BUTTERFLY • ADD-ON GUIDE Exit Surveys A hands-on guide for HR admins and survey managers: set up exit surveys, trigger them to departing employees, and read the reports. |
Contents
1. What Exit Surveys do
2. Getting to Exit Surveys
3. The Exit Survey list screen
4. Creating a new exit survey
4.1 Trigger & Disclaimer
4.2 Exit Reasons
4.3 Questions
4.4 Notifications
4.5 Languages
4.6 General
5. Managing an existing survey
6. Enabling, disabling, and deleting
7. Triggering a survey to exiting employees
8. Reading the report
9. Individual response view
10. Permissions & related settings
11. Tips & FAQ
1. What Exit Surveys do
Exit Surveys is a Butterfly add-on for collecting structured feedback from employees who are leaving the organization. You build a reusable survey template (questions, categories, trigger, translations), then trigger it against one or more departing employees. Butterfly sends the survey by email or SMS, tracks responses, and rolls everything up into a report with driver scores, a top-reasons breakdown, and per-respondent detail.
Three things to keep straight:
1. A survey template is a reusable definition — questions, categories, trigger copy, translations, notification rules.
2. A trigger is the act of sending a survey to one or more departing employees. You can trigger the same template many times.
3. A response is a single exit interview completed by a departing employee. Responses feed the aggregate report and the individual drawer.
| TIP Most orgs build one “standard” exit survey template and reuse it. You only need more than one template if different roles, regions, or languages genuinely need different questions. |
2. Getting to Exit Surveys
Exit Surveys lives under the UNDERSTAND area of the left navigation.
1. In the left-hand navigation, expand the UNDERSTAND section.
2. Click “Exit Survey”. This opens the Exit Survey list screen.
3. Direct URL: https://<your-org>.butterfly.ai/report/exit-surveys
| NOTE If you don’t see Exit Survey in the menu, your role is probably missing the “Exit survey → Report” permission. See section 10. |
3. The Exit Survey list screen
The list screen shows every exit survey template in your workspace. From here you create new surveys, open existing ones, and enable or disable them.
What’s on the screen
1. Page title: “Exit Surveys”. Primary button in the top right: “+ Create Exit Survey”.
2. Clicking a survey name opens its report (not the edit view). Use the Settings Cog to change questions or settings.
4. Creating a new exit survey
Clicking “+ Create Exit Survey” opens a 6-step wizard. You can move forward with “Next” and back with “Previous”.
| HEADS UP The wizard doesn’t auto-save drafts. If you need to pause, click through to the last step and Save — you can come back and edit. |
4.1 Trigger & Disclaimer
Step 1 defines how the survey is sent to the employee and what legal/privacy text they see before starting.
- Disclaimer — free-text area shown on the intro screen before the employee answers. Typically anonymity + data-use language but this is also a great area to add an intro message before the survey starts.
- Trigger Question — Butterfly will send a mood rating question to your employees capturing immediate sentiments. Choose From Butterfly Library or Custom Library
3. Click Next to advance to Exit Reasons.
| NOTE The disclaimer is shown exactly as written — have HR or Legal approve the wording before you publish. |
4.2 Exit Reasons
Step 2 is the list of structured reasons an employee can select for leaving. These drive the “Top exit reasons” chart in the report.
1. You start with a default list but can switch to the Custom Library if you’d like to make your own list
2. Click Next to advance to Questions.
| TIP Try to keep the list to 4-8 reasons. Too many and the chart becomes noisy; too few and you lose the “why” signal. |
| NOTE All questions selected require an answer before moving on to the next page unless the “Optional” check box has been selected |
4.3 Questions
Step 3 is where you build the actual survey body. Questions can be grouped into categories (“Drivers”), each scored 1–10 in the report.
1. Categories group related questions (e.g., Management, Compensation, Culture). Utilizing categories will give each its own driver score on the report.
2. Supported question types: Rating (1–10), Open text, Multiple choice, Yes/No. Rating + Open text is the most common combo.
