customer visit questionnaire

22 Impactful Customer Service Survey Questions to Ask in 2024

When it comes to understanding your customers' perception of your brand, there is arguably nothing as powerful as a well-crafted customer service survey. Running these surveys regularly enables you to engage directly with your customers and gain insights into their experiences, which will then provide valuable data to assist in improving your products, services, and overall operations.

In this guide, we'll provide a list of questions you might want to include in your customer surveys and why, and we’ll share tips on best practices for requesting customer feedback. Additionally, you'll learn how to interpret and use those results to drive improvement and growth.

What are customer service surveys?

Customer service surveys are essentially check-ins with your customers. Imagine being able to conduct a one-on-one conversation with each customer — these surveys are a time-efficient way of doing that. They're designed to gather meaningful feedback on your customers' experiences with your service or product, often resulting in actionable data that you can put to work right away.

Integrating customer service surveys into your brand’s strategy can be a powerful gauge of customer needs and satisfaction. The insights gained help you make informed decisions, whether that’s enhancing your product, streamlining your service, or reshaping the customer journey. They're not just about collecting data; they're a way to show your customers that you're actively listening and willing to make changes that matter to them.

Understanding common customer service survey terms

If you’re new to customer service surveys, you're going to encounter a variety of terms. Let's explore some of these terms.

CES (customer effort score): This measures the effort your customers have to go through to do something, like getting an issue resolved or finding a product on your website. The easier, the better.

CSAT (customer satisfaction score): This is the go-to indicator of how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction or with your service overall. High CSAT scores are your aim here.

NPS (Net Promoter Score): This helps identify how many of your customers are fans (promoters) and how many are less enthused (detractors), calculated by asking how likely they are to recommend your product or service.

Dropout rate: This is the percentage of respondents who start but don't finish your survey. You want this to be low, so always strive for engaging and concise surveys.

Feasibility: This considers how practical your survey is. Can the questions be easily understood? Is the survey an appropriate length? Feasibility ensures your survey is as respondent-friendly as possible.

Explicit/implicit: Explicit feedback is direct — your customer specifically says what they liked or didn't like. Implicit feedback is read between the lines, derived from behavior or choices.

GIGO (garbage in, garbage out): Simply put, the quality of your survey's outcomes depends on the quality of what you put into it. This includes your survey design, question clarity, and answer options.

Incompletes: Surveys that aren’t finished fall into this category. Tracking and minimizing incompletes is crucial to maximizing the feedback you collect.

Margin of error/confidence interval: This statistical term represents the degree to which your survey results could differ from the overall population's feelings. Smaller margins of error indicate more confidence in your survey's representation of your customer base.

Population: This is the group you're ultimately interested in learning about. In the case of a customer service survey, your population is likely all your customers or a specific segment of them.

Psychographics: While demographics tell you who your customer is, psychographics tell you why they buy. This might include personal beliefs, values, and motivators.

Quantitative/qualitative: Quantitative data gives you the numbers like how many, how much, and how often. Qualitative data gives you the narrative — thoughts, stories, and reasons behind behaviors.

Response rate: This is the portion of people who completed your survey out of those who were asked. The higher the rate, the more solid the data you can glean from your survey.

Sample: This is the part of your customer population that’s selected to represent the whole in your survey. The key is to ensure that your sample matches the diversity of your entire customer base for accurate feedback.

Recommended Reading

How to Improve Customer Loyalty With Customer Effort Score

Why Customer Satisfaction is Important for Your Business

An Overview of NPS for Customer Service Teams

The benefits of conducting customer service surveys.

Understanding your customers' needs and experiences is like having a road map for your business's journey toward improvement and success. Conducting customer service surveys is a crucial step in gathering this essential feedback. Let's take a look at two key reasons why these surveys are so important and how they can provide valuable insights for product and process improvement.

Product and process improvement

Feedback is the cornerstone of growth for any business. It serves as a mirror, reflecting not only the strengths of your products or services but also areas that need enhancement. By actively seeking feedback through customer service surveys, you're telling your customers that their opinions matter, fostering a sense of value and loyalty. This process allows you to identify specific aspects of your product or service that customers are happy with and those that may require adjustments.

Moreover, in today’s fast-paced market, the ability to quickly adapt and refine your offerings based on customer feedback can set you apart from competitors. It encourages continuous improvement, ensuring that your product or service evolves in alignment with customer expectations and emerging trends. This proactive approach can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately contributing to your business's long-term success.

Valuable customer insights

Customer service surveys offer a direct line to your customers’ thoughts and feelings about their experiences with your company. They can uncover not just superficial reactions but deep insights into how your products or services are actually being used, perceived, and valued. These surveys can provide quantitative data that highlight trends and patterns as well as qualitative feedback that offers deeper understanding into customer sentiments.

Furthermore, the structured nature of surveys allows you to ask targeted questions that address specific areas of your business operations. This can range from product features and usability to customer support and overall satisfaction . By analyzing the responses, you can pinpoint exactly where your business excels and where there is room for improvement. This level of insight is invaluable in shaping decision-making processes and strategic planning.

22 customer service survey questions to ask

Customer survey questions can be categorized based on their purpose, the nature of the data they seek to collect, and the way they engage respondents. We recommend creating a customer service survey template for each type of feedback you need. Here’s a list of customer survey questions broken down into five types to help you get started.

Customer satisfaction survey questions

Customer satisfaction questions are used to measure how well a company's product or service meets, exceeds, or falls short of customer expectations. They offer direct insight into what's working well and what areas may require improvement. These questions can show the likelihood of repeat business, the potential for positive word-of-mouth promotion, and serve as early indicators of market trends.

By regularly assessing customer satisfaction using ratings and yes or no customer service survey questions, businesses maintain a customer-centric approach, which helps in building loyalty and long-term relationships. Additionally, this feedback can be used to benchmark performance over time or against competitors.

How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the product/service you received? (Scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being very unsatisfied and 10 being very satisfied.)

Considering your complete experience with our company, how likely are you to recommend our products or services to a friend or colleague? (NPS surverys run on a scale from 0 to 10.)

What did you like most about your experience with our product/service?

Was our product/service able to meet your needs effectively? (Yes/No; If no, please explain.)

What, if anything, would you change about our product/service to better meet your needs?

Product/service usage questions

Product/service usage questions enable you to understand how customers are actually interacting with your products or services. This makes it possible to identify which features are most popular and which may require more attention or improvement.

Understanding usage patterns also aids in product development and innovation, as real customer data can be used to prioritize which new features or changes might be most impactful.

How often do you use our product or service? (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Rarely)

Which features of our product/service do you use the most?

In what context or situation do you most commonly use our product/service?

Did you find our product/service user-friendly when you first started using it? (Yes/No; If no, what was difficult?)

Compared to our competitors, how do you rate our product in terms of usability? (Better, About the same, Worse; Please explain.)

Customer effort score (CES) questions

Customer effort score questions measure the ease with which customers can achieve their goals when interacting with your product or service. Lower effort typically indicates higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and repurchase intention.

CES feedback can be pivotal for streamlining processes, reducing customer pain points, and ensuring that the provided solutions are user-friendly. By focusing on reducing customer effort, you can not only enhance your customer service but also differentiate your company in a competitive market.

When you contacted us for support, how easy was it to interact with our customer support team? (Very difficult, Somewhat difficult, Neutral, Somewhat easy, Very easy)

After purchasing, how easy was it to set up and start using the product? (Very difficult, Somewhat difficult, Neutral, Somewhat easy, Very easy)

When you contacted us for support, did we resolve your issue promptly and with minimal effort on your part? (Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Neutral, Somewhat disagree, Strongly disagree)

Customer expectations and desires questions

Asking customers about their expectations and desires enables you to align product offerings with customer needs. You can use this feedback to refine your value proposition, ensuring that marketing and communication strategies set accurate customer expectations.

