--- name: sales-questionpro description: "QuestionPro platform help — self-serve survey and research suite (questionpro.com): 30-52 question types, branching logic, 100+ languages, AskWhy, CX/NPS and employee 360 modules, SPSS export, a QuestionPro Audience consumer panel, and a documented v2 REST API (api-key header, page/perPage, regional US/EU/CA hosts) plus per-survey webhooks. Use when QuestionPro API calls suddenly return 429 after working fine, hunting the v2 base URL or the api-key header, pulling QuestionPro responses into a warehouse or CRM, wiring a survey webhook to fire on completion, deciding whether the free 200-response tier is enough, budgeting a QuestionPro Audience panel order, finding conjoint/MaxDiff/TURF greyed out on your plan, or comparing QuestionPro vs SurveyMonkey vs Qualtrics. Do NOT use for cross-tool NPS/CSAT/VoC strategy (use /sales-customer-feedback), picking a validation method for a startup idea (use /sales-idea-validation), or enterprise XM (use /sales-qualtrics)." argument-hint: "[describe what you need help with in QuestionPro]" license: MIT version: 1.0.0 tags: [sales, surveys, feedback, market-research, platform] --- # QuestionPro Platform Help Help the user with QuestionPro — survey design, distribution, the Audience panel, response analytics, and the v2 REST API / webhook automation surface. ## Step 1 — Gather context If `references/learnings.md` exists, read it first for accumulated platform knowledge. Ask the user: 1. **What do you need help with?** - A) Building a survey (question types, logic, languages, AskWhy) - B) Distributing it (email lists, links, offline/mobile, reminders) - C) Buying responses from QuestionPro Audience - D) Analyzing responses (reports, TURF, SPSS export) - E) Automation / integrations (v2 REST API, webhooks, CX or Communities APIs, Zapier) - F) Account / billing (plan comparison, response limits, API quota) - G) Something else — describe it 2. **What's your situation?** - A) Setting up QuestionPro for the first time - B) Something isn't working / data looks wrong - C) Optimizing an existing survey - D) Getting data out into another system - E) Evaluating QuestionPro vs alternatives 3. **What plan are you on?** (Essentials/free, Advanced, Team Edition, Research Suite, trial, not sure) **If the user's request already provides enough context, skip to the relevant step.** Lead with your best-effort answer, then ask 1-2 clarifying questions at the end. ## Step 2 — Route or answer directly If the request maps to a specialized skill, route: - Cross-tool NPS/CSAT/VoC strategy → `/sales-customer-feedback {your question}` - Choosing how to validate a startup idea → `/sales-idea-validation {your question}` - SurveyMonkey platform questions → `/sales-surveymonkey {your question}` - Zoho Survey platform questions → `/sales-zoho-survey {your question}` - Enterprise XM → `/sales-qualtrics {your question}` - Survey invitation email deliverability → `/sales-deliverability {your question}` Otherwise, answer directly using the reference below. ## Step 3 — QuestionPro platform reference **Read `references/platform-guide.md`** for the full platform reference — modules, pricing and plan gates, the Audience panel, integrations, and how QuestionPro compares to alternatives. Answer using only the relevant section. Don't dump the full reference. **For API or webhook questions**, also read `references/questionpro-api-reference.md` — v2 REST endpoints, auth, limits, pagination, response data model, and webhook creation. ## Step 4 — Actionable guidance You no longer need the full platform guide — focus on the user's specific situation. 1. **State the plan gate first.** Before giving steps, tell the user whether their tier supports the feature. **If they ask about conjoint or MaxDiff, say immediately that these are Research Suite only — quote-only, ~$5–10k/yr, 10-seat minimum, and not trialable** — rather than walking them through a feature they cannot reach. Branding needs Advanced+; collaboration and regional data centers need Team+. **When a plan gate is hard, don't stop at "no" — name an alternative.** For conjoint/MaxDiff on a self-serve budget, point at **OpinionX** for free stack-ranking/conjoint-style pricing studies, and/or route the underlying pricing question to `/sales-idea-validation` for a real behavior test. 2. **When a 429 comes up, disambiguate it before troubleshooting.** QuestionPro returns 429 for two unrelated reasons: the burst rate limit (300 calls/60s per key, 2,400/60s per org) — where retrying works — or **the license's finite lifetime API quota being spent** (Trial 500, Advanced 5,000, Team 10,000, Research 20,000), where **retrying never works and no amount of backoff helps**. Ask which it is before proposing a fix, and **tell them to check their remaining calls under Integration » Developer API** to settle it. Tell the user plainly that an exhausted quota is not a transient error. 3. **Recommend webhook-push over polling for any pipeline.** A webhook delivery costs zero API calls; polling burns the finite quota. Say the arithmetic out loud when it decides the design — polling once a minute is ~43,200 calls/month, which exhausts an Advanced license's entire 5,000-call allowance in under three days, permanently. 