give it a try? Download the app from the App Store or Google Play to give it a try with a test survey!
Panel App
Forsta’s Panel Management makes it easy for Market Research agencies and corporations to:
- Develop and maintain high-quality panels —Leverage powerful sampling capabilities
- Design customized, fully branded panelist portals
Once your branded panelist portal is set up, your panelists can enjoy a seamless mobile experience leveraging Forsta’s Mobile Panel App. This easy-to-use, but powerful tool provides access to the following features:
- View and edit their profile
- View their credits or incentives
- Receive survey opportunity push notifications
- Respond to surveys
- Pause and resume surveys in case of interruption
Beyond the basics, Forsta’s Panel App includes the latest technologies to improve the speed, quality, and depth of data. With its GPS location and beacon triggering, for example, you can easily launch a survey and capture customer location data in-the-moment.
Mobile for your employees
In addition to our easy-to-use consumer facing apps, we have apps that are guaranteed to enhance your staff’s productivity from conducting field research to reviewing reports to taking action on negative feedback on-the-go.Forsta has developed innovative mobile solutions to help your employees be more productive. Our solutions are covered in the following pages.
83%
say they are at the same productivity level or higher working from home compared to the office
61%
would like to work two or three days a week from home
95%
of employees said good technology from their employer is important or very important
CAPI App
CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing) is a module of Forsta’s platform that makes face-to-face or field interviewing and reporting easy. CAPI is available for:
- Supervisors from any desktop computer
- Interviewers on Windows®, Android™ or Apple® devices
CAPI enables your interviewers to conduct feedback and research programs regardless of where respondents are located. And its offline capabilities means you never have to worry whether the interviewers’ have a stable Internet connection! Forsta CAPI is well suited for Central Location Testing (CLT) or you can efficiently manage a dispersed field force in local or remote locations. It provides all of your interviewers with access to sophisticated survey capabilities, including:
- Multimedia question types and capture (videos, flash files, images, etc.)
- GPS location capture
- Complex survey logic for questionnaire routing
- Advanced quota control
- 42 localized language options
A case study
A beverage company was keen to develop a better understanding of airport purchasing trends including the impact product placement, time and day of the week, and flight patterns have on sales. This company contracted an outside research firm to use Forsta’s CAPI solution to plan and execute the project. CAPI was the ideal solution because of its offline data capture capabilities that prevented any lost data resulting from poor indoor Internet connection and weak airport Wi-Fi. As part of the project, the researchers collected pictures and video to enhance the quantitative and qualitative research data.
AskMe App
AskMe mobile survey app not only serves for consumer-facing projects, it is also an excellent solution to help you solve business problems, streamline employees’ workflows, and make it easy for employees to provide feedback. This app can be fully branded to match your company’s image. And best of all, AskMe works offline! So regardless of the quality of the employee’s Internet connection, your survey responses are secure – even if they contain multimedia information like photos or videos.
“As the UK’s leading independent standard- setting body and provider of warranty for new homes, we need to enable our auditors to provide timely, accurate data about the new buildings they’re assessing. Forsta‘s AskMe app is the ideal tool for this as not only can our people complete surveys regardless of internet connectivity, but they’re able to submit photos to back up their comments, and the app automatically captures geolocation data so we know that the data provided reflects the correct site.”
MARTIN FEARNLEY
Information Innovation Manager at NHBC
A case study
A global provider of high-end genetic research equipment had an interesting challenge. The equipment this company sells is very large. With each sale the company would ask their client to measure their doors to ensure there was an entrance large enough to receive the equipment. Time and again, however, their customers were wrong about their door measurements. This led to some difficult customer conversations when equipment could not be delivered! As there was no paper trail proving the sales reps had asked for door measurements, everyone involved was getting very frustrated… until they found Forsta’s AskMe app.Now, as soon as the company closes a deal, the field sales reps use a fully branded AskMe survey to take pics of the doors and document the necessary measurements. When the field sales rep submits the data, the measurements and photos are automatically forwarded to their client to confirm. Upon confirmation, the agreed measurements and appropriate delivery agreement messaging are automatically delivered to their client as a fully branded PDF.
Action Management
Action management monitors your survey results for you and automatically assigns issues to the correct department or individual based on configurable rules tailored to your unique business needs. What’s more, action management facilitates advanced reporting so you can measure your program’s impact while improving efficiency.Action management’s email alerts and mobile-responsive design ensure your staff can access alerts and cases from just about anywhere! And, because action management’s mobile capabilities are delivered using responsive design technology, your staff can use virtually any smartphone or tablet that provides web browsing via Chrome or Safari. Best of all, action management’s mobile site is streamlined and simplified for optimal usability on-the-go.
Dashboards
Dashboards are an excellent way to organize information, share insights, and monitor an organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs) at-a-glance. Forsta’s comprehensive reporting suite, including Reportal™, active dashboards, instant analytics, and discovery analytics, provides organizations with access to everything they need for reporting, data visualization, and dashboarding.
Of course, considering the important role that dashboards play in the lives of your increasingly mobile workforce, Forsta’s reporting suite can support a variety of role-based mobile dashboards. Our mobile dashboards make it easy for your stakeholders to access real-time data and rich visualizations from any device.
“Sophisticated Forsta dashboards enable us to parse the data by product, geography or even business process, such as a claim or a call center query. With three clicks of a button instead of three days of analysis, a regional manager can gauge a group’s performance.”
Seth Hall
Vice President of Customer Service, Philadelphia Insurance
Related resources
Boost your agency’s performance: 5 AI strategies for success
Boost your agency’s performance: 5 AI strategies for success Webinar synopsis: AI is revolutionizing research, delivering faster, more accurate insights. This webinar covers five key strategies to integrate AI into your agency, enhancing efficiency, decision-making, and client results—while preserving the human touch. Through case studies and expert insights, you’ll leave with actionable steps to overcome […]
The research agency’s AI efficiency playbook
The research agency’s AI efficiency playbook The research agency’s AI efficiency playbook The rise of AI has led to a surge of excitement, anxiety, and confusion within the research industry. Agency leaders can reap the rewards of this new landscape with our five guiding principles for integrating AI into your strategies. From boosting operational efficiency […]
Sports apparel titan defines gold standard for global brand tracking
Sports apparel titan defines gold standard for global brand tracking Sports apparel titan defines gold standard for global brand tracking with Forsta’s help Everyone knows this leading sportswear brand. But doesthe brand know its own reputation? This global sports apparel giant, with billions in revenue, faced challenges in tracking the health and perception of its […]
Learn more about our industry leading platform
FORSTA NEWSLETTER
Get industry insights that matter,
delivered direct to your inbox
We collect this information to send you free content, offers, and product updates. Visit our recently updated privacy policy for details on how we protect and manage your submitted data.
