Tags can be used in a wide range of different applications. They can be applied in both the physical and the virtual world to gather spontaneous feedback on meetings, communications, facilities, products, services – virtually anything, as indicated by the chart on the right.
Use the sections below to reflect on the options that are available for you to use your Tags, and to get specific guidance on how to apply your Tag for that application. But please remember that the guidance provided for each application below tends to reflect only one of many possible options, and we encourage you to use your creativity in getting your Tags to gather the information you need.
For guidance on downloading the Tag you need for your application, go to the ‘Download Tag‘ guidance.
Click a heading below to show/hide relevant help.
How to use Tags in emails (including CRM and mailing software)
Pasting Tags into emails
Since email is electronic, the prefered Tag is usually the faces Tag which can be easily copied and pasted into the body of the email. Please note that when you are composing an email, everything in it is editable, and so the Tag will not work as expected (clicking a face simply enables you to resize it and move it around), however, once the email is sent it is no longer editable, and so clicking a face will immediately record the response and open the response page. In other words, don’t worry that it doesn’t work as you imagine when you paste it, since it will be fine when you send it (but try sending it to yourself first, just to be sure!).
Pasting Tags into signatures
Inserting Tags each time you write an email is laborious, and so it is much easier to paste the Tag into your signature. The guide mentioned above explains how this can be done for outlook, and other providers use similar systems – for precise detail, google “edit signature” and the name of your mail software. Some email software (including outlook) enables you to have a number of different signatures, and to select (or swap) them when composing a new email. This is very helpful if you want to use different Tags (or different encodings of Tags) for different types of emails: internal, external, customer, etc.
Using Tags in CRM and mailing software
Much of the guidance above and below also applies to using Tags in emails generated from your CRM system or your mailing software. However, there is also the opportunity within such database supported systems to encode additional information into your responses, such as the recipient, the topic, etc. By using the relevant information placeholders in CODE 1 to 3, your system can annotate your Tag with key pieces of subscriber information when the Tag is sent out.
CRM systems can also be used in conjunction with community Tags (which use the same Tag questions for every user, but ensures they each access their own individual data) and tracking (which monitors opening of emails and response rates). Please contact us if you wish to use these features, which currently need to be configured within the Inspirometer system itself.
Including basic guidance
Tags in your email can easily be missed or overlooked by your audience. It is quite likely that they won’t know what it is, what it’s for, why it matters, or what to do with it. Chances are they probably think it is just some new part of your logo or current promotion, and therefore you will get far less responses than you would like. We therefore encourage people to put their Tag somewhere prominent, and put large bold text around it to explain the basics. Microsoft use the words ‘How am I doing?’ in grey 18pt text just above the Tag. It also helps to clarify that this in just one click, and that they are not risking opening the portal on a complex survey (We use the phrase: “Feedback in just 1-click” or “…just one click is all that is required”).
Help for when images don’t download
Because the security settings in some email systems prevent automatic download of pictures, it is also useful to include a link to identify that this may have happened, and to give them guidance on how to overcome this. We recommend the following text and link (which we include in 7 point grey font – with a blue link – just below the faces). Please feel free to copy it and use it for your own email Tags.
Click here if you cannot see the faces in the line above.
Speaking to your recipients
The above guidance will help you to increase your response rate, as will placing your Tag in a prominent position in the email (some users place it in the top line). However, the best way to increase the response rate is to talk to your correspondents about the Tags, how they work, what you are trying to do with them, what the benefits are for them, and to allay any security (or anonymity) concerns they may have.
For more information on this, please see our guide on maximising response rates.
How to use Tags in meetings (physical and web-based)
For casual use of Tags to gather feedback on meetings, simply include meetings@inspirometer.com in your meeting invite list. The video below shows you how.
This will automatically poll your attendees at the end of the meeting so that they can rate the meeting’s overall effectiveness from their personal perspective.
Meetings are probably the greatest untapped source of productivity and cultural improvement in organisations today. If you would like to explore a more strategic approach to effortlessly using Tags and meeting statistics to tap into these opportunities, please see our section on meeting effectiveness.
You can also include Tags in presentations and on various meeting resources as per the other guidance available on this page.
How to use Tags in presentations, conferences and events
Engaging smartphones for feedback
However, even at conferences and events, delegates are rarely far removed from their smartphone, and the Inspirometer has a number of simple ways by which it can configure a smartphone to present a response page that is relevant to the specific activity, display, facility or resource that the delegate is currently engaged with – these are QR codes and NFC tags.
