MicroSurveys in Community are designed to help you get answers from your incoming student cohort in real-time - but there are ways and means of doing this effectively!
The purpose of this guide is to help you to craft and send MicroSurveys on the right theme, at the right time. This is such a valuable tool for validating insights within your Community, but if you don't think through what you're asking of your students and why, the results could fall flat.
Read on to discover best practice recommendations for creating your own MicroSurveys - and what to do with your results.
📋 Tip 1: Keep your Micro-Surveys micro
The beauty of a MicroSurvey is it's brevity. This means that they won't interrupt student engagement or disrupt enjoyment of your Community. Luckily - as the name would suggest! - MicroSurveys are designed to be non-intrusive and quick to complete, in under 90 seconds. We know that a long survey is more likely to be abandoned, which is why you can add a maximum of 3 questions.
Keep it to 1-3 questions - and keep the wording of questions clear, and concise. This makes planning your questions all the more important - for maximum impact.
📋 Tip 2: Don't survey for the sake of it
The biggest mistake is running Micro-Surveys for the sake of it, gathering feedback at random, that you have no plans for.
Before you add your Micro-Survey, identify your goals.
What do you want to find out?
Which team goal or success criteria do these questions align with?
What specific area do you want to measure or improve?
Which data points can your Micro-Survey help you to validate?
Having clear goals will help you create targeted questions that provide the insights you actually need.
For your Community, this could be anything from gauging interest in a specific area of study, asking what makes your university stand out among others, testing the appeal of an open day or webinar topic, or checking in on how confident students feel about the enrolment process.
📋 Tip 3: Only ask what you can act on
Each Micro-Survey should be tied to something you can action, improve, or change. If you can’t say what actions you'll take based on student responses, don’t launch the survey.
Actions taken don't always have to lead to proactive change - for example, if you ask your admitted students what they are concerned about and a significant number respond with cost of living; you will be aware that this is not something you or your team can actively change. However, you can signpost to resources, student support, or guidance on feasible budgeting. You should have a clear plan on what you can or will do as a result of survey responses.
📋 Tip 4: Match your questions to the moment
Timing matters more than question quality - there is not much point in asking accepted students what support they need during orientation, if they are still considering whether to apply.
Below you'll find some recommended trigger points for a Micro-Survey:
After a student joins your Community → “What are you most interested in?”
After attending an Ambassador Ask-Me-Anything session → “Did this make you feel that you're more likely to apply?”
Midway through application season → “Have you come to visit us on campus?”
After inactivity → “What’s stopping you from getting involved?”
Think of Micro-Surveys as contextual nudges - they give you a snapshot of intent, engagement, and commitment.
📋 Tip 5: Your data tells you what's happening - use Micro-Surveys to tell you why
We recommend using Micro-Surveys as part of a wider holistic reporting process - the data available in your Unibuddy dashboard shows you patterns, but data alone can't always tell you why that pattern has emerged.
If you are also a Unibuddy Chat customer, you will likely have seen or used your Sector Benchmarking and Peer Benchmarking dashboards. Were there any metrics where you were below the sector or peer average? Was there a result that you weren't anticipating?
Use Micro-Surveys to test, confirm, or challenge what you're seeing: assuming that your Community is for accepted students, you might ask your Community members if they previously spoke with a Unibuddy Ambassador on your website, and whether that made them more likely to apply to your institution.
If you are only using Unibuddy Community, there is plenty of data in your Community and To-Do Analytics that you can delve further into with Micro-Surveys.
Is there a specific To-Do task that has low completion rate? Ask your cohort what their blockers are - what is stopping them completing this task, or why are they not attending an event?
Are direct messaging rates high, but you are seeing lower numbers of students publicly messaging in your Spaces? Ask your Community members what they want from Spaces? Is there anything you or your Ambassadors could provide to kick things off? Are there other themes or topics for Spaces which they would prefer to chat within?
Is student confidence scoring data showing that students need more information on housing, or their classes? Ask how students are searching for information, which resources they are aware of, or how they would prefer to receive information on this topic.
We hope you enjoy using the feature - and as always, if you have feedback, please reach out to your Customer Success or Enablement Manager.