A school group of forty walks in, the chaperone pays for everything at once, and the register stops to ask for a ZIP code and “How did you hear about us?” Then a staff member buys a comp pass for a contractor and gets the same prompt. Neither answer means anything, but both end up in your marketing data.
Point-of-sale surveys in Altru are useful when they capture real visitors making real choices. The trouble is that they tend to fire on transactions where the question doesn’t apply. This article covers what to check in your setup, what you can realistically control, and how to keep the data clean when you can’t switch the prompt off for a specific sale.
First, be clear about what you can and can’t scope
Altru lets you set up marketing survey questions and attach them to the sales process. How finely you can target them is the part people get stuck on. As far as we can tell, survey behavior is tied to the sales channel and configuration rather than to individual items or individual transactions. We have not seen a reliable built-in way to say “ask on general admission, skip on comps and group payments” within the same register.
Because Altru configuration options change over time and can differ between sites, don’t take that as final. Before you build workarounds:
- Review the survey and sales configuration in a test or sandbox environment, and note every place a survey can be assigned or made optional.
- Ask Blackbaud support directly whether surveys can be limited by sales method, program, or item in your current release.
- Check whether the questions themselves can be marked as not required. An optional question is the simplest fix of all.
Decide which sales actually need a survey
Before changing anything, sort your transaction types into three groups. It is usually a short conversation between admissions and marketing.
- Always ask. Walk-up general admission and first-time visitors. These are the people your marketing team wants to learn about.
- Never ask. Comps, staff and volunteer passes, vendor or contractor entry, refunds and exchanges, reprints, and corrections.
- Ask once, not per ticket. Group payments, school trips, and large family purchases where one person pays for many.
Once that list exists, you can match each group to a tactic below.
Practical ways to reduce unwanted prompts
Use separate sales setups where it makes sense
If survey prompts follow the sales channel, then where a transaction is processed matters. Comps and staff passes can often be issued somewhere other than the main admissions register, and group visits usually belong in group sales rather than daily sales anyway. Moving those transactions to the right place can remove most of the noise without touching the survey itself. Test this first, since the exact behavior depends on how your organization has configured each area.
Give staff an honest “skip” answer
When the prompt can’t be turned off, add an answer such as Not asked or Staff / comp transaction. Staff will skip or guess no matter what, so give them an answer that tells the truth. Then you can filter those responses out of reports instead of mistaking them for people who heard about you on the radio.
Shorten the survey
One question that staff actually ask beats four that get clicked through. If the survey is long, cashiers start picking the first option to keep the line moving, and that habit carries over to the transactions where you wanted real answers. Keep the question that drives a real decision, usually ZIP code or referral source, and cut the rest.
Write a one-line desk rule
Something like “Ask on walk-up admission only. Everything else: choose Not asked.” Post it at each register and cover it in seasonal training. A rule people can remember does more than a long procedure doc.
Clean up the data you already have
If surveys have been firing on everything for a while, your existing responses are mixed. A query against survey responses joined to the transaction details can help you separate them. Filter by sales method, by item type, or by zero-dollar transactions to find comps, and look for runs of the same answer from the same user in a short window, which usually means a cashier clicked through.
You don’t have to delete anything. Just build your marketing reports on a query that excludes those transaction types, and document the filter so whoever runs the report next year gets the same answer you do.
Checking the results after a month
- “Not asked” shows up mostly on the transaction types you expected, and rarely on general admission.
- The share of responses picking the first answer in the list drops.
- Your marketing team stops asking why referral numbers spike on school-group days.
Quick answers
Can I turn off the survey for one specific item?
We haven’t found a dependable item-level setting. Confirm with Blackbaud support for your release, and in the meantime use a “Not asked” answer and filter it out of reports.
Should group sales be surveyed at all?
Usually once per group, at booking, rather than per ticket at the door. The group coordinator is the person whose answer actually tells you something.