NFC tags are a relatively little-used technology at present, with very few smartphones able to interact with them, and even fewer users inclined to do so. QR codes on the other hand work with virtually all smartphones and, although user take-up is not yet overwhelming, they are the most popular, and the least expensive means of electronically linking your smartphone to a physical event or item.
How to implement QR Tags
All of your Tags are available to be downloaded in the form of QR codes, both with and without additional encoding. This makes them the best currently available means to engage feedback from delegates and audiences.
In the case of physical displays, literature, instructions, delegate packs, facilities, information and other physical items, your QR Tag can simply be printed onto the page directly, or added subsequently via a sticker. Encoding will enable you to narrow down aberrant responses to individual items, while timestamps will give you a context of what was happening around the experience.
In the case of presentations, videos, and visual displays, QR Tags can be included as the final image or slide in each set, thereby inviting people to provide feedback. Feedback can be further encouraged by making handouts and supplementary information conditional on providing feedback. (On request, Tag response pages can be set up to provide a link to resources on the ‘Thankyou’ page).
Touchscreen option
There is also an option of providing Tags as a touchscreen for standard tablets and iPads. Please scroll down to Using Tags for interactive screens and exit polls if you would like to use this functionality.
How to use Tags in coaching and training delivery
Early trials with Inspirometer autoTags out of training events, coaching sessions and strategy workshops have more than doubled take-up and progress on the commitments that were undertaken at the conclusion of each. Given the annual expenditure on such events, that represents a massive potential saving (or increase in effectiveness).
AutoTags can be easily set up by individuals using the guidance laid out here. For the purposes of simple reinforcement, their own email address should be the only one in the recipient list. We would also suggest that the timing of the autoTag be about 2 hours before finishing time each day. This provides enough elapsed time to make progress unprompted, but also leaves enough remaining time to fix things if required.
Once the required behaviour/change has become reasonably habitual for the Tag-holder, the Tag can be re-purposed to gather feedback from their colleagues/customers about the impact of the change, and how that might be further improved. This is best achieved by attaching the Tag to the interactions in which the behaviour is required/exhibited, but it can also be achieved by adding other email addresses to the recipient list for the autoTag (although it may be best to change the frequency to weekly in this case).
Inspirometer also provides for coaches, trainers, and directors of training programmes to be able to monitor progress across individuals, cohorts, courses and programmes. This equips individual trainers and coaches to offer appropriate and timely interventions when people are seen to be struggling with their progress, and it provides oversight to those managing the overall programmes. This integrated solution also provides for systematically creating autoTags across complete cohorts, and for integration with LMS learning goals and peer review assessments in competency based programmes. For more information on setting up an integrated learning solution, please contact us.
How to use Tags in shared workspaces e.g. OneNote; Evernote
Embedding Tags into the notes and pages in these workspaces is very easy. Use the ‘Advanced’ option on your Tag download page so that you can record the page/note reference in code 1, and then simply copy and paste the Tag into the document. In some cases, you may need to format the Tag as a Table using the tick-box option just below the Tag – this is particularly true of OneNote which would otherwise paste your Tag as a vertical series of images interspersed by carriage returns.
Once you have embedded Tags into your shared notes, you can monitor the feedback and comments, and quickly identify (via Code 1) which contributions are adding the most value to your colleagues, and which are most in need of review.
How to use Tags in Customer Feedback
Tags are essentially all about customer feedback. Whether you are using them in emails, meetings, presentations, training or events, they are essentially polling your (external or internal) customers for these things and providing you feedback to your account. The easiest way to use your Tags to obtain customer feedback is to Tag those things which you are using to provide a service to those customers.
However, you may also want to poll your customers (external or internal) on a periodic basis about your service and relationship in general, and this is what this section is about. There are essentially two main options that you have for this approach: Via your CRM system, or directly from the Inspirometer Scheduler. Furthermore, we now have a solution which enables you to present a Tag on a tablet screen, similar to the type of feedback tool you find at airports.
Using your CRM system to poll customers
This is the preferred method since your CRM system is already geared up to maintain an accurate, segmented list of your customers. To poll their opinion on the relationship, simply:
- Create a Tag which asks them a relevant question, such as “How do you feel about the service and support you have received from XYZ over the past month?”