Understanding customer desires can also drive innovation and help prioritize the development of new features, services, or products. By keeping the customer's voice at the center of development, you can increase the likelihood of market acceptance and continued engagement.

Before purchasing our product/service, what was your top expectation, and did we meet it?

What additional features would you like to see in our product/service in the future?

How well does our product/service align with what was promised in our marketing or advertising? (Not at all, Somewhat, Very well; Please provide more detail.)

What other services or products do you wish our company offered?

Post-purchase feedback questions

Post-purchase feedback questions provide an understanding of the customer journey after the point of sale. This feedback is great for assessing the overall buying experience, identifying any roadblocks in the purchase process, and improving after-sales support.

Collecting post-purchase insights can also show the perceived value of the product or service, which enables you to maintain competitive pricing and offers. This feedback can also help you develop loyalty-building opportunities and effective customer retention strategies.

What motivated you to choose our product/service over our competitors?

How smooth was the purchasing process on our website or in our store? (Very difficult, Somewhat difficult, Neutral, Somewhat easy, Very easy)

If you experienced any issues with your product/service after purchase, were they addressed efficiently? (Yes/No; If no, please provide more detail.)

How satisfied are you with the after-sales support you received? (Very unsatisfied, Unsatisfied, Neutral, Satisfied, Very satisfied)

Did you find our product/service to be a good value for your money? (Yes/No; If no, why not?)

Best practices for requesting customer feedback

Knowing what to ask is only part of the customer survey equation. Here are some best practices and strategies for developing a beneficial customer service survey process.

Choose the right time to ask

Timing can be everything. Reach out for feedback when the experience is fresh in the customer's mind, whether it's immediately after a purchase, after an interaction with customer service, or at the end of a significant project. This ensures that the feedback is both reflective of the customer’s true experience and includes details that can guide improvements.

Customer service tools like Help Scout’s microsurveys are a great way to gather customer insights without being intrusive. This tool lets you reach out for feedback at specific points in the customer journey, which means you can gather feedback while the customer’s experience is top of mind.

Keep it simple

The key to getting customers to respond is making it as easy as possible for them. Long surveys can be overwhelming, so keep questions clear, concise, and relevant. It’s about striking the right balance between getting the information you need and respecting the customer’s time and effort.

Be specific with your questions

Vague questions lead to vague answers. Instead of asking if they're happy with your service, pinpoint aspects you want feedback on, like the checkout process, product range, or customer support.

Follow up on feedback

Customers who take the time to provide feedback are engaged in your brand, and they’ll appreciate knowing that their voice is heard. A simple acknowledgment can go a long way toward fostering trust with your customer base.

How to use survey results

Gathering feedback from your customers is like striking gold, but striking gold is only the first step. Whether through direct changes based on CSAT feedback, strategic shifts informed by report trends, or internal education spurred by documentation insights, each step you take based on feedback is a step toward a more customer-centric business model.

Here’s how you can apply customer feedback effectively.

Identify patterns and trends: Look beyond individual comments and identify recurring themes or concerns. These patterns can highlight areas in need of improvement or potential opportunities you might not have considered.

Prioritize action based on feedback: Not all feedback will require immediate action, but some might highlight critical issues. Use customer feedback to prioritize changes that will have the most significant impact on customer satisfaction and business success.

Share insights across teams: Feedback shouldn't be siloed within the customer service team. Sharing customer insights across departments ensures that everyone understands customer needs and how they can contribute to meeting those needs.

Track changes and outcomes: After implementing changes based on feedback, track the outcomes. This will help you understand the impact of your actions and guide future decisions.

There are several Help Scout reporting features that make the process of deciphering customer feedback a whole lot easier.

Happiness report: This report can give you a high-level view of customer satisfaction over time. Use it to identify trends in satisfaction and correlate them with specific actions or changes within your business.

Microsurvey reports: Microsurveys can yield specific insights into various aspects of your customer experience. Analyzing the results can help you understand customer sentiment on new features, customer service interactions, and more. Pay attention to changes in responses after implementing new processes or updates.

Docs article reports: If you use customer self-service options like a knowledge base , understanding which articles are helping (or confusing) your customers can be incredibly valuable. These reports can inform you which areas of your product or service need clearer documentation or highlight topics that may require more in-depth customer education.

Leveraging customer service surveys for growth

For customer service and marketing teams, few things are as precious as the voice of your customers. CSAT surveys, microsurveys, and feedback reports all play crucial roles in this process.

Help Scout's customer feedback tools are designed to seamlessly integrate into your interactions, be it via email, chat, or docs . While you create remarkable experiences for your customers, these tools work silently in the background, gathering valuable insights without interrupting the customer journey. 

Whether it’s the simplicity and directness of CSAT surveys, the timeliness of microsurveys, or the impactful insights from different reports, Help Scout's functionalities are designed to help you understand your customers better.

Sign up for a free trial of Help Scout today, and start having better conversations with your customers.

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Jacinda santora.

Jacinda Santora combines marketing psychology, strategy development, and strategy execution to deliver customer-centric, data-driven solutions for brand growth. Connect with her on LinkedIn .

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24 powerful customer satisfaction survey questions (+ templates)

Customer feedback surveys are important because they give you an insight into what your customers are thinking and feeling. This information can help you make decisions about your product, your customer service, and your overall business strategy. Customer satisfaction surveys (CSAT) are an important way to measure how your customers feel about their experience with your company.

Creating customer satisfaction surveys is reasonably straightforward, but you have to make sure you’re asking the right questions. If you ask too many questions, customers won’t fill out the whole survey. Ask the wrong questions, and they won’t tell you what’s really happening with your business.

To help you create a survey that will get you the high-quality customer feedback you need, we’ve put together a list of more than 20 customer satisfaction survey questions. We’ve also included some example CSAT survey templates you can use to measure customer satisfaction and get started today.

Why customer satisfaction surveys are important

Customer satisfaction surveys help you to understand your customer’s needs and wants. They also allow you to track customer satisfaction over time, so you can see if your company is making improvements. Additionally, customer satisfaction surveys can help you identify areas where your company needs to make changes.

This is important, because customer satisfaction data shows that satisfied customers are more likely to be repeat customers and continue doing business with you. They’re also more likely to refer new customers by telling their friends and family about your company. On the other hand, dissatisfied customers are more likely to take their business elsewhere.

We’ve written a “What Is CSAT?” guide that explains the customer satisfaction survey format in more detail.

What makes a good customer satisfaction survey question?

The questions you ask in your survey can make a big difference in the quality of the data you collect. There are a few things to keep in mind when you’re creating customer survey questions:

Make sure the questions are relevant to your business

You want to ask questions that will help you understand your customer’s experience and how you can improve it. For example, “How easy is it to find the customer service number on our website?” is a relevant question for a company that offers customer service.

Keep the questions short and simple

The survey should be quick and easy for customers to fill out. Customers are more likely to answer short, simple questions than long, complicated ones. So avoid long, complicated questions. For example, “How would you rate the customer service you received on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best?” is a simple question that can be easily answered.

Aim to make questions specific

Vague questions won’t give you the specific data you need to improve your customer’s experience. For example, “How was your customer service experience?” is too vague. A better question would be, “How satisfied are you with the customer service you received?”

Avoid asking leading questions

Leading questions are those that suggest a particular answer. For example, “Was our customer service friendly?” is a leading question because it suggests that the customer service was friendly. Leading questions can bias your results.

Make sure that questions are clear

Ambiguous questions can be confusing for customers and lead to inaccurate answers. For example, “How do you feel about our customer service?” is an ambiguous question. A better question would be, “How satisfied are you with the customer service you received?”

Now that you know what to keep in mind when creating your survey questions, let’s take a look at some customer feedback survey sample questions you can use to measure customer satisfaction.

20+ customer satisfaction survey questions to get better feedback

CSAT surveys can unlock valuable insights for companies that use them, but if you’re not asking the right questions, you won’t get the accurate data you need to make better decisions. Or, as we like to say, “The quality of the data is only as good as the quality of the questions.”

