Your guide to form and survey automation

Forms and surveys are incredibly versatile tools for gathering information, whether you're collecting customer feedback, managing event registrations, or capturing new leads. But if you have a large volume of responses, manually handling all those submissions can get overwhelming—fast. 

With automated workflows—we call them Zaps—you can put your survey responses to work with no manual effort. Imagine instantly adding new contacts to your email list, notifying your team in Slack, or creating tasks in your project management tool—all triggered by a single form submission. 

When you use automation, you can focus on building relationships and acting on the data, while Zapier handles the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Here's how.

Skip ahead

• Create a custom form or survey with Zapier

• Send automatic follow-up emails

• Save form and survey responses in a spreadsheet

• Create tasks from form and survey responses

• Add subscribers from forms and surveys

• Send chat notifications

• Add leads to form and survey tools

• Create advanced workflows with forms

Create a custom form or survey with Zapier

Nobody actually enjoys wrestling with form data. You spend ages setting up a form, then have to figure out where all that information goes and somehow get it to play nice with the rest of your tools. It's about as fun as doing your taxes.

That's where Zapier's Automation Platform comes in. Think of it as your data's personal assistant—one that actually knows what it's doing. You can quickly whip up forms with Zapier Interfaces that feed data straight into Zapier Tables. And because it's Zapier, your info automatically flows wherever you need it with Zaps—our automated workflows. 

Want those new customer details to land in your CRM? Done. Need to ping your team in Slack when someone fills out an urgent request? Easy peasy. No more copying and pasting between tools or setting up complicated workflows that break every other Tuesday. It's like having all the LEGO pieces snap together perfectly on the first try.

Get started with one of these pre-built templates:

Contact Us Form

Automate the way you handle incoming messages using a customizable contact form template.

Try it

Try it

Survey Template

Collect feedback quickly with automatic notifications.

Try it

Try it

AI Form Template

Streamline data collection with an AI-powered form.

Try it

Try it

Product Feedback Template

Efficiently gather, manage, and respond to customer feedback.

Try it

Try it

Send automatic follow-up emails

Sending a timely follow-up email after someone submits a form or survey is a great way to nurture relationships and keep the conversation going. Whether you're thanking them for their response, providing additional resources, or confirming receipt of their submission, automated follow-up emails help you stay engaged without manual outreach.

For example, after someone submits a registration form, you can automatically send them a confirmation email with event details or next steps. If you're collecting feedback through a survey, a follow-up email could thank respondents for their input and share how you'll use their feedback. Similarly, if you're gathering inquiries or leads, you can immediately acknowledge them to let them know you received their message and will be in touch soon.

No matter what form tool you use, you can use Zapier to automate follow-up emails. You'll save time and ensure no customers slip through the cracks, keeping your audience engaged and fostering stronger connections with every submission.

If you want to add a little more personalization and personality to your automated follow-up emails, consider adding an AI step to your workflows. These Zaps send form data to ChatGPT to prompt a follow-up email based on each form submission's context. Then, the Zap can either send the email or save it as a draft for final sign-off from a real person. Either way, you'll be able to send more personalized emails with minimal effort. 

Save form and survey responses in a spreadsheet

Organizing your form and survey responses in a spreadsheet is one of the easiest ways to track incoming data, analyze trends, and share insights with your team. By automatically saving responses to a spreadsheet, you can ensure all the information you collect is consistently logged in real time, reducing manual data entry and eliminating the risk of errors.

For instance, if you're running a customer satisfaction survey, you can automatically log each response in a spreadsheet to quickly identify trends, calculate averages, and pinpoint areas for improvement. If you're gathering leads through a form, saving each new entry in a spreadsheet allows you to filter, categorize, and prioritize follow-up actions. Similarly, if you're using forms to collect registrations or contact inquiries, having everything organized in a central spreadsheet makes it easy to track progress and manage next steps.

Here are a few Zaps to get you started:

Create tasks from form and survey responses

When you're collecting information in a form, it's hopefully because you plan to take action based on those responses. You don't want them rotting away in a folder somewhere. 

If you're using a form to collect customer service requests, automatically creating tasks in your project management tool means every request is promptly logged, assigned, and tracked until completion. Similarly, if you're collecting feedback through surveys, you can automatically generate tasks for follow-up actions like addressing concerns or investigating suggestions. Event registrations or volunteer sign-ups can also trigger task creation, allowing your team to stay organized as you prepare for an event.