4. **Whenever you set up a webhook, tell the user there is no HMAC signature to verify.** They must authenticate it themselves with a shared secret in `requestHeader` plus an unguessable URL, and verify it server-side. Never imply a signature header exists. Retry behavior is undocumented, so pair every webhook with a nightly reconciliation query. **Create it with `POST /surveys/{id}/webhooks` and always state both the payload template (`requestJSON`, e.g. the `{complete_response}` macro) and the trigger point (`location`, e.g. `LOCATION_AFTER_SURVEY`)** — the body is a template the user defines, so there is no fixed payload schema to code against. 5. **Use `perPage=1000`, not the default 100,** on any bulk read — same data, one-tenth the quota burn. 6. **Check the data center before debugging auth.** US/Canada/EU have different hosts and keys are not portable; Surveys, CX, and Communities each issue a *separate* key. 7. **Step-by-step instructions** — numbered steps to accomplish their goal. 8. **Verification** — how to confirm it works (preview the survey, check the webhook's per-webhook log, send a test response, confirm remaining API quota under Integration » Developer API). If you discover a gotcha, workaround, or tip not covered in `references/learnings.md`, append it there with today's date. ## Gotchas > *Best-effort from research (2026-07)* — review these, especially plan-gated features and pricing, > which change. - **429 means two different things, and only one of them is retryable.** QuestionPro meters both a burst rate limit (300 calls/60s per key, 2,400/60s per org) *and* a **finite lifetime quota of API calls per license** (Trial 500, Advanced 5,000, Team Edition 10,000, Research/CX/Communities/Workforce 20,000). Once the quota is spent, every subsequent call 429s forever. This is the single most confusing thing about the API: an integration that worked all week dies permanently, and the status code implies "slow down" when the real answer is "buy more calls." - **Conjoint and MaxDiff are Research Suite only — quote-only, and untrialable.** Reported ~$5–10k/yr with a **10-user seat minimum**, so a two-person research team pays the full freight. They cannot be tested without booking a sales demo. If someone is choosing QuestionPro *for* conjoint/MaxDiff on a startup budget, that's the wrong tool — say so. - **The free Essentials tier has no listed API quota.** It's absent from the limits table entirely — don't promise API access on the free plan. Free is also capped at **200 responses per survey**. - **Team Edition is cheaper per seat than Advanced** ($83 vs $99/user/mo) but requires **5 seats** — so the real floor is ~$415/mo. A solo user pays more per seat than a team does. - **Webhooks have no HMAC signature or signing secret.** Authenticate with your own shared secret in `requestHeader` and an unguessable URL. Retry/backoff on receiver failure is undocumented — never assume at-least-once delivery; reconcile. - **`requestJSON` is a template, not a schema.** `{complete_response}` is a macro QuestionPro expands. The delivered payload shape is whatever you configured, so there's no single fixed webhook schema. - **Surveys, CX, and Communities each have a separate API and a separate key.** A Surveys key 401s against CX. CX keys are generated inside CX, not under Integration » Developer API. - **Keys are data-center-bound.** US `api.questionpro.com`, Canada `ca.questionpro.com`, EU `eu.questionpro.com`. A key minted in one region won't authenticate against another — and the v2 docs never expand the `{{env}}` placeholder, so people guess wrong. - **Audience panel is bid/quote-based with no published rate.** Cost-per-complete, incentives included; third-party panel completes typically run **$3–15** each. Shorter surveys cost less; tighter targeting costs more. There is no panel API — buying is a UI flow. - **Expect aggressive sales email after signup**, plus recurring reviewer complaints about price vs value, 7–10 hour support response times, and a cluttered UI. - **Response-parsing pitfalls live in the API reference.** The `answerValues[].value` object shape, non-ISO timestamps, drifting pagination field names, the `custom1`..`custom5` join keys, the `dataQuality`/`duplicate` panel-quality fields, and the deprecated v1 RPC API are all documented in `references/questionpro-api-reference.md` (Data-model & parsing pitfalls) — read it before writing a parser. - **Self-improving**: If you discover something not covered here, append it to `references/learnings.md` with today's date. ## Related skills - `/sales-customer-feedback` — NPS/CSAT/VoC strategy across all tools — survey design, response rates, closed-loop feedback, platform comparison. Install: `npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-customer-feedback -a claude-code` - `/sales-idea-validation` — Validating an idea before building — where a paid survey panel does and doesn't count as evidence. Install: `npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-idea-validation -a claude-code` - `/sales-surveymonkey` — SurveyMonkey platform help — the closest self-serve peer, with REST API v3 and a per-response Audience panel. Install: `npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-surveymonkey -a