- Place the Tag in an email to be sent out to all (or a segment) of your customer base
- Include the question above the Tag in the email, so they know what they are rating when they click on a face
- Include any other brief salutations or encouragements (such as “Feedback in just one click”)
- Send the email (on a periodic schedule if you wish)
If you wish to know which customers have rated you, and what they rated you, you can encode the Tags so that they pick up the customer details from your CRM system when they are sent. For more information on how to do this, see the section on encoding Tags.
Using the Inspirometer Scheduler to poll customers
This system enables everything to be done from within the Inspirometer system, but it requires that you maintain a list of your customer’s emails within Inspirometer, and to update and maintain (or refresh) that list as required. Guidance on how to use the Inspirometer Scheduler can be found under: How to create a Tag > Scheduling Tags.
By default, Tags sent out by Inspirometer are anonymous. However, if you do require your responses to be identifiable, there is an option to limit the responses your receive to ‘registered devices’ and to capture the email address of the respondent through their registered device. This has an added advantage of ensuring that your feedback is only from the people you intend.
Registering a device is remarkably easy and quick for your customer to do. You can find more information on how you can enable this option in the bottom half of the section on validating feedback.
How to use Tags on interactive screen and exit polls
Increasingly, people are using simple interactive faces to record user satisfaction as people exit an experience, such as airport security, events and display stands. In some cases these are via stand-alone devices and in other cases the devices are ‘manned’ – e.g. there is someone presenting the device to you. Inspirometer provides a solution which can be used in both of these cases.
Presenting Tags on a tablet screen for unmanned operation
Where the faces are to be presented automatically, the display needs to reset itself after each engagement, even if the engagement is not completed. For this reason, this approach is best used with one Tag/question per device. However this is all that is required for simple feedback on a display or at an exit.
Making this happen is simply a matter of opening a web-page on a tablet or iPad, using a specific URL. The URL uses your eight character Tag code (which can be found against the relevant Tag on your Tag list as shown below).
Use this code to replace ‘YourCodeHere’ in the following string, and simply paste the result in your browser address bar – https://my.inspirometer.com/res/z/tablet.php?tag=YourCodeHere
Clicking this link: https://my.inspirometer.com/res/z/tablet.php?tag=Mk63nKkZ will show you what the page looks like with a demonstration Tag.
The widget automatically reloads when a face is clicked/tapped, ready for the next person.
Presenting Tags on a tablet screen for manned operation
Sometimes, tablet based surveys (though remaining simple and straightforward) need to present more than one question. These are best conducted in a situation where someone is presenting the device to the person from whom they want feedback, so that they can more easily explain what is required, and also to encourage people to complete it (without a direct personal request, screens with more than one simple question are far more likely to be ignored by passers by). Having someone administer the tablet means that a screen refresh can be a human decision, which makes it more likely that it won’t occur inconveniently.
For tablet based surveys with more than one question, we recommend that you create your own web-page, and use our widgets within it. This will enable you to ask the questions you wish, in the order you wish, and the layout you wish. You will require editor access to a blank webpage (just search ‘free webpage creator’ if you do not have one), and to create Tags for the questions you want to ask, to copy the Tags as widgets (see how here) and to paste them into your webpage (you must be in text or html view to do this). See the widget section of the demo page for an example.
The people who are administering this survey can then simply point their tablet browser at your survey, and refresh the page after each interaction.
How to use Tags as mood indicators and to track culture
Tags provide a great way to quickly poll your organisation and gain a real-time understanding of employee satisfaction and other factors concerning the progress, adoption and and realisation of your cultural values. The easiest way to do this is simply to create a Tag asking the question you want answered: “How do you feel about working for our company?” or “How well are we doing at fostering creativity in our day-to-day?” and send it out on an email to people. They can respond in just one click and you get a high response rate (as long as your people know it is easy and anonymous, and that you are serious about the results).
The above solution will provide you with rapid, easy and accurate information on your current culture, but it won’t provide any sense of how balanced this is across your organisation and whether you have any particular high-performing or problem areas.
For that you will need our special Polling Tag. The Polling Tag is sent directly to all the members of your Inspirometer compiler, and aggregated by department, building a hierarchical picture of the culture. Responses are still anonymous (individual respondents are not identified and scores are only provided where there is a minimum population of three respondents) but it is possible to see how the picture varies by area. And because the information is available by department, individual managers can review their own local performance and use the information to confirm or challenge their current cultural strategies.
The Polling Tag can be obtained free of charge by contacting us and requesting one. It is used the same way as any other AutoTag – it simply aggregates the results differently.
Continue to Responding to Tags