Survey Throttling

Survey Throttling

Throttling

Overview

The Throttling feature helps you control how frequently a contact receives surveys within a defined time period. This prevents over-surveying, reduces survey fatigue, and ensures better response quality by spacing out survey invitations effectively.

Key Use Cases

  • Prevent sending too many surveys to the same contact
  • Maintain a consistent and controlled survey frequency
  • Improve response quality by avoiding survey fatigue
  • Manage survey exposure across multiple programs or channels
  • Ensure a better overall customer experience

Accessing Throttling

You can configure throttling either from Settings for centralized control or directly within Survey Settings for survey-specific control.

Types of Throttling

1. Global Throttling

Global Throttling applies a default rule across all surveys in your account, ensuring that once a contact receives a survey, they won’t receive another until the defined period ends. It works across all channels and is enabled by default, making it useful as a baseline safeguard for preventing over-surveying.


2. Group-level Throttling

Group-level Throttling allows you to group multiple surveys together and apply a shared throttling rule. Once a contact receives a survey from that group, they won’t receive another survey from the same group until the cooldown period ends. This is especially useful for managing multiple programs, journeys, or always-on surveys and ensures controlled exposure across related surveys.


3. Survey-level Throttling

Survey-level Throttling applies to individual surveys and provides the most granular control. It overrides both Global and Group-level throttling, allowing you to define a specific cooldown period for a particular survey without affecting others.


How Throttling Works

Throttling is based on the survey trigger time, not completion. Once a survey is triggered for a contact, the defined throttling rule is applied, preventing additional surveys from being sent until the cooldown period ends. This applies even if the survey is not opened or completed.

Key Features

  • Multi-level Control – Apply rules at global, group, or survey level
  • Channel-wide Coverage – Works across Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Web, and more
  • Flexible Duration – Set custom cooldown periods (e.g., 30, 45, 60 days)
  • Group Management – Organize surveys into groups with shared rules
  • Overlap Prevention – Avoid sending surveys from different groups too close together
  • Priority Handling – Survey-level rules override group and global settings

Throttling Priority

When multiple rules apply, the system follows this order:
Survey-level > Group-level > Global
This ensures maximum flexibility while still preventing excessive survey distribution.

Important Notes

  • Throttling is triggered when a survey is sent, not when it is completed
  • Applies even if the respondent does not open or respond to the survey
  • Group-level throttling overrides global rules, and survey-level overrides both
  • Helps maintain balance across multi-channel and always-on survey strategies