Building a Student Feedback Campaign with RCS, Vonage and Salesforce

Every training program ends with the same question: what did the students really think?

At Astrea IT Services, we wanted honest feedback on our Summer Training Program, and we wanted it from every student, not just the few who open an email. So we built a feedback campaign that lives where students already spend their time: their phone’s messaging app.

In this blog, we will walk through how the campaign works, how it is built on Salesforce with Vonage, and what we learned along the way.

The Idea

Instead of emailing a survey link, we send each student a rich message through RCS (Rich Communication Services), the modern successor to SMS. The message arrives in the default messaging app, shows our verified name, and includes a Give feedback button. One tap opens a short form. No app to install, no login to remember.

How the Campaign Works

The RCS feedback card on the student's phone

• A personalized message goes out from Salesforce. Student records already live in Salesforce, so the campaign starts there. A batch process picks the students who have not been asked yet and sends each of them an RCS card through the Vonage Messages API, with their name in the greeting.
• The student taps the button and fills a short form. The form is hosted on a Salesforce Site and designed for phones: large tap targets, the right keyboard for each field, and no zooming. It asks for their name, college, registered email, a rating from 1 to 5, and optional comments.
• We verify that the student is real. The email must match a registered student. If it does not, the student is asked to use the email they registered with. Each student can submit only once, which keeps our data clean.
• The response is saved and linked to the student. Every submission becomes a Feedback record connected to the student’s profile. A rating below 3 is classed as negative, and 3 or above as positive, so we can filter and report on sentiment instantly.
• The student gets the right reply, automatically. As soon as feedback is saved, the student receives a thank-you message. Happy students get a warm acknowledgement. Students who had a difficult experience get an empathetic note inviting them to tell us more.
• Everything is tracked. For every student we record whether the request was sent, when, and the message ID, so nothing is guesswork.

A saved Feedback record with rating, sentiment and the linked student

The student record tracking request status, sent time and request ID

Why RCS Instead of Email or SMS

• It feels like a message, not a survey. Rich cards and buttons are easier to act on than a plain link.
• It is branded and trusted. Students see who the message is from.
• One tap to respond. Fewer steps mean more completed responses.

Under the Hood

For the technically curious, the solution runs entirely on the Salesforce platform with Vonage handling message delivery.

• Apex batch jobs send messages in small groups. Salesforce limits how many outbound calls one transaction can make, so we keep each group small and safe.
• A Salesforce Site hosts the public form. The form never exposes student data. It only checks whether an email matches a student and nothing more.
• A trigger on the Feedback record marks the student as having responded and queues the reply. Sending a message is done in the background, because Salesforce does not allow outbound calls straight from a trigger.
• Safeguards make sure a student’s feedback and their status update are saved together or not at all, and that the same student cannot submit twice.

Conclusion

A feedback campaign works best when it meets people where they already are. By combining Salesforce as the system of record, Vonage for RCS delivery, and a simple mobile-first form, we turned a routine survey into a one-tap experience that is trackable end to end.

Want Something Similar?

If you want to reach your customers or students with rich, trackable messages directly from your CRM, we would be glad to help.