Automatically turning form submissions into tasks saves time, reduces manual tracking, and ensures responses lead to meaningful actions. This process keeps your projects organized and ensures that your team remains responsive to essential tasks.

Of course, adding a new task to your productivity tool is only half the battle. If that task isn't given a deadline—or, more importantly, an owner—it risks falling through the cracks. A multi-step Zap can help you find and add essential fields to your new tasks, like:

• Finding the right assignee for the new task using a lookup table step

• Setting deadlines using a formatter step

• Doing advanced deadline calculations (like finding the next business day) using a Code by Zapier step

• Using a paths step to send form responses to different team's task lists based on the context

Add subscribers from forms and surveys

Forms and surveys are often excellent tools for growing your audience. Automatically adding contact information collected through forms to your email list or CRM ensures you don't miss any potential leads and saves time on manual data entry.

Suppose you're using a form to gather newsletter sign-ups or event registrations. In that case, you can automatically add those contacts to your email marketing platform so they're included in your next campaign. Similarly, if you're collecting feedback or interest through surveys, you can automatically add those respondents to your CRM, allowing you to segment your audience and send targeted follow-ups based on their responses.

With automation, you can focus on engaging with your audience, improving your communication strategy, and driving growth without worrying about manual data entry or missed leads.

Send chat notifications

Forms and surveys often collect critical information that requires immediate attention or team coordination. Automatically sending chat notifications based on new form submissions keeps your team in the loop without manual updates or constant checking.

If you're using a form to gather customer inquiries, feedback, or internal requests, you can automatically notify a Slack channel whenever a new response is received. This setup lets your team respond quickly to customer issues, delegate tasks, or track new leads in real time. Similarly, if you're collecting survey responses, automated Slack notifications can alert your team to new feedback, enabling prompt action and better collaboration.

Automating chat notifications reduces delays in responding to submissions, improves team communication, and ensures that critical updates are never missed. This approach helps create a more efficient and connected workflow, keeping your team informed and engaged.

Pro tip: If you want to avoid spamming your Slack channel, consider using a digest step to cut down on notifications. That way, your team will receive a list of all the day's (or week's) form submissions in one concise message.

Add leads to form and survey tools

Efficiently capturing leads is crucial for any business aiming to grow its customer base. Integrating lead generation tools with form tools can ensure you automatically log every new lead into your system, streamlining your lead management process.

For example, when you receive a new lead through a Google, LinkedIn, or Facebook Lead Gen form, Zapier can automatically submit the lead's information to a form in Gravity Forms, Wufoo, or another form tool. This setup is ideal for teams that use forms as a central hub for processing leads, standardizing all lead information regardless of the lead source. This setup allows seamless integration with existing workflows, such as routing leads to your CRM, assigning them to sales reps, or sending automated follow-up emails.

By automating lead capture, you ensure that every new lead is efficiently recorded in your system, allowing your team to focus on nurturing these leads rather than manually entering data. Here are a few Zaps to get you started.

Create advanced workflows with forms

Forms are great tools for collecting information—but they're not limited to simple use cases. Especially when paired with automation, you can use forms to set up more complex systems that streamline your data collection processes across departments and workflows.

For example, say a customer registers for a webinar using an embedded Typeform form on your website. From there, you might need to create a new entry in a separate form to track follow-up survey recipients. Or, if you use GoCanvas to collect and assign jobs, you could turn new customer inquiry forms into a dispatch for your team members.

Alternatively, maybe your team stores duplicate entries in a separate form for tracking or backup purposes. If you collect job applications in Cognito Forms, you might want a filtered copy of the applicants in another form so HR can review a simplified list. These Zaps let you connect your forms to each other for more advanced form-based automation.

Streamline your form and survey management with automation

And that's just the tip of the iceberg—you can build even more powerful automated systems by thinking big picture. For instance, here's a visualization (using Zapier Canvas) of how a hypothetical business might automate everything from follow-ups to task management and record-keeping, all with a form builder as the foundation.

Automating your form and survey workflows with Zapier can transform how you handle data and respond to submissions. Automatically linking your forms to your existing tools like Google Sheets, email platforms, and task management systems allows you to streamline processes, ensures you don't miss responses, and frees time for more valuable tasks. 

With Zapier, you can easily integrate your forms with the rest of your tech stack, allowing you to focus on what matters most: building relationships, improving workflows, and acting on valuable insights. Get started automating your form and survey tools.

This article was originally published in November 2024. It was most recently updated in March 2025 by Nicole Replogle.