Voice Surveys

Overview

Plivo lets you automate voice surveys for use cases such as collecting feedback from customers and conducting polling on political issues. You can set up multiple levels of questions and walk users through different paths depending on the keys they press in response to your questions, and save the responses for analysis. You can implement voice surveys either by using our PHLO visual workflow builder or our APIs and XML documents. Follow the instructions in one of the tabs below.

Using XML

Here’s how to use Plivo APIs and XML to implement voice surveys.

How it works

Plivo requests an answer URL when the call is answered (step 4) and expects the file at that address to hold a valid XML response from the application with instructions on how to handle the call.

Prerequisites

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. You must have a voice-enabled Plivo phone number to receive incoming calls; you can rent numbers from the Numbers page of the Plivo console, or by using the Numbers API. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a .NET development environment and a web server and safely expose that server to the internet.

Create a voice survey application in C#

In Visual Studio, create a controller called SurveyController.cs and paste into it this code.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Plivo.XML;

namespace Receivecall.Controllers
{
    public class SurveyController : Controller
    {
        // Message that Plivo reads when the call recipient answers
        String Question1 = "Hi, this is a call from Plivo. How would you rate your overall satisfaction with our services? Press 1 if you're satisfied. Press 2 to suggest improvements";
        String Question2 = "How would you rate your satisfaction with our customer service? Press 1 if you're satisfied. Press 2 to suggest improvements";
        // Message that Plivo reads when the recipient provides negative feedback
        String NegativeFeedback = "We're sorry about your bad experience. One of our representatives will get in touch with you";
        // Message that Plivo reads when the caller does nothing
        String NoinputMessage = "Sorry, I didn't catch that. Please hang up and try again";
        // Message that Plivo reads when the caller enters an invalid number
        String WronginputMessage = "Sorry, that's not a valid entry";

        // GET: /<controller>/ -12/
        public IActionResult Index()
        {
            var resp = new Response();
            Plivo.XML.GetInput get_input = new
                Plivo.XML.GetInput("",
                    new Dictionary<string, string>()
                    {
                        {"action", "https://<yourdomain>.com/survey/firstbranch/"},
                        {"method", "POST"},
                        {"digitEndTimeout", "5"},
                        {"inputType", "dtmf"},
                        {"redirect", "true"},
                    });
            resp.Add(get_input);
            get_input.AddSpeak(Question1,
                new Dictionary<string, string>() { });
            resp.AddSpeak(NoinputMessage,
                new Dictionary<string, string>() { });
    
            var output = resp.ToString();
            return this.Content(output, "text/xml");
        }
        // First branch of IVR phone tree
        public IActionResult FirstBranch()
        {
            String digit = Request.Query["Digits"];
            Debug.WriteLine("Digit pressed : {0}", digit);
    
            var resp = new Response();
    
            if (digit == "1")
            {
                String getinput_action_url = "https://<yourdomain>.com/survey/secondbranch/";
    
                // Add GetInput XML Tag
                Plivo.XML.GetInput get_input = new
                Plivo.XML.GetInput("",
                    new Dictionary<string, string>()
                    {
                        {"action", getinput_action_url},
                        {"method", "POST"},
                        {"digitEndTimeout", "5"},
                        {"finishOnKey", "#"},
                        {"inputType", "dtmf"},
                        {"redirect", "true"},
                    });
                resp.Add(get_input);
                get_input.AddSpeak(Question2,
                    new Dictionary<string, string>() { });
                resp.AddSpeak(NoinputMessage,
                    new Dictionary<string, string>() { });
            }
            else if (digit == "2")
            {
                // Add Speak XML Tag
                resp.AddSpeak(NegativeFeedback,
                    new Dictionary<string, string>() { });
            }
            else
            {
                // Add Speak XML Tag
                resp.AddSpeak(WronginputMessage,
                    new Dictionary<string, string>() { });
            }
    
            Debug.WriteLine(resp.ToString());
    
            var output = resp.ToString();
            return this.Content(output, "text/xml");
        }
        // Second branch of IVR phone tree
        public IActionResult SecondBranch()
        {
            var resp = new Response();
            String digit = Request.Query["Digits"];
            Debug.WriteLine("Digit pressed : {0}", digit);
    
            // Add Speak XMLTag
            if (digit == "1")
            {
                resp.AddSpeak("Thank you for participating in the survey",
                   new Dictionary<string, string>()
                   {
                    { "language","en-GB"}
                });
            }
            else if (digit == "2")
            {
                // Add Speak XML Tag
                resp.AddSpeak(NegativeFeedback,
                    new Dictionary<string, string>() { });
            }
            else
            {
                resp.AddSpeak(WronginputMessage,
                    new Dictionary<string, string>() { });
            }
    
            Debug.WriteLine(resp.ToString());
    
            var output = resp.ToString();
            return this.Content(output, "text/xml");
        }
    }
}

Replace the auth placeholders with your authentication credentials from the Plivo console. Replace the phone number placeholders with actual phone numbers in E.164 format (for example, +12025551234).

Note:We recommend that you store your credentials in the auth_id and auth_token environment variables, to avoid the possibility of accidentally committing them to source control. If you do this, you can initialize the client with no arguments and Plivo will automatically fetch the values from the environment variables. You can use the

<a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.environment.setenvironmentvariable?view=netcore-3.1" rel="nofollow">Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable</a>

method to store environment variables and

<a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.environment.getenvironmentvariable?view=netcore-3.1" rel="nofollow">Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable</a>

to fetch them when initializing the client.

Before starting the application, edit Properties/launchSettings.json and set the applicationUrl as

"applicationUrl": "http://localhost:5000/"

Run the project and you should see your basic server application in action at http://localhost:5000/survey/.

Set up ngrok to expose your local server to the internet.

Test

Make a call to a Plivo phone number and see how the survey application works.

​Overview

​How it works

​Prerequisites

​Create a voice survey application in C#

​Test

Overview

How it works

Prerequisites

Create a voice survey application in C#

Test