Do you want to know what your employees or customers really think? And I do mean, really. Like what they’d like to tell you if they weren’t afraid of being judged.
Well, then, you need to start collecting anonymous feedback.
Unfortunately, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s actually not that easy. Typical feedback tools record at least some personally identifiable information (PII), meaning they never collect information anonymously.
To do that, you need anonymous feedback software. In this article, we’ll review 9 such tools and help you pick the best one for your brand.
Before we get to that, let’s dive a little deeper into something…
Why you absolutely should collect anonymous feedback?
Gathering feedback—be it ideas, suggestions, opinions, or reviews—has long become a staple of business and growth operations. This is how we uncover new opportunities, find out what’s working and what’s not, and even put out fires before they take down the whole organization.
Or that’s the theory behind it, at least.
I appreciate that this statement is harsh, but I consciously say it. You see, often, the ideas or feedback we collect isn’t entirely true to what the person really wanted to say.
In fact, I’d wager to say that the only true and honest feedback we get is the negative one. Often, it’s only when a colleague or customer is enraged at our businesses, that they tend to state their opinions clearly.
Otherwise, they often tone down their replies or provide no feedback at all.
Let me show it to you.
As an experiment, I scouted Reddit and other online sources for information about how honest people are in their survey feedback.
Here are just some of the comments I found.
Shocking? Perhaps. But then again, that’s precisely what happens when people fear that their feedback will be used against them.
(And I’ve found plenty of people on those forums sharing stories of this happening and the consequences they faced.)
Enter anonymous feedback
The term – anonymous feedback – refers to exactly that: feedback that is collected without any associated data that could identify the person behind it in any way.
In other words, it’s the feedback in its purest form, without context aside from the actual rating or other feedback type.
And here’s what happens when you begin collecting anonymous feedback.
- Finally, you start collecting honest replies. Of course, I am not saying that any feedback you’ve collected to date wasn’t honest. However, there is a possibility that at least some responses were skewed due to people feeling afraid or anxious about sharing their actual opinions.
- You create a culture of transparency. You show employees or customers that they no longer need to feel threatened by their opinions. Quite the contrary, in fact. They can share those ideas with you because you only care about the idea rather than who said it.
- You collect better ideas. I’m sure this goes without saying. Since your team is no longer threatened by the idea of their feedback causing backlash, they are more likely to share their absolutely best ideas with you.
- You collect more responses, too. Many people ignore traditional surveys because they don’t believe their voices matter. With anonymous feedback, they know their voices matter and are more likely to take the survey.
But there is a catch…
To collect truly anonymous feedback, you need to ensure such a high level of privacy to your staff or customers.
Because it’s only when people know that their privacy and identify is protected, they are likely to act on a survey fully.
How do you get that? With a dedicated anonymous feedback tool, of course.
So, let’s talk about those.
How does anonymous feedback software work?
At first glance, anonymous feedback software doesn’t look much different from any other survey or feedback tool.
It allows for creating feedback forms, distributing them to employees or clients, and collecting feedback.
And yet, anonymous feedback platforms are different.
Built-in Privacy
For those tools, privacy is not an option. It’s not a setting you turn on or an option you include in a particular survey.
These tools come with it turned on right out of the box. Not to mention that, typically, their privacy capabilities extend beyond just not recording the person’s IP address or name.
Suggestion Ox (disclaimer—this is my anonymous feedback tool), for example, does not have the option to turn privacy off. Any suggestion box you create is automatically anonymous, and no personally identifiable information is recorded.
(Set up window in Suggestion Ox. See how it allows you to specify just the basic information and has no option to disable privacy. Every form you create with the tool is 100% anonymous.)
Anonymous Replies
Not every anonymous feedback tool offers that option. But some do, and the feature allows companies to send replies to respondents anonymously, without ever learning the identity of the person they’re speaking to.
This is a hugely useful feature when you need to either respond to or follow-up on a feedback, notice, or even allegation but do not want to break the person’s trust.
With this option, you two can talk about the issue without ever knowing the identify of one another.
Case management
As feedback begins to roll in, features like these help you manage each entry and all the different intake forms you might be running.
So, one more question remains: What are the best tools for collecting anonymous feedback?
Well…
9 Absolutely amazing anonymous feedback tools
#1. Suggestion Ox
Best for: Collecting anonymous employee feedback and conducting anonymous conversations with employees
Our name might suggest that Suggestion Ox (again, this is my tool,) is a suggestion box software. Well, it is but I like to describe it as a “candid conversations platform.”
That’s because our platform facilitates more than just collecting feedback. You see – Suggestion Ox empowers employees and organizations to have two-way, anonymous communication.
It starts with a suggestion box, of course. With my tool, you can create and customize suggestion boxes and distribute them to your employees via a shareable link, a QR code, or on Slack or MS Teams.
The tool collects all feedback anonymously, so you never know who provided it.
But then, you can also respond to employees’ feedback with Suggestion Ox while protecting their anonymity. Even though you and they would converse about it, you wouldn’t know with whom you’re conversing.
As a result, with Suggestion Ox, you can receive honest and unbiased feedback as your people know their identity is protected and are more willing to share ideas.
Here’s a closer look at what Suggestion Ox offers:
- The most powerful way to collect 100% anonymous feedback and reply anonymously to employees.
- Delivery through several channels, such as shareable links and QR codes, or use Slack or MS Teams integrations, and your employees can post suggestions on both the web and their mobile devices.
