Item: Google Forms
Rating: 7
Author: Kaley White

Overall Satisfaction with Google Forms

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I used Google Forms in my role as a software support engineer to gather customer feedback on the performance of our medical image segmentation software. We and our distributors distributed the survey link to a few dozen customers, hoping to learn how our software could improve to meet customers' clinical needs.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Google Forms has a very small learning curve.
Google Forms is free, making it perfect for a startup.
Google Forms can automatically write survey responses to a GSheet for easy analysis.

Cons

It's cumbersome for respondents who don't have or aren't allowed to use a Google Account.
Customization options are limited.
The UI is a bit tacky compared to more "professional" survey tools like Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey.

Return on Investment

Google Forms allowed us to save money by not having to purchase a survey tool subscription.
Google Forms helped us focus our efforts on customers' top pain points, making them more likely to purchase our software.
We were unable to gather certain insights due to customers' technical difficulties with the survey.

Usability

Google Forms is very intuitive with a small learning curve. It integrates well with the rest of the GSuite, so anyone familiar with GDrive, GDocs, or especially GSheets should be able to get up and running quickly, and Google customer support is helpful as always. Unfortunately, as with most free tools, customizability is pretty limited.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM

Even though Google Forms doesn't offer much customization, its survey logic options are more comprehensive than HubSpot's, so we chose Google Forms even though we already had HubSpot messaging integrated into our customer communication workflows. It also helped that all employees collaborating on the survey had Google Accounts whereas only a few had access to HubSpot.

Key Insights

Do you think Google Forms delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Google Forms's feature set?

Did Google Forms live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Google Forms go as expected?

Would you buy Google Forms again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Streamlit, Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Forms is great for simple surveys, such as quick polls, but any logic beyond conditional pages is not supported. Google Forms is best used when the survey participants have and are permitted to use a Google Account to fill out the form; we ran into issues with hospital IT departments. I don't believe there's a better free tool out there than Google Forms, though.

Google Forms Feature Ratings

Using Google Forms

Users and Roles

3 - A product research coordinator and two software support agents collaborated on a customer feedback survey, sharing the results Google Sheet with colleagues. We used Google Forms for only a single project because our response rate was poor.

Support Headcount Required

Google Forms is pretty easy to use, so any questions could be answered by our internal technical employees or via a quick Google Search. Familiarity with the wider GSuite, especially GSHeets, and GDrive, is helpful when working with Google Forms as these tools integrate well together. Fortunately, the company I used Google Forms at was a "Google shop."

Business Processes Supported

External customer feedback surveys
Internal employee surveys (e.g., cybersecurity practices)
External customer file sharing

Innovative Uses

File sharing

Future Planned Uses

Gather internal employee feedback on company policies and practices
Use better survey design to improve customer survey response rates

Likelihood to Renew

Google Forms comes with the rest of the GSuite, so we don't need to renew our access to it specifically. It's nice to have it as an option if we need it, but it's really not professional enough for externally facing surveys at the company I work for now. However, nothing beats it for quick internal polls at a company that uses Google Workspace.

Evaluating Google Forms and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes - We turned to Google Forms when HubSpot forms lacked the conditional survey logic that we needed in order to gather feedback from customers who had only used a subset of our products' features. Google Forms didn't replace all of HubSpot, of course; we only used it instead of HubSpot for one particular survey.

Key Differentiators

Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use
Other

Price was the most important factor. We needed a free solution that supported at least basic conditional survey logic. Another factor in our decision was that we were a Google shop, so employees were already familiar with the GSuite, and survey responses could be integrated with other GSuite tools, especially GSheets.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

If we had a bigger budget, we would've purchased Qualtrics. We tried Qualtrics's free trial when Google Forms' conditional logic fell short but weren't able to create, distribute, and gather responses before our Qualtrics trial ran out. Ideally, we would use a more professional tool than Google Forms for externally facing surveys, but that's overkill for internal employee surveys.

Google Forms Implementation

Implementation Rating

Google Forms doesn't really require "implementation": simply log into GDrive and create a survey! You can configure settings per survey to, for example, automatically write responses to a GSheet.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal

Implementation Issues

We discovered the hard way the absence of certain functionality.
Since we were a Google shop, we seamlessly answered the survey internally, not foreseeing the issues that customers would have if they lacked a Google Account.

Google Forms Training

Training Types Used

No Training

In-Person Training

Online Training

Ease of Google Forms Training

Like most Google products, Google Forms is super usable, requiring no special training even for most nontechnical users. We were able to answer our questions via Google Search, especially referencing Google's self-service help articles.

Configuring Google Forms

Product Configurability

Configurability is too limited for all but the most basic surveys, but honestly, most other free survey tools aren't any better.

Configuration Lessons

There's no "global" configuration necessary before diving right in. Individual forms can be configured to integrate with Google Sheets.

UI Customization

No - there is no facility to customize the interface

Extensibility and Customization

No - we have not done any custom code

Additional Customization Considerations

We attempted to not require respondents to log into a Google Account.

Google Forms Support

Support Rating

I've never contacted support for Google Forms specifically, but Google's customer support, both self-service and live, is always thorough and helpful.

Google Forms Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

We didn't. I'm not aware that Google offers premium support for Google Forms. Even if it does, though, our budget wouldn't have allowed it at the time we needed to conduct the survey. If we could've afforded it, we would've purchased a more professional survey solution than Google Forms.

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of Google Forms Support

I never contacted support for assistance with Google Forms, but Google's self-service articles are professional and readable.

Using Google Forms

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar	None

Easy Tasks

Simple question types, such as multi-select, free response, and Likert
Data export to a spreadsheet
Basic built-in data visualizations

Difficult Tasks

Survey logic (the only option is simple branching)
Gathering responses from users without a Google Account
Appearing professional in our surveys

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes, but I don't use it

Google Forms Reliability

Scalability

There is no limit to the number of responses a survey can receive. (Well, I suppose one could eventually run into the GSheet row count limit, but anyone able to obtain that many responses has the resources to purchase a more comprehensive survey tool!) We used Google Forms for both internally and externally facing surveys.

Reliability and Availability

We experienced no downtime. Anyone with a Google Account was always able to submit the survey, and we had no issues creating and editing the survey, either.

Performance

We noticed no performance issues. Google Forms are quick to create and load. Google Forms is designed to integrate well with the rest of the GSuite, and using GSheets with Google Forms streamlines analysis rather than slowing anything down.

Integrating Google Forms

Ease of Integration

Google Forms integrates well with other Google products. Forms can be configured to automatically writeresponses to a Google Sheet.

Systems Integrated With

Google Sheets

Integration with Google Sheets is as simple as selecting the GSheet to write responses to!

Future Integration Plans

Streamlit

We use Streamlit for analytics, so easily pulling data from a Google Forms into a Streamlit app could be handy. Of course, the automatic write to Google Sheets could take care of this.

Types of Integration

File import/export

Integration Lessons Learned

Configure your form to automatically export responses to a Google Sheet, from which you can analyze the data or export it for analysis in other tools.