Autopilot schedules and recurs Email and/or SMS surveys to a group of people you upload. Simply add a group of people and select how often each person should receive a survey. Autopilot will evenly spread out sending, focusing on weekday mornings for optimal response rates. Once a survey is sent, each person is automatically rescheduled to receive another survey based on the cadence you select (ex. every 3 months).
When you add a group of people to Autopilot, those surveys will be automatically scheduled over a time period you select. For example, if you select a 3 month cadence, Autopilot will evenly schedule surveys throughout that 3 month period. We'll schedule those surveys during ideal time windows to maximize your response rates. We focus scheduling on weekdays only, Monday through Friday, from 5am to 10am.
Autopilot’s scheduling is based on the last sent timestamp. If someone was recently surveyed outside of Autopilot, such as via Web, you can be confident they won’t be surveyed again too soon. We’ll reschedule them outside of your throttle period, giving them enough time for a fresh experience to discuss in their response.
The next step is the recurring survey. Once an initial survey is sent with Autopilot, it’ll automatically reschedule that person to receive another survey at the interval you select (ex. 3 months from their last send date). This keeps a constant pulse of customer feedback flowing into your dashboard. Recurring surveys are based on the last sent timestamp (i.e. Autopilot frequency + last sent timestamp).
If someone has been previously surveyed outside of Autopilot, we'll schedule them to receive their first Autopilot survey based on their last sent timestamp (ex. if you selected a 3 month frequency, we'd send 3 months from their last sent survey). This may mean that those previously surveyed outside of Autopilot will receive their Autopilot survey more immediately than others.
Now that you have an understanding of the fundamentals of Autopilot, let’s discuss what sets it apart from the one-time send.
With our One-time sends (Email, SMS), we’ll send out surveys immediately to all the people you upload. These surveys are sent right away (not scheduled out over time) and will not automatically recur.
With Autopilot, we’ll evenly schedule out the surveys over the time frame you select, sending each weekday to a portion of people. We’ll also recur those surveys at the frequency you set.
You can still continue to send one-time sends as needed, switching between “One-time survey” and “Autopilot”.
With an understanding of how Autopilot works, it’s helpful to also cover the key advantages for using the feature. Ranging from streamlining your sending process to easing the follow-up process, our next section will cover a few of the primary reasons customers start using Autopilot.
Next section: Why use Autopilot?