Short answer: a keypad phone survey works when each question is one short sentence with a scale the caller can hold in their head: 1 to 5, or yes / no. Ask no more than three questions, put the most important one first, send low scores to a voicemail box for a spoken reason, and push every answer to your system as it happens. Expect fewer, more honest answers than a long form gets.
This post is about keypad surveys built on an IVR. For conversational surveys where an AI caller asks open questions, see AI phone surveys in Hindi and regional languages and post-delivery NPS calls with AI.
When a Keypad Survey Is the Right Tool
- After a visit, delivery or service call: "How was your experience?" while it is fresh.
- After a support call: transfer the caller to a two-question survey flow at the end.
- Large, simple pulse checks: a society, institute or distributor network with one question.
- Regional-language audiences: keypad answers need no speech recognition in any language.
It is the wrong tool for open research ("tell us what you think about...") or anything needing more than three questions. Use an online form or an interviewer for those.
Scale Design for the Keypad
Why not 0 to 10
Standard NPS asks for a 0 to 10 score. On a keypad, 10 needs two keys, and phone menus handle "press 1 then 0" poorly: callers press 1 and wait. Edesy menus map one key to one option, so a 0 to 10 question is not a good fit.
Pick one of these instead:
| Scale | Prompt | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 5 | "Press 1 for very poor, up to 5 for excellent." | Satisfaction (CSAT) after a visit or delivery |
| 1 to 5 recommend | "How likely are you to recommend us? 1 not at all, 5 very likely." | An NPS-like recommend question |
| Yes / no | "Was your problem solved? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no." | Resolution after support |
| Three-way | "Better, same or worse than last time? Press 1, 2 or 3." | Repeat customers |
If your company reports NPS, keep the 0 to 10 question in your SMS or email survey and use the phone for a 1 to 5 recommend score. Do not mix the two in one chart.
Always say both ends
"Rate us from 1 to 5" leaves callers guessing which end is good. Say it: "1 is very poor, 5 is excellent." In Hindi: "1 मतलब बहुत खराब, 5 मतलब बहुत अच्छा।"
Higher number means better
Keep that direction for every question. Flipping it on question two guarantees wrong answers.
Writing the Questions
- One idea per question. "Were the staff polite and was the wait short?" cannot be answered with one key. Split it or drop half.
- Put the key question first. Some callers hang up after one answer. Make that answer count.
- Three questions maximum. Two is better.
- Skip the long thank-you upfront. "We value your feedback" before the question costs answers.
- Say the scale before the question ends, so the caller is ready to press.
Sample: post-visit (English)
Hi, this is City Care Clinic with a quick one-question survey about your visit today. On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is very poor and 5 is excellent, how was your experience? Press a number now.
If 1 or 2: We are sorry. Please tell us what went wrong after the beep, then hang up.
If 3 to 5: Thank you. Have a good day.
Sample: post-visit (Hindi)
नमस्ते, सिटी केयर क्लिनिक से एक छोटा सा सवाल। आज की विज़िट कैसी रही? 1 मतलब बहुत खराब, 5 मतलब बहुत अच्छा। कृपया 1 से 5 के बीच कोई नंबर दबाइए।
Sample: support resolution
Was your problem solved today? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no.
If 2: Press 1 to get a call back from a senior team member, or 2 to end the call.
Building It
The Edesy flow builder has a Feedback survey (rate 1-5) template to start from. A typical three-step survey:
- Say (or Play a recording) with the question and scale.
- Menu with keys 1 to 5 and a timeout of six to eight seconds.
- HTTP Request at the start of each key's branch, in background mode, posting
{"ref": "{{reference_id}}", "q": "visit_rating", "answer": "{{digits}}"}to your endpoint. - Keys 1 and 2 go to a Voicemail node for a spoken reason; keys 3 to 5 go to a thank-you.
- No input: one repeat, then a polite goodbye.
For an outbound survey, your system calls POST /v1/ivr/calls with the customer's number and a
reference_id (order, visit or ticket ID), and gets the full key path back in the status callback
when the call ends. See the IVR outbound call API guide.
For an inbound survey, point a number at the survey flow and ask your support team to transfer callers to that number at the end of a call.
Getting Answers You Can Trust
Response bias
The people who answer a survey call are not everyone. Very happy and very unhappy customers are more likely to respond. Track the answer rate alongside the scores; a rising score with a falling answer rate is not good news.
Timing
Call within a day or two of the experience. Older than that and people remember the general impression, not the visit.
Calling hours
Outbound API calls are dialled only between 09:00 and 21:00 IST. For feedback, late morning and early evening on weekdays are usually less intrusive than the edges of that window.
Do not survey the same person repeatedly
Keep a simple rule, such as no more than one survey call per customer per month, and respect the do-not-call list. Survey fatigue lowers answer rates for everyone.
Closing the Loop
A survey that nobody acts on trains customers to stop answering. Decide before launch:
- Who listens to voicemails from low scores, and how fast. Same day is a good target.
- Who calls back the "problem not solved" answers.
- What gets reported weekly: answer rate, score distribution, top reasons from voicemails.
Low scores followed by a quick personal call back often turn into the most loyal customers you have. The keypad survey's job is to find those people quickly.
Languages
Hindi and English questions can be written as text and spoken by text-to-speech. For Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and others, record each question as audio and play it before the keypad menu. The answer is still a key, so analysis is the same in every language. Recording tips are in IVR in any Indian language with recorded prompts.
Start a Keypad Survey
See templates and flows on the survey and feedback IVR page, or talk to us about your first survey.