It’s important to remember that sharing good feedback is hard. Customers rarely enjoy filling out surveys, so it’s your job to make sure that questions are clear, concise, and relevant.

Writer’s block is common when it comes to customer satisfaction surveys, so we’ve compiled a list of consumer satisfaction survey questions that you can use as a starting point.

Questions to understand the experience

Understanding how people experience your product or service is key to understanding customer satisfaction. By asking these types of questions, you can identify areas where your customer experience could be improved. This can also help you better meet your customer’s needs.

• 1. How satisfied are you with the quality of the product/service?
• 2. Did our product/service meet your expectations?
• 3. How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or family member?
• 4. How satisfied are you with the speed of our product/service?
• 5. How satisfied are you with the price of our product/service?

Questions about specific touchpoints

These questions can help you understand how your customer feels about specific touchpoints in their customer journey. By asking these types of questions, you can identify moments of delight, points of friction, and customer pain points.

• 1. How easy was it to find what you were looking for?
• 2. How easy was it to purchase the product/service you were looking for?
• 3. Did you experience any issues when using our product/service?
• 4. What was your overall impression of our product/service?
• 5. What was the most memorable part of your experience?

Questions about customer demographics

By understanding your customer’s demographics, you can tailor the customer experience to better meet their needs. These types of questions can also help you segment your customer base and target your marketing efforts.

• 1. What is your age?
• 2. What is your gender identity?
• 3. Where do you live?
• 4. What is your approximate annual income?
• 5. What is your employment status?
• 6. What is the highest level of education you have completed?
• 7. Do you have children under the age of 18?
• 8. What is your marital status?
• 9. What is your primary language?

Questions about personal preferences, behaviour and desires

While demographic data can help you understand your customer base, it’s also important to understand how they behave and what motivates them. Taking psychographic information into account, like personal beliefs and values, allows you to develop experiences that people will remember.

• 1. What is the most important thing to you in a product/service?
• 2. What type of product/service do you usually purchase?
• 3. What would motivate you to purchase our product/service again?
• 4. What is your favourite thing about (the industry related to your product/service)?
• 5. Is there anything you don’t like about (the industry related to your product/service)?

Customer satisfaction survey templates

Now that you know what customer satisfaction questions to ask, it’s time to put together your survey. To make things easier, we’ve created some customer satisfaction survey examples and templates that you can use as a starting point.

Basic CSAT survey template

This basic customer satisfaction survey template can be used to collect feedback about any type of product or service. Choose this customer satisfaction questionnaire template if you need a great starting point for creating your own customer satisfaction survey.

Get template

Retail survey template

This CSAT template is designed specifically for retail businesses. It covers all the key areas that are important to customers when they’re shopping, such as customer service, product selection, and value.

Restaurant survey template

This template is designed specifically for restaurants and the food service industry. It covers all the key areas that are important to customers when they’re dining out, such as food quality, service, and value.

Hotel survey template

This guest survey template is designed specifically for hotels. It covers all the key areas that are important to customers when they’re staying at a hotel, such as cleanliness, comfort, and value.

Banking survey template

This customer satisfaction survey is designed specifically for banks. It covers all the key areas that are important to customers when they’re banking, such as customer service, fees, and accessibility.

Event survey template

This CSAT template is designed specifically for events. It covers all the key areas that are important to customers when they’re attending an event, such as the venue, food, and entertainment.

Spa/Salon survey template

This CSAT survey template is designed specifically for spas and salons. It covers all the key areas that are important to customers when they’re getting a spa or salon treatment, such as customer service, cleanliness, and value.

Barbershop survey template

This customer satisfaction survey is designed specifically for barbershops. It covers all the key areas that are important to customers when they’re getting a haircut, such as customer service, quality of the haircut, and value.

Client satisfaction survey template

For client satisfaction survey examples specifically designed for businesses that work with clients, check out this template. It covers all the key areas that are important to clients, such as customer service, quality of work, and value.

IT help desk survey template

This questionnaire covers the essential IT help desk customer satisfaction survey questions. IT department customer satisfaction survey questions can be very specific, so it’s a great starting point for creating your own customer satisfaction survey for an IT help desk or support team.

We add new customer satisfaction survey samples every week. Sign up to get alerts whenever new a customer satisfaction survey form sample is added.

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Remember, the survey is just the start. Once you’ve collected customer feedback, it’s important to take action on the results. Use customer satisfaction survey results to improve the customer experience, increase customer loyalty , and boost your bottom line.

How do you write a customer feedback survey?

Follow these four principles to write a good customer feedback survey.

• Keep it short: customer surveys should be short and to the point.
• Ask the right questions: make sure you’re asking questions that will actually give you useful insights into customer satisfaction.
• Make it easy to respond: make sure the survey is easy to complete, with clear instructions and obvious answers.
• Follow up: once you’ve collected customer feedback, make sure you take action on the results.

What are some good customer satisfaction survey questions?

The best customer satisfaction survey question is usually the most obvious - “How satisfied are you with our product/service?” - allow customers to answer this using a rating scale, then follow-up with additional questions that allow them to tell you greater details using their own words.

How effective are customer satisfaction surveys?

Customer satisfaction surveys are a powerful way to collect customer feedback. The insights that you gain from a good customer experience survey/questionnaire can help you improve customer satisfaction, increase customer loyalty, and boost your bottom line.

Why are surveys good for customer satisfaction?

Surveys alone aren’t going to magically improve customer satisfaction. But they are a powerful tool that, when used correctly, can give you valuable insights into your customer’s needs and wants.

Using surveys as part of your customer success and marketing strategy will enable you to make data-driven decisions that will improve customer satisfaction

How often should you send customer satisfaction surveys?

How often you should survey customers will depend on your business and customer needs. If you’re just starting out, you may want to send a survey after each customer interaction. As you get more data, you may want to send surveys less frequently.

A good rule of thumb is to send a customer satisfaction survey at least once a quarter, or after any major customer service interaction.

How do you create a customer satisfaction survey?

Creating a customer satisfaction survey is easy with a dedicated feedback platform, such as TRACX . The benefits of using an all-in-one tool are that it’s easy to create beautiful surveys that are optimised for customer engagement, and you can easily track and analyse customer feedback over time.

What are the types of survey questions?

Most survey questions will fall under one of three main categories:

• Open-ended questions - These are questions that allow the customer to answer in their own words. They’re great for understanding customer sentiment, but can be difficult to analyse.
• Closed questions - These are questions that can be answered with a yes/no or multiple choice answer. They’re easier to analyse, but may not give you as much detail as open-ended questions.
• Likert and Rating scale questions - These are questions that ask the customer to answer on a scale, such as “Very Satisfied” to “Very Unsatisfied”. They’re easy to analyse and a good way to segment customer feedback quickly.

Read more about the different types of survey questions .

Does customer satisfaction impact your Net Promoter Score?

Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty metric that measures how likely your customers are to recommend your product or service to others. It’s calculated using a special survey, called an NPS survey.

Customer satisfaction is just one of the factors that can impact your Net Promoter Score. Other factors can include customer engagement, customer effort, and customer retention.

Does customer effort impact your Customer Satisfaction Score?

Yes, your customer effort score can have a big impact on customer satisfaction. In fact, customer effort can be as good as NPS when it comes to predicting customer loyalty.

How do you improve customer satisfaction?

There are many ways to improve customer satisfaction. One of the easiest ways to start is simply by asking for feedback on a regular basis, and making sure that you act on it.

How do you guage customer satisfaction?

A good way to gauge customer satisfaction is through the use of CSAT surveys. To learn more about what CSAT means, we recommend starting with our “What is CSAT” guide .

