Throttling

Overview

Throttling helps control how frequently contacts receive surveys within a defined time period. This prevents over-surveying, reduces survey fatigue, and improves the overall response experience.

By applying throttling rules, organizations can ensure respondents are not repeatedly contacted across multiple surveys or channels within a short duration. This is especially useful for always-on surveys, multi-program deployments, and large-scale feedback collection.

SurveySensum supports three types of throttling:

• Global Throttling
• Group-level Throttling
• Survey-level Throttling

When to use it:
Use throttling when you want to control survey frequency, avoid overwhelming respondents, and maintain better response quality.

Use Group-level Throttling for related survey programs and Survey-level Throttling for special survey-specific controls.

Key Use Cases

• Prevent contacts from receiving too many surveys
• Reduce survey fatigue across channels
• Manage survey frequency across programs or journeys
• Control always-on survey exposure
• Apply different throttling rules for specific surveys

How to Use Throttling

How to Access Throttling

Throttling can be configured from two locations.

Method 1: From Account Settings

1. Log in to your account
2. Click Settings
3. Select Throttling from the left navigation

Method 2: From Survey Settings

1. Open the required survey
2. Go to Survey Settings
3. Configure Survey-level Throttling

Global Throttling

Global Throttling applies a default throttling rule across all surveys in the account. It ensures that contacts do not receive multiple surveys within the configured throttling period, regardless of the survey or distribution channel.

By default, Global Throttling is enabled with a 30-day throttling period and works across all share channels such as Email, Website Embed, In-App, SMS, and WhatsApp.

Once a contact receives any survey within the account, no additional survey is triggered for that contact until the throttling period ends.

Global Throttling applies account-wide and acts as the default throttling layer.

Group-level Throttling

Group-level Throttling allows users to create survey groups and apply a shared throttling rule across all surveys within that group.

This is useful for managing survey frequency across related programs, customer journeys, or always-on surveys.

Users can:

• Create survey groups
• Add multiple surveys to a group
• Define a throttling duration
• Prevent contacts from receiving another survey from the same group during the lock perio

Once a survey from a group is triggered, the group becomes locked for that contact until the configured period ends. This applies even if the respondent does not open or complete the survey.

Create a Throttling Group

To create a throttling group:

1. Go to Settings → Throttling → Group-level Throttling
2. Click Create Throttling Group
3. Enter the group name
4. Select surveys to include
5. Set the throttling duration
6. Create the group

Prevent Group Overlap

When contacts belong to multiple throttling groups, surveys from different groups may become eligible around the same time.

To avoid this, users can enable Prevent Group Overlap and define overlapping buffer days. This ensures surveys from different groups are spaced appropriately instead of being triggered back-to-back.

Group-level throttling applies based on the survey trigger date, not survey completion.

Survey-level Throttling

Survey-level Throttling applies throttling rules to an individual survey only. It provides the highest level of control and overrides both Group-level and Global Throttling.

For example, if a survey has a 30-day Survey-level throttling rule, that specific survey cannot be triggered again for the same contact within 30 days, even if other surveys remain eligible.

Configure Survey-level Throttling

To enable Survey-level Throttling:

1. Go to Settings → Throttling → Survey-level Throttling
2. Click Add Survey
3. Select the survey
4. Enter the throttling duration
5. Save the configuration

Throttling Priority

When multiple throttling rules apply simultaneously, the system follows this priority order:

• Survey-level Throttling
• Group-level Throttling
• Global Throttling

This means:

• Survey-level rules override all others
• Group-level rules apply when no Survey-level rule exists
• Global Throttling acts as the default fallback rule

This layered structure provides flexibility while ensuring controlled survey distribution.

Survey-level throttling always overrides Group-level and Global throttling settings.