How to Connect Feedback Responses to Recordings

Hotjar offers the ability to connect feedback responses submitted through on-site Surveys and Incoming Feedback widgets with Recordings.

Connecting feedback responses with Recordings will make it possible to assign the feedback respondent a Hotjar ID, which allows you to look up any Recordings that have been collected from the same user. You can then connect the dots between what the user said (their feedback response) and what they experienced (session recording) while visiting your site.

Understanding your Options

When creating or editing a Survey or Incoming Feedback widget, you will see the Connect feedback to Hotjar insights configuration with a drop-down menu, beneath the "Thank you message" in the Questions section. 

The drop-down menu will display three options to manage this feature:

• Automatically connect respondent feedback
• Ask respondents for consent to connect feedback
• Do not connect respondent feedback

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Automatically connect respondent feedback

This is the default setting for all newly created widgets. Hotjar will automatically display a unique Hotjar User ID next to a feedback response, allowing you to search for recorded sessions from that user in your Recordings list.

For example, the image below shows a Survey response that has been given a system-generated Hotjar User ID:

You can then filter by the same Hotjar User ID to see Recordings from that user if available, as seen in the below image:

Accessing Recordings directly from Incoming Feedback responses

When you're viewing a response to an Incoming Feedback widget, you'll see a 'Play' button below the Session Details information. If a Recording was captured for this user's session, the button will be green and you can click on it to see the specific session where the feedback response was submitted.

If the button is greyed out, it means that a Recording was not captured for the respondent's session or, if the response is very recent, it could be that the user's session is still open, and so a recording hasn't yet been generated for it. The "Play" button will always be greyed out if your site asks the user for their consent to connect their feedback to other data collected and the user does not give consent.

Remember that Hotjar displays Incoming Feedback and Survey widgets to all targeted users, regardless of your Hotjar Plan. This means that any responses submitted by a user will be stored, even if the user’s session was not tracked by Recordings. Since Recordings may not track all your users, you might find that some Feedback responses do not have any corresponding session recordings.

Accessing Feedback responses directly from Recordings

When viewing the playback of a session recording, you may see icons that indicate the user submitted an Incoming Feedback or NPS® Survey response:

If the response was connected to Recordings, you can hover over the icon and it will display a link to where you can view the specific response that was submitted. However, if the response was not connected to Recordings, you will see the icon in your Recordings playback, but you will not have a clickable link to view the response.

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Ask respondents for consent to connect feedback

This option allows Hotjar to connect Feedback responses with Recordings only if the user has granted their consent first. Learn more about what it means to grant consent.

When this option is selected, a respondent will see the following message after they submit a response through a Survey or Incoming Feedback widget:

If the user does not grant consent by selecting the X button, their response will still be submitted, but no Hotjar User ID or searchable Recording associated with the user’s visit will be collected. Instead, the response will show as an Anonymous user as seen below:

If the user grants consent by selecting the checkmark button, the same Hotjar User ID that is assigned to the Feedback response will be assigned to previous and future Recording collected by Hotjar.

This allows you to search for Recordings captured from that user, as mentioned in the section above.

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Do not connect respondent feedback

This option prevents Hotjar from connecting Feedback responses with Hotjar insights. Instead, responses from Feedback tools with this setting will display “Anonymous” instead of a Hotjar User ID. The consent message mentioned above will not be displayed when using this setting.

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What does granting consent allow?

Granting consent allows you to collect and combine the Feedback responses with:

• Any other feedback previously submitted from the same device
• Location (limited to the country)
• Language used
• Device and Browser used
• Custom Attributes (e.g. products or services being using)
• Behavior and Interactions on the page(s) visited

All Behavior and Interaction data collected will be retained for no longer than one year. It will then be automatically deleted. All Feedback responses data submitted is stored in accordance with our Data Retention Policy.

The right for the user to withdraw this consent is present at any time. From the date when the withdraw of consent occurs, we will no longer combine Feedback responses with information about behavior. Requests to have data removed by your user can be actioned with our User Lookup tool. 

Any data collected and combined from the date when consent was granted until the date of withdrawal would have been lawfully processed.

The legal basis for processing this data, which might include personal data, if any provided, is Article 6(1)(a) EU General Data Protection Regulation.¨

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