Co-founder, TRACX

Tom is the co-founder of TRACX, a no-code marketing platform that allows local business owners to collect customer feedback and create engaging marketing campaigns. With over 17 years of experience in entrepreneurship, product development, and marketing for businesses large and small, Tom is currently responsible for developing product and marketing strategies for TRACX.

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Customer Satisfaction

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys
• What are customer satisfaction surveys?
• Why use customer satisfaction surveys

How do I measure customer satisfaction?

Types of customer experience surveys, types of customer satisfaction survey questions, additional questions to ask in your customer satisfaction survey, customer satisfaction survey design best practices, linking customer satisfaction surveys to your customer journey, how to turn your customer feedback into action, customer satisfaction survey templates, see how xm for customer frontlines works, customer satisfaction (csat) surveys: questions & template.

21 min read Consumers expect an exceptional experience with your company, and unfortunately, people talk about bad customer experiences more than they’ll brag about good ones. Read on to learn why satisfaction data is valuable information, and how to optimize your customer satisfaction surveys for useful insights.

What is customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey?

A customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey is used to determine a CSAT score by asking customers the question ‘How satisfied are you with [organization]? Answers range from 1-5 with 5 being “highly satisfied” and 1 being “highly unsatisfied”.

They are used to understand your customer’s satisfaction levels with your organization’s products, services, or experiences. This is one type of customer experience survey and can be used to gauge customers’ needs, understand problems with your products and/or services, or segment customers by their score. They often use rating scales to measure changes over time, and gain a deeper understanding of whether or not you’re meeting the customer’s expectations.

Get started with our free customer satisfaction survey template

Why use customer satisfaction surveys?

Customer satisfaction is at the core of human experience, reflecting customers’ liking of a company’s business activities. A customer satisfaction survey is a great way to understand how your customer feels about your business and their customer journey, and to nail down exactly what new customers might like about your offering.

There are several reasons why measuring your audience’s views with a customer satisfaction survey can be beneficial to your brand.

Customers will leave if they don’t feel like their experience was worth it

Our recent 2022 Global Consumer Trends Report found that 62% of customers think brands need to care about them more. With 9.5% of your revenue at risk from customers walking after a bad experience, knowing how your customers feel is financially beneficial. Gathering feedback via a customer satisfaction survey means you can figure out how to care for customers – and to monitor changes in customer sentiment before small issues become real problems.

A satisfying customer experience is worth the money for your target audience

Our research also found that 60% of consumers would buy more if businesses treated them better . Measuring which interactions and experiences your customers value will help you to judge what they will pay more for.

Satisfied customers will spread the word

Americans will mention a positive experience to an average of nine people and a negative experience to an average of 16 . This can have a knock-on effect for your brand reputation. According to Nielsen , 84% of consumers they surveyed thought word-of-mouth was the most trustworthy recommendation type. With every experience potentially attracting or pushing away future customers that hear of you this way, it’s vital to monitor how your customers feel with a customer satisfaction survey.

Satisfaction is a great indicator of retention, loyalty, and likelihood to repurchase

High levels of satisfaction (with pleasurable experiences) are strong predictors of customer and client retention and product repurchase. Customer satisfaction data that answers why loyal customers or clients enjoyed their experience helps the company recreate these experiences in the future. Effective businesses focus on creating and reinforcing world-class experiences so that they retain existing customers and add new customers.

A well-timed customer satisfaction survey can help you hone your customer journey

Mapping your customer journey is an important step of understanding your customers’ interactions with your brand – and for building out your customer lifecycle. However, it’s not enough to just create your journey map. You need to know how your customers feel at each stage of their experience with your brand, from the first interaction to getting in touch with customer service representatives, to making a purchase. A customer satisfaction survey can put your finger on the pulse of customer sentiment and give you a great sense of where your journey needs updating maximum efficacy.

To understand how satisfied your customers are, you need to understand the key drivers behind their experiences. The best way of discovering not only how your customers feel, but what has caused them to feel the way they do is by creating customer satisfaction surveys.

However, customer satisfaction feedback can be nebulous. Giving your customers a framework for their feedback – such as likelihood to recommend with a scale of 0 – 10 – can help you contrast and compare answers over time, as well as develop insights and action across multiple relationships.

Choosing the type of customer satisfaction survey you wish to create will help you to develop a metric for measuring – and improving – your customer satisfaction.

There are a few ways you can measure customer experience through customer or client satisfaction surveys. The first question you need to answer is what metrics you want to use.

The most commonly used metrics are:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) ® – Probably the most popular measure of customer affinity towards your company. Created and trademarked by Bain & Company, the net promoter system involves a quick survey that typically asks “How likely are you to recommend [company name] to a friend” with a Likert scale question from 0-10
• Customer Effort Score (CES)   – This metric measures how hard it was for a customer to be able to complete the task that prompted their interaction. This survey question could look like, “How easy was it to deal with our company today?” This survey and measurement system can be useful for post-interaction surveys with customer service or support teams
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) – This is a commonly used measure for product and services to rate how happy consumers are with what they purchased. The typical survey question to collect this feedback looks like, “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the [goods/service] you received?” then offers a Likert scale question type between 1-5 with 5 being “highly satisfied” and 1 being “highly unsatisfied”

In this article, we will be focusing on customer satisfaction surveys (CSAT).

When building your customer satisfaction survey questions, the type of question you choose to ask can make a big difference to the insights you receive and your ability to improve the experience.

Here are the types and some sample customer satisfaction (CSAT) questions to help you decide which will get you the answers you’re looking for.

Likert scale questions

A Likert Scale question provides customers with options for their response from one extreme to another (i.e. satisfied to unsatisfied), with or without a neutral response.

For example, a five-point Likert scale question might look like this:

How satisfied are you with our service?

• Very satisfied
• Moderately satisfied
• Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
• Moderately dissatisfied
• Very dissatisfied

An even Likert scale question removes the middle response to provide a binary choice.

These types of customer satisfaction survey questions are simple to understand and answer, and will provide you with quantifiable customer satisfaction data.

However, the real attitude of your customers can’t usually be deduced by just this type of question alone. Customers might have specific drivers that aren’t highlighted by this question, or they might feel reluctant to choose an “extreme” option, even if it is true for their experience.

Binary questions

Binary questions provide you with the quickest response to any feedback survey question. By asking a simple yes/no question (or its equivalent), you can get the general sense of whether customers’ needs have been met.

For example, you could ask:

Were you satisfied with your experience with us?

[Smiley face/Unhappy face]

Did you find what you were looking for today?

Again, this does not provide you with the full context of their answer.

Multiple choice questions

Multiple choice questions can enable you to find out more about customers and their experiences.

Which of our services was most useful for you today?

[Service A] [Service B] [Service C]

This type of question can be more leading for your customers, as you are providing the text answers for them to choose from. However, it can offer you more insight than a simple binary or Likert scale question.

Open-ended questions

This type of question allows your customer to provide a description in their own words of how satisfied they are with your products or services.

What could we have improved on today?

[Open text box]

Open-ended questions can give you a much more specific insight into a particular customer’s problems or highlights. However, they are also higher effort for your customers – which may put them off responding.

Get started with our free Customer Satisfaction Survey template

Adding additional questions can help you sort through and take action on your customer feedback — just remember that shorter is generally better when it comes to survey completion rate.

Usage frequency

Edit the usage frequency options below so that they are relevant to your industry or product. This helps you understand the user’s skill level with your product/service.

• Once a Month
• Every 2-3 Months
• 2-3 Times a Month

Product and usage survey questions

Product and usage survey questions can give you greater insight into how your customer base uses your products and services. Not only that, but you can learn more about how they feel about them as well. This can help inform not only how you approach customers, but also with your product development efforts. Incorporating customer feedback about your products, you know how to better meet their needs and improve their experience.

Product and usage survey questions you could ask include:

• How often do you use our products/services?
• Which key features of our products/our services are the most useful?
• How easy do you find our products/our services to use?
• Do our products/services provide value for money?
• Are there any features that you would like to see in our products/services?
• What problem are you trying to solve by using our products/our services?

