Auto-Tag Survey Responses

When you run a survey, open-ended questions produce the most valuable feedback—and the most work. Reading and sorting every free-text answer by topic works at 20 responses; at 200 or 2,000 it’s a bottleneck. Auto-tagging survey responses lets Responsly categorize open text for you, so recurring themes surface without manual sorting.

In Responsly, auto-tagging lives under Customer Heaven in your form Settings, powered by the Athena AI. This guide explains how to turn it on, define your tags, what gets tagged, and where to read the results.

What auto-tagging does (and when to use it)

Auto-tagging applies your chosen tags to incoming open-text answers automatically, turning unstructured comments into structured, countable themes. Use it when you:

collect a steady stream of open-ended feedback and can’t read every answer,
want to quantify feature requests, bugs, or pain points instead of skimming quotes,
need consistent categorization across many responses (manual tagging drifts between people).

The same background pass can also add sentiment so you can separate positive, neutral, and negative feedback while you review.

Who can use this feature?

Customer Heaven appears in the Settings area while you edit a form. If you don’t see it, your workspace may not include this option yet—contact Responsly support to check availability.

Set up auto-tagging for open text

Follow these steps in the form editor:

Open the form you want to analyze.
Go to Settings.
Open Customer Heaven and turn on the main switch.
Choose which open text questions to analyze—up to four text questions per form. If you don’t choose, the first eligible text questions are used by default.
Add the tags you want to track (for example: bug, feature request, pricing, onboarding). Keep the list tight—a focused set of themes tags more consistently than a long one.
(Optional) Enable sentiment and, if your team works in one language, response translation so answers are readable and tagged in your destination language. See Auto-Translate Survey Responses.
Save. New submissions are then processed using these rules.

What gets tagged (and what doesn’t)

Tagged: Open text questions included in Customer Heaven analysis—up to four per form. You can adjust which text questions are analyzed, or exclude ones that shouldn’t be processed.
Not tagged this way: Closed question types (scales, choice lists) stay as submitted; auto-tagging focuses on the open-ended wording people type freely.

If a response doesn’t confidently match any of your tags, it’s left untagged rather than forced into the wrong bucket.

What happens after someone submits?

The response is stored as soon as the respondent finishes. Open-text answers are then processed automatically in the background—tagging, sentiment, and optional translation. You may not see tags the instant the submit button is pressed, so refresh Analysis after a short moment. If something still looks missing after a longer wait, refresh again or reach out to support.

Where to read tags in Analysis

In Analysis, open-ended blocks show the tags applied to each answer, so you can spot themes as you scroll. From there you can:

filter responses by tag to see everyone who mentioned a theme,
read sentiment alongside each tag to separate praise from complaints,
explore a word cloud view for text questions to catch themes at a glance.

Combine tags with cross-tabulation to see how themes differ by segment, and build dashboards to track a theme’s volume over time.

Export tagged responses

When you export survey data, tagged responses keep their labels so you can analyze themes in a spreadsheet or BI tool alongside the original open text.

Review and refine your tags

Auto-tagging gets better the more you steer it:

After the first ~100 tagged responses, check which tags are used most and whether any answers are mis-tagged.
Add tags for recurring themes that show up as untagged, and remove tags that never fire.
Revisit the list periodically—customer language and your product change over time.

Learn the strategy behind your tag list in Customer Feedback Categorization, read multilingual answers in one language with Auto-Translate Survey Responses, and turn tagged themes into insights with How to Analyze Survey Data. To see collection and categorization in one place, explore feedback analytics.

FAQ

Does auto-tagging apply to existing responses or only new ones?

Once tags are configured, open-text answers included in Customer Heaven are processed automatically in the background as they arrive. Refresh the Analysis view after a short moment to see tags and sentiment on recent responses.

Which answers get auto-tagged?

Open text (free-text) questions that are part of Customer Heaven analysis—up to four text questions per form. Closed questions like scales and choice lists are not tagged this way; the focus is on the open-ended wording people type freely.

Can I combine auto-tagging with sentiment and translation?

Yes. The same background pass can add sentiment and keywords, and translate open text into your destination language, so you get tags, tone, and one-language readability together without a separate tool.

What if a response doesn't match any of my tags?

It's left untagged rather than forced into the wrong bucket. Review untagged answers periodically and add or refine tags so recurring themes get captured going forward.