• You see a survey record with a score of 11 on an NPS Survey with 0-10 scoring available. Similarly, for Thumbs Up/Down or Star Ratings, you see a survey record with a score that is not possible using that survey methodology.
• You see a group of surveys for the same related object, all created within a short time frame, with one survey record for each of the possible scores. For example, NPS survey emails have 11 possible scores: 0 through 10.
• You may also notice that the Survey Record Type is set to Default instead of the specific record type for the Survey Template.
• Your email template HTML correctly shows the links for each of the possible scores (NPS will have links for each of the 0 through 10 scores.)
• The Created By and Last Modified By fields have an identical time stamp, both with Simple Survey Site Guest User.
• You have confirmed that there is no other automation to change the survey score.
• The Survey record is associated with a Case, but the Case is junk/spam created from an auto-response message from opening a case with another company.

In the case where a single record has a score that is out of bounds, there are two possible scenarios. First, the recipient of the survey may have modified the URL parameters to change the score of the survey by manually entering an 11. We were able to recreate the issue with this method. Please make sure that you have updated Simple Survey to the latest version. Simple Survey will no longer accept scores that are out of bounds for the survey methodology.

In the case where multiple records are created simultaneously, we believe that the survey invitation email was processed by an email scanner, such as Barracuda, which clicked every link in the email in rapid succession. This would create a condition resulting in survey records for each of the potential scores. This scenario is tough to replicate.

Another condition created by Microsoft Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Safe Links is creating two duplicate survey records of the same score. So if you use Office 365 with Safe Link protection, it "pre-clicks" the survey link to intercept potential malware/phishing attacks. If this is the case, you'll notice that one record will only have the score most likely with no Human Confidence Score even if you're using reCAPTCHA, and the other record will contain the score and additional responses.

Simple Survey now includes support for reCAPTCHA v3, which will identify surveys that have been taken by humans. Surveys created by an email or link scanner will have a low human confidence score. Surveys created by humans will have additional information and will have a high human confidence score.

* As of version 3.64 of Simple Survey, when reCAPTCHA is configured, survey responses submitted by bots will no longer create multiple, duplicate, empty survey records! Simple Survey will look at the Human Confidence Score to prevent the creation of records stemming from bot responses. Please upgrade and enable reCAPTCHA to prevent this issue from happening! *

We also recommend temporarily enabling field history tracking for the Survey Score to catch variations of this behavior, which may yield some additional information.

Additional Consideration:

As of version 5.21 of Simple Survey, pre-created survey records include a Human Confidence Score if reCAPTCHA is configured. However, a Human Confidence Score will not be generated and/or assigned to the survey records upon creation (as the survey hasn't been sent and respondents have not taken the survey). The score will only be assigned once a human opens the landing page to take the survey. If a bot interacts with the survey record, it will not save the interaction, so the Human Confidence Score will still remain blank.

Vicasso recommends pre-creating survey records to prevent the issue of multiple duplicate and/or mostly empty surveys being created simultaneously, as mentioned in this article. Only one survey record will be pre-created and later on updated either by a bot or a human.