Demographic Questions

Demographic questions can be helpful in understanding what audiences or customer segments you are excelling with or under serving. We recommend getting as much of this data from your customer database or CRM, instead of asking for it in a survey whenever possible. Below are some potential demographic questions you can add to your customer satisfaction survey.

• Employment Status
• Household Income
• Marital Status
• Children/dependents
• Location (zip code)
• Ethnic background

Psychographic survey questions

Unlike demographic survey questions, psychographic survey questions are more focused on psychological criteria. These questions can cover activities, interests and opinions, giving you a fuller picture of your customer profile. These questions can be open-ended, binary or multiple choice.

Psychographic questions might cover:

• Attitudes toward a certain product or service
• Religious beliefs
• Political affiliations
• Likes and dislikes towards certain topics
• Personal reasons behind purchases

Satisfaction category questions

This type of question helps you identify satisfaction key drivers and highlight the areas of a customer’s experience that are important, allowing you to align product and service priorities. Below are potential categories of drivers.

• Overall Quality
• Purchase Experience
• Installation/Onboarding
• Warranty/Repair Experience

Open text feedback question

This question allows customers to provide unsolicited open-text feedback and their response to your customer satisfaction survey and mention specific topics or experiences for your team to review.

Action/ follow-up questions

This is a simple question asking if it’s okay if a member of the team reaches out to the respondent to try and understand and resolve any pain points.

Properly constructed customer satisfaction surveys and questionnaires provide the insights that are the foundation for benchmarking customer happiness. Depending on what customer metrics you intend to use, it will determine what type of survey questions you need to ask your customers. Below are a few best practices:

• Ask for overall company rating first – This satisfaction survey question gives you great initial insight and allows you to compare to industry and internal benchmarks over time.
• Allow for open text feedback – Open text questions allow you to collect open-ended responses from your respondents. You can gain more detail about your customer’s experiences and you might uncover new insights you didn’t expect.
• Optimize for mobile – Many consumers are now completing surveys on mobile devices or within mobile apps, so your survey must be optimized for mobile devices . If it is too complicated for a mobile respondent, survey participation will decrease.
• Ask double-barrel questions – These questions touch on more than one issue, but only allow for one response. They are confusing for the respondent, and you’ll get skewed data because you don’t know which question the respondent is answering.
• Make the survey too long – The majority of CSAT surveys should be less than 10 questions. People won’t finish long surveys.
• Use internal or industry jargon- Your customers must be able to clearly understand each question without hesitation and using internal or industry jargon is confusing to respondents.

Asking your customers about their experiences at any time might seem useful, but ideally you will link your customer satisfaction survey to specific points in the customer journey. Proper timing of customer satisfaction surveys depends on the type of product or service provided, the type and number of customers served, the longevity and frequency of customer/supplier interactions, and the intended use of the results.

Nevertheless, timing when to send a customer satisfaction survey is extremely important no matter the circumstances.

Best practices include:

• Asking for responses shortly after the customer journey touchpoint has occurred: The experience should be fresh in your respondent’s mind so you get the most honest answers and gain insights that are accurate.
• Use multiple channels to give customers options they’ll prefer: You can solicit feedback face-to-face when they leave your store, email, online survey, phone, or within your mobile app.
• Avoid survey fatigue: Don’t quiz the same customers again and again throughout all the points of their journey – figure out when delivering a survey will give you the most useful insights.
• Take action once you have customer satisfaction data: There’s no use learning that part of your journey puts off your customers and then leaving the problem to fester. Take action to make changes once you know what experiences make customers feel less satisfied.

Delivering customer satisfaction surveys at the right points in the journey

Let’s look at an example of a customer journey from the airline industry. A customer satisfaction survey can be sent at every touchpoint in the process.

• After the customer books their flight – Feedback after the initial purchase is important because you want to understand if the person was satisfied with their checkout or purchase experience. Send an email with a link to an online survey after the customer purchases their flight to find out how satisfied they were with the booking process. Consumers want easy transactions, so look for ease-of-use in your data.
• After the actual flight – Post-purchase evaluations reflect the satisfaction of the individual customer at the time of product or service delivery (or shortly thereafter). This can be a transactional NPS or customer satisfaction survey and sent by email.
• After a customer service encounter- If the customer initiates contact with a customer service representative, a customer effort score (CES) survey should be sent immediately after the issue was resolved. For airlines, this could be a call to change a flight date or report lost baggage. The goal is to see how much effort it took to resolve the issue.
• Six months after the flight – To measure the long-term customer loyalty, relational NPS or CSAT surveys can be sent months after the transaction occurred to see if your customers are still loyal to your brand.
• In-app mobile feedback – You can request customer feedback on the mobile app or customer experience through a feedback tab in the app. Getting mobile app feedback is important — only your customers can tell you what will make them more satisfied with their experience.

Measuring customer satisfaction is important but what you do with the data is essential. If your customers take the time to fill out a survey, it’s important they know you’re serious about improving their experience.

• Close the loop – Respond quickly after receiving negative feedback from your customers. This is a chance to keep your customer loyal. 70 percent of consumers said they would be more likely to do business with an organization again if their complaint was handled well the first time.
• Analyze for trends – Understand what metrics you’re looking to improve and see if there are patterns on these specific items. For instance, if 30 percent of respondents say the customer service wait time was too long, you know you need to improve in that area.
• Company-wide effort- Every department must be on board to keep the customer satisfied. If customers complain about a product feature, the product department must be willing to receive the data and fix it. If customers complain about the service, customer service representatives need to understand how to fix the issues more effectively. Make sure the right people have the right visibility with role-based CX dashboards and analytics .

Do you want to go deeper into customer insights and create loyal and satisfied customers?

Though looking at customer satisfaction survey examples is helpful, we’ve gone one step further to create a customer satisfaction survey template to get you started.

Our prebuilt customer satisfaction survey template can be used in your customer experience management (CXM) to start properly measuring customer satisfaction. Keep in mind, all of these customer satisfaction surveys can be used today when you sign up for a FREE Qualtrics account .

Other Customer Feedback Resources:

• Customer Feedback – What to Collect and When
• Omni Channel Customer Feedback
• How to increase survey response rates

Related resources

Measuring customer satisfaction 22 min read, what is csat 8 min read, customer delight 18 min read, improving customer satisfaction 11 min read, customer satisfaction 16 min read.

Customer Journey

Customer Interactions 11 min read

Customer Service

Customer Service Experience 13 min read

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How to Conduct the Perfect Customer Visit

By Natsha Ness

Customers are the lifeblood of any organization. Whether you have the ability to meet with them face-to-face, or are required to so over Zoom due to our ever-changing reality, customer visits require intentionality. They also provide a golden opportunity to make your customers the North Star they should be – and improve literally everything about your organization as a result. Why a Customer Visit is Worth Its Weight … in Actual Gold

How do we know a customer visit is critical to success? In 2019, we conducted research into sales and marketing alignment, in partnership with DRIFT . In it, we found a significant correlation between the most aligned sales and marketing teams (which were also the most revenue-generating teams) and their focus, not only around customers-centric metrics, but also regular visits with customers.

Planning Customer Visits is Key

Sometimes customer visits are inexpensive (like when they happen on Zoom ). Still, just because you’re  remote doesn’t mean the interaction has to feel inexpensive. In fact, you can still invest in the same sorts of things you did on-site. Think about buying lunch with an UberEats code. Or sending your customers a box with a bunch of goodies for the meeting. In other words, think about how you can make the “visit” an experience.

If someone falls into your target account list, and is likely to have a strong lifetime value in your business, they’re worth visiting. But you have to first make sure there’s mutual agreement around the desired outcome of such a meeting. In other words, why are you getting together?