claude-code` - `/sales-zoho-survey` — Zoho Survey platform help — the budget floor of this class, but without a real API. Install: `npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-zoho-survey -a claude-code` - `/sales-qualtrics` — Qualtrics XM platform help — the enterprise research step up. Install: `npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-qualtrics -a claude-code` - `/sales-do` — Not sure which skill to use? The router matches any sales objective to the right skill. Install: `npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-do -a claude-code` ## Examples ### Example 1: The API stopped working (developer/automation) **User**: "Our QuestionPro sync ran fine for a week and now every call returns 429. I added exponential backoff and it's still 429. What's wrong?" **Approach**: Backoff already failing is the tell — this is the **lifetime API quota**, not the burst limit. Advanced includes 5,000 total calls (Team 10,000, Trial 500), and a once-a-minute poll is ~43,200/month, so it's spent in under three days, permanently. Have them check remaining calls under **Integration » Developer API**. The fix is architectural: switch to a **webhook** (`POST /surveys/{id}/webhooks`, `location: LOCATION_AFTER_SURVEY`) which costs zero calls per delivery, and reserve API reads for a nightly reconcile at `perPage=1000`. Warn there's no HMAC signature (authenticate with a shared secret in `requestHeader` + an unguessable URL) and retry is undocumented, so keep the reconcile. ### Example 2: Chose QuestionPro for conjoint **User**: "I'm a solo founder. I signed up for QuestionPro to run a conjoint study on pricing but I can't find conjoint anywhere in the builder. Where is it?" **Approach**: It's not hidden — conjoint (and MaxDiff) are **Research Suite only**: quote-only (~$5–10k/yr), 10-seat minimum, no trial, so a solo founder would buy 10 seats for it. Say plainly they picked the tool for a capability they can't reach on any plan they'd buy. Redirect: **OpinionX** does free conjoint-style pricing studies, and route the pricing question to `/sales-idea-validation` since "what should I price this at" usually wants a **real behavior test** (price-tiered landing page + real checkout). Caveat: conjoint measures *stated* preference, never that anyone will actually pay. ### Example 3: Panel budget for concept testing **User**: "I need 800 responses from US homeowners aged 30-55 to test a product concept. What'll QuestionPro Audience cost and how do I set it up?" **Approach**: There's **no published per-response rate** — Audience is cost-per-complete (incentives included), bought by configuring a sample or requesting a bid. Third-party completes typically run **$3–15** each, so 800 is plausibly **$2,400–12,000** depending on incidence and length; the real number appears once configured. Levers: shorter surveys cost less, and every extra targeting filter raises the rate. Filter delivered data on the built-in `dataQuality`, `dataQualityScore`, and `duplicate` fields before analysis. Category caveat: 800 "I'd buy this" answers are **stated preference at scale**, not demand — take the go/no-go to a real behavior test (`/sales-idea-validation`). ## Troubleshooting ### "API returns 429 / rate limited" - **Determine which 429 it is first.** Burst limit (300/60s per key, 2,400/60s per org) → backoff works; **lifetime quota exhausted** → retrying never works. Backoff not fixing it = quota. Check remaining calls under Integration » Developer API (Trial 500 · Advanced 5,000 · Team 10,000 · Research/CX/Communities/Workforce 20,000). - **Fix by architecture, not retries.** Stop polling → webhook (zero calls per delivery); keep API reads for backfill at `perPage=1000` (10× fewer calls than the default 100). ### "401 Unauthorized / 404 on a valid survey ID" - **Data center**: US `api.questionpro.com` · Canada `ca.questionpro.com` · EU `eu.questionpro.com` — keys aren't portable and the v2 docs leave `{{env}}` unexpanded. - **Right product's key**: Surveys, CX, and Communities each issue a separate key (a Surveys key 401s against CX). **Header** is `api-key` (not `Authorization`/`X-API-Key`). **v1 deprecated** 2021-07-15 (v2 paths look like `/a/api/v2/surveys/{id}/responses`). **403** = valid key, tier/role lacks permission. ### "Conjoint / MaxDiff / branding / collaboration is missing or greyed out" - **Confirm the tier.** Conjoint/MaxDiff are **Research Suite only** (quote-only, 10-seat min, no trial); branding needs Advanced+; collaboration + regional data centers need Team+. Question types scale by tier (Essentials 30 · Advanced 38 · Team 46 · Research 52). These are hard gates — for conjoint on a budget, use OpinionX or reframe via `/sales-idea-validation`. ### "Webhook data isn't arriving / arrives but my parser produces blank fields" - **Check the per-webhook log** (UI) — the source of truth for delivery. Confirm `location: LOCATION_AFTER_SURVEY` and a real macro like `{complete_response}` in `requestJSON` (an empty template delivers nothing). There's **no HMAC** — authenticate the shared secret in `requestHeader`, don't reject unsigned. **Blank columns** = the `answerValues[].value` object trap (see the API reference's parsing pitfalls). Add a nightly `GET /responses` reconcile since retry is undocumented.