Survey Response
A Survey Response is the standard Salesforce object (API name SurveyResponse) that records one participant's submission to a Salesforce survey.
Definition
A Survey Response is the standard Salesforce object (API name SurveyResponse) that records one participant's submission to a Salesforce survey. It captures the status of the response, where the participant was when they answered, and when they finished, and it links back to the survey, the survey version, and the invitation that was sent.
The Survey Response is the parent record for a set of Survey Question Response records, which hold the actual answer to each question. Because every submission becomes a real CRM record, you can report on it, automate from it, and analyze it next to the contacts, cases, and accounts it relates to.
How a survey submission becomes CRM data
Where Survey Response sits in the data model
Salesforce Surveys uses a small family of standard objects, and Survey Response is the hub for everything a single participant submits. A Survey record holds the design, and each saved edition is a Survey Version. When you ask someone to take the survey, Salesforce creates a Survey Invitation that points at the version and, optionally, a Survey Subject that ties the invitation to a record like a case or contact. When the participant answers, a Survey Response row is created and stamped with the survey, the version, and the invitation it came from. The answers themselves live one level down. Each question the person answers produces a Survey Question Response, and the platform may also write a Survey Question Score row for scored questions so numeric values are easy to aggregate. Knowing this layout matters because reports, flows, and SOQL all have to traverse it. You query the Survey Response to find the submission, then walk to its child question responses to read individual answers. Treating the response as the anchor record keeps your automation and analytics predictable.
Survey Response versus Survey Question Response
People often blur these two objects, so it helps to keep them separate in your head. The Survey Response represents the whole submission. It is the record that says this person, from this invitation, finished this survey at this time and from this approximate location. It carries status and completion information, and it is the natural grain for counting how many people responded. The Survey Question Response represents a single answer. One Survey Response is the parent of many Survey Question Response rows, one per answered question, and each stores the value the participant gave. If you want to know the average rating for question three, you read the question responses (or the related score records), not the parent. A useful mental model: the Survey Response is the envelope, and the Survey Question Responses are the individual answer slips inside it. Most reporting bugs come from querying the wrong level, so decide early whether your question is about submissions (use the response) or about specific answers (use the question responses or scores).
Response status and partial submissions
Not every survey gets finished, and the data model reflects that. A Survey Response carries a status that distinguishes a completed submission from one that is still in progress or only partially answered. This is why a fresh response can exist before the participant reaches the last page. If you only want finished feedback, filter on the completed status rather than counting every response row, otherwise your totals will include abandoned attempts. Completion timing is recorded too, so you can measure how long invitations sit before someone responds and how many drop off midway. For continuous experiences, like a survey embedded in a community or an in-app prompt, partial responses are common and worth watching. A high count of incomplete responses usually points at a survey that is too long or a question that confuses people. Because the status lives on the response and the answers live on the children, you can analyze drop-off (how far people got) by joining the response to its question responses and seeing where answers stop.
Linking responses to records for context
The reason Salesforce Surveys beats a standalone tool is context. A response is not a floating data point. Through the invitation and the Survey Subject, a submission can be tied to the exact case, contact, account, or other record the feedback is about. Send a survey after a support case closes, and the resulting response is connected to that case and its contact. Now satisfaction is not just a number, it is a number attached to a known customer interaction. That linkage is what makes segmentation possible. You can compare responses by account tier, by the agent who handled the case, by region, or by product, because the related records carry those attributes already. It also feeds automation: a low score on a case-linked survey can reopen the case or create a follow-up task for the owner. When you design a feedback program, decide up front which record each survey is about and make sure the invitation captures that subject. Responses with no record association are still useful in aggregate, but they lose most of their diagnostic power.
Reporting and analytics on responses
Once responses are records, ordinary Salesforce reporting applies. You build a custom report type over the survey objects so question answers and scores show up as fields, then chart trends like average CSAT by month or NPS by segment. The Survey Question Score object is handy here because it stores a numeric value for scored questions, which makes averages and roll-ups straightforward without parsing free text. Beyond standard reports, Salesforce offers analytics templates and dashboards built specifically for survey data, and Feedback Management adds sentiment analysis that reads open-text responses and tags them by theme and tone. Whichever route you take, the response and its children are the source rows. A common pattern is a dashboard that watches completed responses in near real time, flags any score below a threshold, and routes the underlying record to a queue. Because the data sits in your org rather than an external app, it joins cleanly to opportunities, cases, and lifetime value, so feedback can influence renewal risk scoring and other downstream models.
Editions, limits, and which product you have
How many responses you can collect depends on the product provisioned in your org. Standard Platform Surveys, included at no extra cost, allow a default of 300 responses and leave out the advanced settings. Salesforce Feedback Management Starter raises the ceiling to 100,000 responses and adds advanced features, while Feedback Management Growth offers unlimited responses and lifecycle tracking across the customer relationship. The Survey Response object behaves the same way in each, but the volume you can store and the features around it differ. This matters when you plan a program. A team piloting one post-case survey may live comfortably inside the free allowance, but an enterprise running multiple always-on surveys will hit the 300 limit quickly and needs a Feedback Management license. If you are not sure which product you have, Salesforce documents how to identify it in Setup. Knowing your edition early prevents the unpleasant surprise of invitations that stop generating responses once a cap is reached, and it shapes whether features like sentiment insights are even available to you.
Set up response capture and reporting
You do not hand-create Survey Response records; Salesforce writes them when someone submits a survey. What you configure is the surrounding setup so responses are captured against the right records and are easy to report on. These steps assume Salesforce Surveys or Feedback Management is already enabled.
- Confirm your survey product and limits
In Setup, check whether your org has Standard Platform Surveys (300 responses) or a Feedback Management license. This tells you how many responses you can store and whether advanced settings are available.
- Associate the survey with a record
When you send the invitation, set the survey subject so each response ties to the case, contact, or account it concerns. This is what gives later analysis its context.
- Automate the send
Use a record-triggered flow (for example, when a case is closed) to create and send the invitation automatically, so responses arrive at the right moment in the customer relationship.
- Build a custom report type
Create a report type over Survey Response with its question responses and scores so answers appear as report fields, then build dashboards for trends like CSAT or NPS over time.
- Act on low scores
Add a flow that watches completed responses and routes any low score back to the owning record, reopening a case or creating a follow-up task.
The record (case, contact, account, and so on) a response is linked to through its invitation; set it so feedback has context.
Filter reports on the completed status so partial or in-progress responses do not inflate your totals.
The report type spanning the survey objects that exposes question answers and scores as reportable fields.
A Feedback Management feature that scores open-text answers by theme and tone for richer analysis.
- Counting every response row inflates results; abandoned attempts exist as in-progress responses, so filter on completed status.
- Reading answers off the parent Survey Response will not work; individual answers live on child Survey Question Response (or Survey Question Score) records.
- Responses with no survey subject lose most of their diagnostic value because you cannot segment them by account, case, or agent.
- Standard Platform Surveys stop at 300 responses; once you cross that, you need a Feedback Management license or new invitations will not collect more.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Survey Response.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Survey Response.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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