There could be plenty of possibilities, but three main reasons almost always necessitate a customer visit:

• You’re close to creating a proposal. If you’re about to put together a proposal, a customer visit will help you achieve the tight alignment you need to make sure what you’re offering is a good fit with what the customer needs. This will likely come after multiple discovery calls and deep dives. You’ve figured out which challenge you want to solve, and have had conversations with various people that lead you to believe it’s time to create an official proposal.
• You recently created a proposal. (My recommendation is to make the customer visit happen before the creation of the proposal, but it’s better to go after than not at all).
• Upsell. An often underutilized function of customer visits are to the folks who already invested with you, but of course, this can be leveraged to further the relationship and ensure it stays. It can also be used to uncover additional insights into other products or services that may fit additional, previously undiscovered, challenges. You can also work to prevent customer churn by conducting a customer visit.

Who should be involved in a client visit?

After the “why” comes the “who.” Who needs to attend your customer visit to achieve your desired outcome? There could be a wide variety of internal stakeholders that you want to include. You might have people from business development, marketing, analytics, general managers or directors and/or someone from the C-Suite. There should only be people there who have direct input into and/or influence over the subject matter at hand; no one extra. Once you figure out who should be there, think about each of their differing priorities. If you’re unsure of someone’s priorities, ask them in advance. This will help you show up prepared.

Then consider who should be there from your side. Again, don’t bring anyone who doesn’t have a clear role. There’s no dedicated team that should go to customer visits; it varies based on the goal and the customer. You should know what the customer cares about before you head there. This helps you decide whether you need your CEO present or whether the principal on the account is sufficient.

Before the Visit 

One of the best tips I can give you is to get all the skeletons out of the closet before you get in front of someone. For example, if your customer’s marketing leader beams about his 600 pieces of content, but the business development group complains they are out of date and impossible to find, do you want the first time the marketing leader hears that to be real-time, while you’re onsite? Trust me; you don’t. The whole meeting could go downhill fast. You can work through potential issues by asking if there will be multiple budget stakeholders in the room. If so, as it relates to this project, find out whether they will be contributing some of their budget to the meeting’s desired outcome. If so, what does that look like? These questions can help you spot any areas of potential friction before you’re ever in the room.

Preparation is Prince

The content of your meeting is king, but preparing properly to share that content is certainly a strong runner up. Make sure each attendee has a very specific role, and then prepare the right presentation. Consider the following question to guide your preparation:

• Are you sharing a slideshow? Audio? Video?
• What assets will you use before the meeting, during the meeting and after the meeting?
• How will you leverage small, breakout rooms to facilitate conversations vs. all-together, large group dynamics?
• Do you need slides, overheads, pens, markers, etc.? If so, it’s a good idea to send these ahead!
• Do you need a backup plan? For instance, what if your computers don’t work; do you have a hard copy of your presentation?

Then, it’s time to rehearse. Spend time with your team actually going through the presentation before heading to the customer. Talk about who will cover which slides, and how the flow will go. Make sure you’re bringing value to the customer and the tone of the meeting will be what they’re expecting. Finally, send over a message summarizing the purpose of getting together. I like to call this the DOGMA – Details Outlining Goals & Meeting Agenda. I tell them this is what we agreed to, and offer them a chance to come back and add to it or edit what I’ve sent.

During the Client Visit

Here are a few tips for the meeting itself:

• Watch for signs of misalignment. This often looks like one person repeatedly whispering to another, or in Zoom world, obviously Slacking. If someone is smiling during your presentation and you’re being serious, they’re probably talking about something else with someone on their computer. Even if you notice this, don’t mention it in front of the whole group. Instead, note it for later.
• What you can explore directly and immediately are the subtle expressions that indicate someone doesn’t buy into what’s being presented. If these things happen, try to draw it out so it can be addressed in the room. Don’t be afraid to just say, “Sally, it looks like you might have something to share.” If there are corporate politics involved and you can’t draw out the issue, try to have a conversation privately in person or via  a private Zoom chat. But stay in tune with all parties as much as you can by reading body language, tone of voice and so on.

Note: This insinuates that when on Zoom everyone has their camera on. Everyone should have their camera on.

• Record the meeting. Some people get weird about recordings, but having your meeting recorded can go a long way in helping you clarify issues later or capture something that even the best notetaker might miss. If you think someone might not like the idea, have a colleague dial into the meeting and record the call. You can say something like, “Peter couldn’t be here in person, but he wanted to call in.” It’s an easy, subtle way to get a recording to happen without making anyone feel uncomfortable. Enlist a dedicated note taker, but ask all attendees to take notes.
• Leverage a “Parking Lot.” If someone brings up an idea or thought that isn’t perfectly relevant to where you are in the agenda, jot it down in a “Parking Lot” that you can revisit at the end of the meeting – or afterward.
• Don’t leave the room without recapping what went on, with details and next steps. “This was our desired outcome and here are the five things we discussed. Numbers one through four have been hashed out, but we need to spend more time on number five so let’s set up a call ASAP to flesh that out more.” Make sure to spell out who owns what, and the agreed upon timeline so you set the expectation for accountability.

After the Visit

You had your meeting.  Now what? This is where you make or break the trust and credibility you worked so hard to create. I suggest sending a quick email to all involved parties, again reiterating what was discussed and the next steps. But take it a step further and get a handwritten thank-you note in the mail that same day. The content should be different – make it personal and send it out fast, and you’ll blow your customer’s socks off. Really.

After you’ve sent the customer a summary, create a customer visit report for your internal teams. A customer visit report should include:

• Action items
• Positive highlights
• Risks and opportunities
• Any other key observations and notes

Customer visit reports can also be given to clients, or sent in lieu of the email suggested above. After you’ve written up the most important information, it’s time to start taking action.

Take the lead by holding up your end of the bargain. Take care of any items for which you’re responsible, and set up any follow-up meetings that were discussed immediately. The power of a customer visit can quickly be deflated by distraction – and a lack of action – when it’s over.

How We Can Help Your Client Visit Planning

So, which customers or prospects deserve your time and attention onsite? Make a list, and get to scheduling. It’s the step you’ve been missing toward better alignment and better results too. Need support with any of these tactics? Shift Paradigm is a full-service partner for any organization that wants to stay agile in the current digital landscape. Our customer engagement services provide the complete package to keep your customers invested in your products and organization. Interested? Contact Shift Paradigm today!

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50+ Powerful Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions and Examples

It sounds cliche, but it’s true – Nothing is more important for a business than satisfied customers. 

Think about it – How far would you get with your product if customers weren’t fully happy about using it?

Not very far, probably, and that’s in spite of your product doing exactly what it should, and perhaps even far far more. 

It’s no surprise then that almost every business is either evaluating or planning to evaluate their customer satisfaction.

But unfortunately, almost all of them run into a fundamental problem – What questions to ask to get the real picture of their customer satisfaction. 

In this guide, I’ll help you overcome this once and for all. 

Below, you’ll find a complete list of customer satisfaction survey questions and examples. Consider it a reference point for your customer satisfaction surveys. Bookmark this page and turn to it every time you plan to run a new survey and aren’t sure about what questions to ask. 

Before we get to those questions, let’s talk about this…

Why is everyone fussing about customer satisfaction survey questions?

Isn’t any question, providing it somehow relates to customer satisfaction, good enough for such a survey?

Well, yes, but only in theory. 

In reality, however, there’s a bit more to the questions you ask than that. 

For example – Not every question would work for a customer satisfaction survey. 

Now, I admit that the example below may be a little too extreme. I don’t think anyone would create a survey like that. That said, it also illustrates well my point about not every question being suitable for customer satisfaction surveys. 

First of all, the question makes an assumption about what constitutes a good product usage. 

Granted, some users might be logging in every day. But for most SaaS or digital products, not everybody has to. 

Think of email, for example. Most of us check emails multiple times per day, often several times per hour. However, I know a person who logs into his inbox only twice a day – Once in the morning to check for new messages, and once after lunch to process emails. That’s it. 

