Priya Gill, Global Head of Marketing at SurveyMonkey shares best practices for modern marketers to optimize how they extract better feedback and customer value from online forms in this catch-up with MarTechSeries.com:

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Hi Priya, take us through your role in B2B SaaS and time at SurveyMonkey?

I bring over 15 years of experience across tech, engineering, and even culinary school—all of which shape how I lead a large, diverse marketing team. My engineering background taught me the value of process, structure, and data-driven decision-making, helping me keep the team focused on solving the right problems. Culinary school reinforced creativity and adaptability—traits that are critical in marketing today, where new ideas and creative risks can make all the difference.

As VP and Head of Global Marketing at SurveyMonkey, I lead a talented group of individuals aligned around a shared vision and dedicated to the company’s success. Marketing sits at a unique intersection: we understand shifting consumer perceptions, evolving content trends, and influencer culture, while also having insights into market dynamics, the competitive landscape, and our products. That combination gives us a real superpower—the ability to drive meaningful business impact and help the company flourish.

We’d love the brief lowdown on SurveyMonkey’s latest AI enhancements.

With our new AI Analysis Suite and design tools, we’re rethinking how teams interact with surveys and form data. Gone are the days of analyzing spreadsheets or manually filtering responses to find trends. Now, users can literally have a conversation with results, ask questions, identify themes, and get insights right away. And creating surveys has never been simpler—just paste in questions, and AI transforms them into a polished, structured survey almost instantly. It even generates on-brand themes automatically, so surveys look professional without any extra effort.

Our goal is to help users move from questions to answers to action quickly, while still trusting that the data is accurate, the surveys are smart, and the experience is intuitive. Whether it’s HR, marketing, CX, or another team, these tools make it easy to build the right survey, get meaningful insights, and take action. This is the combination of AI and decades of survey expertise in action, helping teams work smarter and make sense of their data faster and more confidently.

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How are top marketers using surveys and forms to better understand customer feedback today: some takeaways from their processes?

Surveys and forms give marketers something AI alone can’t: authentic, unfiltered feedback directly from their audiences. AI is a powerful tool—it can process data at scale, optimize campaigns, and even spark creative ideas—but it works best when paired with human intuition and empathy. That’s where direct customer or audience feedback comes in.

SurveyMonkey research shows that while marketers see AI as a game-changer, consumers remain cautious. Nearly half (45%) feel AI-generated content lacks authenticity, and 79% believe a human understands them better than AI ever could. By using surveys and forms, marketers can bridge that gap—validating AI-driven insights with real customer voices and ensuring their strategies reflect genuine needs and emotions.

The bottom line is that AI helps marketers move faster and work smarter, but surveys and forms keep them grounded in human insight. Together, they create campaigns that are not only efficient, but also authentic and resonant.

What do you see most marketers struggle with when trying to implement online forms and surveys to their marketing processes?

Based on what I see, the single biggest struggle for marketers isn’t just collecting feedback, but quickly turning it into a clear, actionable insight. They are often faced with data overload, especially from open-ended questions, and find it incredibly challenging to sift through hundreds or thousands of responses to find the meaningful themes. This “analysis paralysis” slows them down and creates a gap between gathering feedback and actually using it to make smarter, faster decisions.

Can you name a couple of brands who’ve got online survey protocols processes built out well?

A few examples come to mind that show how this works across different industries. An airline like Ryanair, for instance, surveys nearly half a million passengers a month to understand every stage of the journey and act on insights quickly. A company like Hornblower, with a diverse portfolio of cruises and tours, uses AI-powered features to centralize feedback and pinpoint areas for improvement. And a growing brand like Woom Bikes uses multilingual surveys to gather both customer and employee feedback globally, two critical functions for improving any organization.

The common key to success here is that each company has made listening a core part of its operations, systematically gathering feedback at every crucial step of the journey to drive meaningful action.

Some tips for marketing pros thinking of implementing use of surveys and forms to their daily processes before we wrap up?

My biggest tip for marketers bringing surveys and forms into their daily processes is to focus on making them intuitive for your team and your customers. Advanced features like AI and automation are fantastic, but they only add value if they feel natural, almost invisible. The real magic comes from staying close to users: test often, listen carefully, repeat, and refine—all with the user’s goal in mind. When every feature is designed around helping people achieve their goals quickly and easily, surveys and forms become a powerful tool users won’t want to do without.

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