- Case management capabilities that allow you to assign and track issues, from intake to investigation to resolution.
- AI assistant helps you write more thoughtful responses.
- Data and analytics dashboards to evaluate responses quickly, and more.
In short, with Suggestion Ox, employees feel empowered to share their ideas or suggestions without fearing ridicule, and they never feel like they’re just shouting in the void.
#2. Zonka Feedback
Best for: Anonymous survey collection
Zonka Feedback is primarily traditional survey software. The platform offers features to build surveys, distribute them through several channels, and collect feedback from customers or employees. Its tool covers various use cases, from product feedback, customer experience, and capturing leads to employee engagement.
For that last use case, the tool also offers the ability to turn privacy settings and ensure that feedback received through a particular survey is anonymous.
Granted, it is not as perfect solution as using a dedicated anonymous feedback software. But if you’re already running different surveys with Zonka and are also considering collecting anonymous feedback, this might be the option for you.
#3. Lattice
Best for: Managing all aspects of employee engagement and retention
Lattice is a large, all-in-one employee engagement platform with feature set spanning varius use cases: performance feedback, compensations, employee goals and OKRs, and more.
But Lattice also offers an Engagement module that allows organizations to collect anonymous employee feedback via:
- pulse surveys,
- onboarding or exit questionnaires,
- eNPS,
- custom surveys, and more.
Lattice also offers an AI module that helps companies analyze survey results quickly, and that also includes any open-ended feedback, identifies common trends and patterns, and even offers recommendations as to the best next actions to take.
#4. Incogneato
Best for: Collecting anonymous employee feedback
Like Suggestion OX, Incogneato is a dedicated anonymous feedback tool, allowing companies create an anonymous suggestion box and post anonymous replies.
(Worth to note – Incogneato offers the anonymous replies feature to users on higher plans only.)
When it comes to survey delivery, Incogneato offers a website widget only. This means that the tool more relevant to organizations that don’t need to reach employees through other channels like Slack or MS Teams.
Incogneato also doesn’t offer any AI capabilities to help managers proces the feedback faster and respond to feedback more thoughtfully.
#5. Jotform
Best for: Anonymous surveys
Jotform is robust survey software that allows you to create all types of feedback forms. As part of its feature set, the tool also offers the ability to anonymize forms and feedback. It’s an option that you’d need to turn on specifically for each form you’d like to make anonymous. That said, it is there, and it can turn your suggestion box or feedback form into an anonymous feedback solution for employees or customers.
#6. Feedbackify
Best for: Collecting anonymous website feedback and suggestions
What makes Feedbackify different from other anonymous feedback tools I mentioned in this guide is its strict focus on website feedback.
True, Feedbackify does allow you to collect feedback through anonymous surveys, but it only allows you to place them on your website. This makes it an ideal solution for collecting anonymous feedback from customers or website visitors. In turn, Feedbackify’s solution is perfect for when you want to know what customers think about your website, notify you of any potential problems with it, or gather ideas on how to improve it further.
#7. WorkTango
Best for: Managing all aspects of employee experience and retention.
WorkTango is another all-in-one platform helping companies manage employee experience, and boost engagement and retention. And, just like with other similar tools on my list, WorkTango also includes capabilities to collect anonymous employee feedback.
- Surveys: WorkTango allows you to create all kinds of surveys, and make them anonymous. Employees won’t have to provide their email address or sign up in any way to provide feedback.
- Two-way anonymous conversations: WorkTango also lets you respond to employees anonymously and continue the conversation while protecting their identify and anonymity at all times.
In addition, WorkTango provides various analytics tools to help you better understand your employee feedback, visualize open-text survey responses to identify themes easily, and more.
#8. Wrenly
Type: Anonymous feedback bot for Slack and MS Teams
An important thing to remember about Wrenly is that it is actually a plugin for MS Teams and Slack. It extends those tools with capabilities to collect anonymous employee feedback. But it does not let you run feedback forms outside of those two communication tools.
Therefore,Wrenly is the best option if you want to reach and engage employees on either MS Teams or Slack but don’t need to create web or mobile suggestion boxes.
Aside from that, Wrenly offers a comprehensive feature set that allows organizations to empower their employees to share feedback, ideas, and comments.
- With Wrenly, you can create HR suggestion boxes,
- You can analyze your teams’ feedback faster with AI,
- Run polls, surveys,
- Export data to other tools, and more.
But it’s worth noting that Wrenly doesn’t offer the option to respond to feedback anonymously or have two-way anonymous conversations with employees.
#9. Survicate
Best for: Running all types of surveys.
Most survey software focuses on helping you collect information from customers, employees, colleagues, research participants, you name it. Anonymity isn’t usually the first concern for those types of projects.
But Survicate is different. Well, it is a survey software, too. You can run all kinds of surveys with Survicate.
However, what makes Survicate different is that all its surveys are anonymous by default. I’m really impressed that you actually need to turn that feature off to recognize survey respondents in any way.
So, if you need to run a standard survey like NPS or CSAT but also need to ensure that it’s 100% anonymous, Survicate might be a great option to consider.
And there you have it…
Nine absolutely amazing anonymous feedback tools. Each of these tools serves a different use case, so sift through them all, check which ones match your objectives, and give them a try.
Good luck.
Oh, and if you’re looking to collect anonymous employee feedback, consider our tool, Suggestion Ox. We offer a 14-day trial, allowing you to fully experience our platform’s value. Sign up here.
Try it free and experience the benefits of employee feedback
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