But if we followed the thinking in the above survey, his email usage would only signal dissatisfaction with the product but that’s far from the truth.

The other problem with this survey question is that it uses a wrong format to collect replies. The question clearly asks for opinion. But the only option to answer is to provide a rating. 

Instead of a rating question, this survey should have used either a long-form comment box or a dropdown with a list of options. 

Although, again, if we consider the question the only way to answer it would be with either yes or no.

I’ve shown you a negative example so let’s turn the tables now. 

Let’s see what happens when you ask good and relevant questions in customer satisfaction surveys. 

Four reasons to really focus on customer satisfaction survey questions

I’ve already hinted at some characteristics of customer satisfaction survey questions (and we’ll talk more about that later in this guide.) They are clear and relevant. And here’s what you get from writing your questions this way:

Higher response rates. Strong survey questions are logical. They make sense to the person seeing them. They are also relevant to their situation, and offer a way for them to share their opinion unobtrusively. 

As a result, customers are more likely to take and complete the survey, boosting your response rates in the process. 

Better data accuracy and reliability. Because the person understood the question, they’ve provided you with a relevant and valuable answer. If that happens across all the surveys you run, the overall quality and accuracy of your data is only bound to go up.

Reduced bias. Well-written questions avoid making assumptions or influencing the respondent’s answers in any way. They also minimize confusion or misinterpretation. 

Improved data analysis. This comes as a direct result of collecting better quality feedback. With that, you can conduct a more meaningful data analysis, and be sure that whatever conclusions you draw are based on real and meaningful answers. 

Different types of questions to use in customer satisfaction surveys

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct survey question types, particularly considering all possible variations and combinations. I’m sure someone somewhere has compiled them all. 

But the thing is, not all of those questions would work in a customer satisfaction survey. In fact, typically, we use no more than a handful of different question types in such surveys:

• Likert scale questions which measure attitudes or opinions by asking respondents to rate statements on a scale, often from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
• Yes/No questions providing binary responses for straightforward questions.
• Ranking questions in which respondents prioritize options based on preference, revealing relative preferences among items.
• Multiple choice questions that allow respondents to select from predefined answer options, providing structured data.
• Open-ended questions that allow participants provide free-text responses, delivering in-depth insights but requiring manual analysis.

NPS survey, for example, uses a rating question. 

( NPS question example)

Its follow-up question, however, usually uses an open-ended question, and asks participants to provide a detailed response. 

(NPS follow-up question)

CSAT, on the other hand, uses a Likert scale question.

The ultimate reference list of customer satisfaction survey questions

Now, off to the good stuff. 

I promised you a complete list of questions to ask in customer satisfaction surveys, and here it is. 

To make it easier to locate the more relevant questions, I organized the list by different goals of customer satisfaction surveys. 

Below, you’ll find the best questions for general customer satisfaction surveys, questions that help collect product feedback, profile users, evaluate your market positioning, and more. 

So, without any further ado, here are the best customer satisfaction survey questions .

General customer satisfaction

Questions in this section are ideal for when you want to evaluate different aspects of your customer satisfaction – From loyalty, to customer effort. 

Best NPS questions that help evaluate customer loyalty

Best follow-up questions for nps surveys, best csat questions to evaluate customer satisfaction, best ces questions to ask, product feedback .

Use these questions when evaluating what customers think about your product or its various features/capabilities.

User profiling

These are the best questions to ask when you’re trying to learn more about your users. A quick note, however – User profiling is strictly related to a company’s specific audience, target market, as well as goals and growth objectives. Naturally, I don’t know any of this about your business. Therefore, I could only list generic questions that might pertain to most businesses. But I acknowledge that they might not be entirely relevant to yours. 

Market positioning

In a market positioning survey, you basically aim to assess how customers perceive your products in relation to competitors. Such a survey is the best way to uncover your unique value proposition and brand image, and understand how to market your product properly to engage the market. 

Here are some questions that might help you achieve it. 

Four rules for writing customer satisfaction survey questions

Questions I listed above provide a great reference for creating customer satisfaction surveys. 

But I also acknowledge that the list does not (and simply cannot) include all aspects of customer satisfaction that you might want to evaluate. Nor could it ever cover all possible elements of your product or company experience that you’d like to learn more about. 

For that reason, I decided to close this guide with a list of just four rules that you absolutely must keep in mind when you’re writing questions for customer satisfaction surveys. 

These rules are

When we talk about clarity in surveys, we talk about writing questions that are easily understood, free from any ambiguity or confusion. 

Writing clear questions ensures that your respondents will understand your questions. It will also minimize the risk of misinterpretation, and ensure that your survey measures what it needs to. 

For example, it’s hard to consider a question like this clear:

“Do you sometimes, but not always, find that the product you purchased has qualities that you don’t necessarily dislike, but also don’t particularly like either?”

The question is ridiculously complex, for one. It contains double negatives, making it difficult to even know what it’s asking about. 

Here’s the same question but written with clarity in mind:

“Have you ever purchased a product that you neither strongly liked or disliked?”

Writing with brevity means writing short. 

Concise questions are easier for respondents to read and understand, after all. Long-winded or overly complex ones, however, will only leave them confused and lead to inaccurate responses or survey fatigue.

Brief questions also minimize the risk of bias, or influencing the person’s response.

Consider this example:

“How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the overall experience of our product, including but not limited to factors like customer service, packaging, pricing, and the product’s performance, based on your recent purchase?”

It’s not a wrong question. ButI bet that even seeing it on screen makes your eyes hurt. It certainly does that to mine.

Now, check the alternative, written with brevity in mind:

“How satisfied are you with your recent product purchase?”

It’s quite a difference, right?

Focus 

In this sense, focus is all about keeping questions closely aligned with your survey objectives. This is crucial because, unfortunately, as product people, we tend to want to do more than we should. Instead of just asking about product feedback, we also decide to ask about overall satisfaction. Instead of focusing on a single feature, we ask about a whole range of product characteristics, and so on. 

Unfortunately, such lack of focus typically results in unclear and long questions that no one, and I do mean no one, wants to answer. 

This question, for example, asks about a bunch of different product characteristics. But how is a person supposed to answer them using a single rating scale? 

“How satisfied are you with our product quality, pricing, customer support, and the customization options available in our app?”

The correct way of structuring this question is by focusing on one characteristic only. Like this:

“How satisfied are you with our product quality?”

The last rule doesn’t relate to any particular aspect of a customer support survey question. 

It’s here simply to remind you to test, test, and test your questions even more before you publish the survey. 

And you, typically, can do this in two ways: 

One is to create a small “test” audience segment and launch your survey to those users only. 

The other is to use the “Limit responses” (or survey throttling) feature that will basically stop showing the survey once a specific number of responses have been collected. 

And that’s it…

These are the best customer satisfaction survey questions to ask to evaluate how happy customers are about your product. 

All that’s left is to get started running your customer satisfaction surveys. 

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28 of our favorite customer feedback questions

Here at Hotjar, we strongly believe that what’s best for your users and customers is best for your business. But how do you know what’s best for your users?

You have to ask them.

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Customer surveys are the most direct way to gather constructive feedback from the people who know the most about the strengths and weaknesses of your products and services.

We’ve written other articles on  website feedback ,  customer satisfaction survey questions , troubleshooting using surveys ,  post-event survey questions , and even general  survey questions , but here we wanted to round up all of our best  customer feedback  questions in one place. Use them to survey your customers and find out what they like, and what they still need from you.

Use Hotjar to build your survey and get the customer insights you need to grow your business.

28 customer feedback questions

Here is a list of 28 customer feedback questions we recommend you ask to get closer to your customers and their needs. Keep reading past the list to learn more about why or when you should ask each type of question.

How would you describe yourself in one sentence?

What is your main goal for using this [website/product]?

What, if anything, is preventing you from achieving that goal?

What is your greatest concern about [product/brand]?

What changed for you after you started using our [product/service]?

