Reliable field data within 48 hours
Your donors expect indicators. Your programmes need data to adjust. But between the enumerators to deploy, the paper questionnaires to key in and the areas that have become unreachable, conventional collection is expensive, takes weeks, and leaves blind spots. The SOLIS bot's surveys move that collection onto beneficiaries' phones, without moving a single team.
How to design a survey that gets completed
The rule learned in the field is clear: fewer than ten questions, closed answers wherever possible, under five minutes to complete. Every extra question drops the completion rate. An effective post-distribution survey fits into three blocks:
- Identification (2 questions): governorate, type of aid received.
- Verification (4 questions): was the assistance actually received, did it match what was announced.
- Quality and satisfaction (3 questions): rating of how it went, fit to needs, free comment.
The beneficiary answers directly in the conversation, at their own pace:
SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL Thank you for taking part. Question 3 of 8: did you receive your assistance?
- Yes
- No
- Partially
Responses feed the dashboard in real time and export to Excel, ready for your reporting.
Where enumerators cannot go
In Ukraine, SI collects its donor indicators in inaccessible front-line areas. The design there answers one non-negotiable principle, the respondent's safety first:
- anonymous by default, no personal identification questions,
- no risky questions, none about movements or positions,
- explicit consent at the start of the survey,
- the option to stop at any moment, with a simple "STOP".
In practice
The multiplier. In Lebanon, a MEAL team of three covers 300 distribution sites. Conventional monitoring had become impossible at that scale. With the bot, the same team collected 700 responses in 48 hours, for €8 in broadcast costs, where the traditional method would have cost over €1,700. The average response time went from more than four hours to three minutes and twenty seconds.
The uptake. Because the surveys are short and completed inside the conversation, they reach a 70% response rate at CARE Lebanon, an exceptional figure for remote monitoring. Across the network, 12,500 questionnaires were completed over the last period.
What it changes
The average cost works out at under €0.20 per response, 10 to 50 times cheaper than field collection. But the saving is not the only gain. By making collection faster and lighter, the bot lets you measure more often, react sooner, and concentrate field visits where a human presence genuinely adds something.
For quality data
- Test your survey with ten beneficiaries before the official launch. Ask them how long it took and which questions felt unclear. An ambiguous question across 300 sites costs you weeks of reprocessing, thirty minutes of testing saves them.
- Have sensitive surveys reviewed by your protection focal point, especially in a conflict context.
- Always triangulate the bot's data with other sources before an operational decision. The tool speeds up measurement, it does not replace judgement.