3. Use the drag handle to reorder; pencil icon to edit the label; trash to delete.
4. Unless marked as “optional” an answer is required on each question before submission.
5. Click Next to advance to Notifications.
4.4 Notifications
Step 4 controls the message notification and reminders sent to employees who haven’t responded to the survey yet. The title and message are fully customizable.
1. Send reminders — pick Enabled or Disabled. The Next button stays disabled until you choose one, even if you don’t want reminders.
2. If Enabled, choose the time and the day that reminders are sent
3. Click Next to advance to Languages.
| HEADS UP Next won’t advance until you pick Enabled or Disabled on Send reminders — even if you don’t want reminders, click Disabled. |
4.5 Languages
Butterfly automatically translates all notifications and questions and question categories. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Support if the disclaimer page needs to be translated.
1. A tab per language shows the english version as well as the language it has been translated into.
2. Edit the right column if you would like to overwrite automatic translations. Changes will automatically save
3. Click Next to advance to General.
4.6 General
Step 6 is the last step: metadata about the survey template itself.
1. Name — a clear, internal-facing name, e.g., “Standard exit survey 2026” or “EMEA exit survey”.
2. Description — optional internal notes: who owns it, when it was last reviewed, what team it covers.
3. Click Save. The survey is created in Disabled state by default — enable it from the list screen when you’re ready to trigger it.
| NOTE Saving does NOT send the survey. You still have to trigger it against specific employees. See sections 6 and 7. |
5. Managing an existing survey
Edits work the same way as creation — you just re-open the wizard on the existing survey.
1. On the list screen, find the survey and click the cog to edit.
2. The 6-step wizard opens pre-filled with the current values. Use the stepper to jump straight to the step you need.
3. Changing a question or reason applies to NEW responses only. Past responses keep the original wording. THERE IS CURRENTLY TO WAY TO CHANGE QUESTIONS ON A SURVEY THAT HAS BEEN SENT
4. Click Save on the last step. Changes go live immediately for any new triggers.
6. Triggering a survey to exiting employees
Triggering is a separate action from creating. You trigger a specific enabled survey for one or more departing employees.
1. Click “View Report” on the list screen to view the survey you would like to send.
2. Click “Trigger exit survey” On the top right of the screen.
3. Employees — search or select. You can pick multiple. Termination and Hire date is pulled from the HRIS record if available.
4. Communication — review recipients and input the new communication channel (Since they have exited, you will need to supply a new phone number or email to deliver the survey to).
5. Send will allow you to choose how long the survey is open for before submitting and sending the exit survey
| TIP You can trigger the same template for different employees at different times — triggers are independent. |
7. Reading the report
Click “View Report” under the survey name on the list to open its report. The report has four main blocks: Summary, Driver scores, Top reasons, and Responses.
1. Summary — total sent, response rate, and average overall score across all responses.
2. Driver scores — one bar per category, scored 1–10. Click a bar to drill into that category’s responses only.
3. Top reasons — horizontal bar chart of the most-picked exit reasons. Useful for quick “why are people leaving” answers.
4. Responses tab — per-respondent list. Click a row to open the individual response drawer (section 9).
8. Individual response view
Clicking “View” in the Responses tab opens a right-side drawer with that person’s full survey answers.
9. Permissions & related settings
Exit Surveys is controlled by a single permission block: Exit survey → Report. Give or revoke it from the role editor.
1. Settings → Roles → open the role you want to change (e.g., HR Manager).
2. Scroll the permissions tree to “Exit survey.” Expand the chevron on the right of the row (clicking the label alone doesn’t expand it).
3. Toggle Report ON to grant access. That single toggle controls the menu item, the list, and the report.
4. Click Save at the top of the role editor. Changes apply next time the affected user refreshes.
| NOTE There’s no separate “Create” vs “Read” permission for Exit Survey. The Report toggle grants full access. |
— End of guide —