Topics show what your customers are talking about in their survey comments. Each topic names a theme and has a sentiment: positive, negative or neutral.

Simplesat's AI reads each written comment and the question it answers. Ratings, stars and choice answers aren't analyzed.

The AI picks topics only from your topic list. The list holds the default topics that come with Simplesat and any custom topics you create.

One comment can get several topics. A comment like "Your agent fixed my problem quickly, but the price is too high" gets a positive topic for the fix and a negative one for the price.

Topics appear a few minutes after a response arrives. If a customer changes their answer, the AI reads the new comment and updates the topics.

Adding and removing topics on a response by hand works on every plan.

To show or hide a topic, turn its Visibility toggle on or off in Admin → Topics. You'll need the Manage topics permission. Owners and Admins have it.

A hidden topic doesn't appear on responses, in filters or in exports. Hiding deletes nothing: turn a topic back on and it returns to its responses. A default topic also appears on responses that arrived while it was hidden.

On Premium (formerly Elite) and above, you can create your own topics for themes the default topics don't cover.

The AI reads the description when it matches comments. Write one clear sentence on what the topic covers. For a topic called Timeliness, that might be Feedback on the promptness of service or response.

A custom topic only matches feedback that arrives after it's created and visible. To put it on older responses, add it yourself.

You can rename or edit a custom topic later on the same page.

A group lets you filter by several related topics at once with the Topic group filter. You might keep service topics in one group and product topics in another. A topic can be in more than one group.

You can rename or delete groups you create. Groups that come with Simplesat can't be renamed.

Owners, Admins and Managers can edit a response's topics. The Topics section in the response details color-codes each topic by sentiment.

To add a topic:

Only visible topics are offered.

To remove a topic, select the ✕ on it. To change a topic's sentiment, remove the topic and add it again with the right sentiment.

Every change is recorded in the response's Notes and events.

On the Feedback page, survey dashboards and custom dashboards, you can filter by Topic, Topic group, Topic sentiment or Topic + sentiment. To see only the negative feedback about one topic, use Topic + sentiment. Topics aren't available as a report filter yet.

Custom dashboards can also chart topics with the topic trends, topic frequency and topic leaderboard widgets.

Feedback exports include a Topic;Sentiment column with each response's visible topics.

If your plan has automatic detection, there's no setting to turn it off. Contact us if you'd like it disabled for your workspace.

You can keep some feedback out of analysis yourself. Run topic analysis is checked by default when you import a CSV. Uncheck it and the feedback is imported with no AI processing. Responses created through the API are only analyzed when the API request asks for it.

Usually the response has no written comment. If it does have one:

Check that its Visibility toggle is on in Admin → Topics. If it's a custom topic, it only matches feedback that arrived after it was created. Add it to older responses yourself.

Some plans limit how many topics can be visible at once. Hide a topic you don't use to make room, or contact us about the limit on your plan.

Remove it and add the right one. The correction applies to that one response. If a custom topic keeps matching the wrong comments, rewrite its description to say more clearly what the topic covers.

Yes. The AI reads only the written comment and the question it answers. A response with no comment gets no topics.

Yes, in any language. Default topics keep their English names whatever language the comment is in. Custom topics keep the names you gave them.

Yes. Remove the topic from the response and add it again with the sentiment you want.

No. Hide it instead. On Premium (formerly Elite) and above, you can also create a custom topic with the name you want.

A default topic appears on the older responses it matched because the AI kept analyzing it while it was hidden. A custom topic only matches feedback that arrives after it's created and visible. You can add it to older responses yourself.