Focus Areas turn raw customer feedback into short‑term, team‑level goals your frontline can actually act on. AskNicely analyses detractor comments, recommends the biggest opportunity, and then tracks how well the team closes the gap. All powered by NiceAI.
Dynamic Surveys will go even further with Focus Areas, drilling into specific goals and actions for every team, so you get deeper insights into what's working and what needs attention for every team.
What is a Focus Area?
- A Time-Bound Goal: It typically lasts for a specific period, like one month or a quarter.
- Tied to a Specific Theme or Topic: Each goal is linked to a feedback theme or topic, such as "Clear & Friendly Communication" or "Quality of Treatment".
- Relevant and Automated: Goals are automatically suggested based on the topics where your team scores the lowest, ensuring they are always relevant.
- Action-Oriented: Each Focus Area includes three manager-defined "actions"—small, specific behaviors that team members can practice. These actions are visible to the team within their AskNicely dashboard.
Why use Focus Areas?
Focus Areas create a bridge between insights and taking action. Dynamic Surveys add follow‑up questions about the current Focus Area for richer, real‑time coaching data and targeted service improvements. By asking more relevant questions, the responses will be longer and more useful to the manager because they're receiving feedback based on what the area they are trying to improve. The result is happier customers and the managers are empowered with information and able to confidently resolve customer issues faster.
How Focus Areas Work with Dynamic Surveys
When a Focus Area is active, AskNicely's Dynamic Surveys automatically adapt. The survey will ask follow-up questions related to the team's specific Focus Area and its defined actions.
This creates a tailored survey experience for each team. By asking more relevant questions, you receive longer, more useful feedback that managers can use for real-time coaching and targeted service improvements. This empowers managers to resolve customer issues faster and more confidently.
For example, if the Focus Area is "Quality of Treatment," a survey might ask:
"Did the technician set clear expectations and go over the checklist of tasks to be completed before commencing the job?"
Note: For optimal insights, we recommend configuring Dynamic Surveys with a minimum of three follow-up questions, with four being ideal.
How to set a Focus Area
For a Single Team (Manager View)
-
From your Home dashboard, find the purple "Focus Area" panel, which suggests the top opportunity for your team.
- If you manage more than one team, select the desired team first.
- Click “Set Focus Area.”
- Confirm the suggested topic or choose another from the dropdown menu.
- Choose the time period (minimum one month recommended).
- Add three bite-sized actions for your team to follow. You can use the AI to suggest actions.
- Important: These actions will directly influence the questions asked by Dynamic Surveys.
- Click Preview & Confirm. The new goal will immediately appear on your team's desktop and mobile dashboards.
Note: Managers can change the Focus Area at any time. This will reset any tracking for the time period, however changing back to the previous Focus Area will retain the progress.
For Multiple Teams (Bulk Setup)
Head Office users and Frontline Managers can set a single Focus Area for multiple teams at once using the Frontline Report.
- Navigate to User Dashboard > Reports > Frontline.
- Use the checkboxes to select the teams you want to update.
- Apply a single Focus Area and the same corresponding actions to all selected teams.
Setting a Global Focus Area (Head Office View)
If an account has no locations/teams created then Head Office users will see a "Global Focus Area" component on their dashboard. This allows a user with Head Office permissions to set a single, company-wide Focus Area across all surveys that utilize the Dynamic Surveys capability.
Tracking progress
Once a Focus Area is active and responses begin to arrive, managers can track progress on their dashboard. The Focus Area panel will display:
- Focus Actions: See how many actions have been "actioned" and "not actioned".
- Responses: The total number of survey responses related to the Focus Area.
- Score: The change in score (e.g., NPS) for the current month compared to the previous month.
NiceAI analyzes response comments to determine if the customer confirmed or declined that the defined actions were performed.
What the team sees
- Goal banner with the Focus Area name and actions.
- Dynamic Survey questions customised to that Focus Area for every respondent tied to that team.
End of Month/Quarter Rollover
To ensure continuity, the system has an automated rollover feature. Five days before a Focus Area expires, the manager will receive a prompt to either continue with the current goal or select a new one. If no action is taken, the current Focus Area will automatically roll over for the next period.
Configuration Requirements
In order for Focus Areas to be set up correctly, the account must have the following configured:
- At least one user where the role type is 'Frontline manager' assigned to a team
- (Optional) If frontline staff are set up as users within AskNicely, then they will also need to be assigned to the relevant team.
Availability
Focus Areas are included in the Transform plan. Contact your Customer Success Manager or support@asknice.ly if you’d like a demo or upgrade.