Where did you first hear about us?

Have you used our [product/service] before?

Why did you choose to use our [product/service] over other options?

Have you used a similar [product/service] before?

How do you use our [product/service]?

How can we make this page better?

What’s the ONE thing our website is missing?

What, if anything, is stopping you from [taking action] today?

What are your main concerns or questions about [product/service]?

Thanks for [taking action]! How are you planning to use [product/service]?

How would you describe the buying experience?

Do you feel our [product/service] is worth the cost?

What convinced you to buy the [product/service]?

What challenges are you trying to solve?

What nearly stopped you from buying?

What do you like most about our [product/service]?

What do you like least?

What [feature/option] could we add to make your experience better?

How could we have gone above and beyond?

Net Promoter Score® (NPS): how likely are you to recommend our [product/service]?

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): how satisfied are you with our [product/service]?

Customer Effort Score (CES): how easy did [feature/process] make it for you to solve your issue?

Is there anything you’d like to add?

💡 Pro tip: online survey tools allow users to describe the customer experience in their own words, from their overall experience to frustrating customer support interactions and moments of customer delight .

Hotjar Surveys enables you to collect customer feedback with ease. Start survey-building today with our free-forever plan, which lets you create and manage three surveys with no limit to the questions you can add to each one. Unlock unlimited surveys with any of our paid plans.

Customer feedback questions that help you understand your customers

You can’t help your customers if you don’t know who they are and what they want in the first place. Asking your customers about themselves helps you gather psychographic data that can be used to create user personas : semi-fictional characters based on the real people who use your product. These personas come in handy for more targeted marketing and for improving user experience.

1. How would you describe yourself in one sentence?

This prompt is designed to help you gather demographic data about your customers such as age, geographic location, or job title. The question is open-ended, but you can encourage your respondents by giving them an example of what you’re expecting (e.g. “I am a 35-year-old editor based in the UK who enjoys writing articles about customer feedback.”).

2. What is your main goal for using this [website/product]?

What do your customers want? Use this question to determine why people have turned to your product and what their expectations are.

3. What, if anything, is preventing you from achieving that goal?

What challenges are the customers facing, and are you doing enough to help them overcome those challenges?

4. What is your greatest concern about [product/brand]?

What’s stopping your customers, or potential customers, from converting? Their answers give you a window into the barriers and objections you might need to address to convince them to progress, and point to gaps in the services you offer or a lack of information on your website. Use this information to address your visitors’ concerns head-on—which, in turn, should help you reduce churn and improve conversion rates .

5. What changed for you after you started using our [product/service]?

This will only apply to existing users of your product or service, but it helps you understand the details of how your product helps customers get their job done—and you can feature their statements in your  testimonials  to help convince other prospective customers to join you.

💡 Pro tip: if you want to get to know your users more intimately, consider pairing surveys with in-depth user interviews . Interviewing users can provide you with even more qualitative data about your audience’s needs, pain points, and experiences, including what drives them to your business.

With Hotjar Engage , you can automate the entire user research process and speak to your own customers or users from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. You can easily adapt the questions from this article into a user interview script .

Interview users face-to-face with Hotjar Engage to breathe more life into customer feedback

Customer feedback questions to improve your marketing efforts

Marketing can be time- and money-intensive, so it helps to use your customers’ feedback to make sure your efforts are effective and well-targeted. The following survey questions will bring valuable insight to your market research strategy.

6. Where did you first hear about us?

Web analytics data can tell you where traffic is coming from, but it can’t tell you why people visit your site. Customers may have heard about your product from a friend, or on a podcast, or perhaps on social media—the only way to collect that data is to ask directly.

7. Have you used our [product/service] before?

This helps you understand the customer’s relationship history with your company. Are they a long-time user of your services, or is this their first spin? Customer relationship information can inform the rest of their survey answers by letting you know their familiarity and expertise with your offerings.

8. Why did you choose to use our [product/service] over other options?

What sets you apart from your competitors? This helps you gauge how you’re competing with others in your customers’ mind on price, service, and solutions offered—and you might even discover a competitive advantage you weren’t aware of.

9. Have you used a similar [product/service] before?

Learn whether the customer has purchased from one of your competitors previously or whether this is their first experience with your type of product or service. Knowing their experience level with your product—and others like it—can add context to their other survey answers.

10. How do you use our [product/service]?

Learning about how the customer uses your product on a practical level can give you insight into the most important product features that you offer. It might also open your eyes to unique use cases you may not have been aware of.

💡 Pro tip: your potential goals for running a customer feedback survey are just as diverse as your customers’ opinions. Choose from more than 40 pre-built Hotjar survey templates (available in 40+ languages) to receive the feedback you need to reach your goal, whether it’s getting to the bottom of high exit rates with an exit-intent survey or investigating a dip in sales with a customer retention survey .

Customer feedback questions to ask on a web page

In general, you want a web page to be attractive, intuitive, and helpful for customers. You can use on-page surveys that pop up or slide in from the side of the page to poll customers on their opinions, which will help you improve your web pages and the overall customer experience.

Take this a step further by running a website survey in conjunction with, or as a follow-up to, usability testing sessions, which help you dig deeper into potential usability and clarity issues with a handful of your customers.

11. How can we make this page better?

Use a one-question pop-up poll to gather real-time feedback on specific web pages. Because this question is completely open-ended, meaning that you’re not restricting your users to a yes/no or multiple-choice answer, you may receive suggestions or feedback you hadn’t considered.

12. What’s the ONE thing our website is missing?

Even if a customer is pleased with your site, there is always room for improvement. Use this question to help identify holes in your existing services and highlight areas where you can build and expand.

13. What, if anything, is stopping you from [taking action] today?

Use a pop-up to query potential customers about their purchasing reservations. Do they need more information? Are they intimidated by the price tag?

14. What are your main concerns or questions about [product/service]?

This is a variation of question #3 above—the difference is this one is asked in the context of the website itself. Ideally, your web page will answer all of the potential customer’s questions and concerns so they can buy with confidence; answers to this question will let you know if any important information is vague or hard for users to find.

15. Thanks for [taking action]! How are you planning to use [product/service]?

Ask this question in a  post-purchase survey  to get a better understanding of the customer’s plans for your product. This will give you some insight into why people are buying your goods or services, and it may help you identify niche use cases you could leverage further.

Customer feedback survey questions to ask when a product isn’t selling

When your product is underperforming, turn to your customers to find out what you’re doing wrong and  how you can improve . It’s difficult to ask people why they aren’t buying your product, but you can get a sense of your target audience’s needs: email an open-ended survey to recent customers to learn more about how they felt about purchasing your product.

16. How would you describe the buying experience?

One possible reason for a dip in sales is that the buying process is confusing or takes too long, and is driving potential customers away. Ask existing customers about their buying experiences to identify areas for improvement.

17. Do you feel our [product/service] is worth the cost?

Another major sticking point for potential customers is cost. If your offerings are perceived as poor value for money, you may need to reevaluate your pricing structure to make your value more explicit.

18. What convinced you to buy the [product/service]?

What were the hooks that persuaded your customers to take action? Try to understand these driving forces, and then replicate and emphasize them.

19. What challenges are you trying to solve?

What are the major issues that cause customers to turn to your product for help? Knowing this can help you make sure you’re meeting their expectations.

20. What nearly stopped you from buying?

Finally, what are the  barriers  or obstacles that might deter potential customers from following through? You want to identify and try to minimize these issues.

💡 Pro tip: are you worried about investing effort into a customer feedback survey because you’re short on time, staff, or funding? 

Sit back and relax as Hotjar’s AI for Surveys generates a survey in seconds based on your goal, whether it’s cultivating loyal customers or optimizing the customer service experience. Then, review the AI’s automated survey report that includes a metrics summary and actionable next steps based on collected feedback, taking the worry out of managing high response rates and giving you a clear roadmap to follow.

Customer feedback questions to improve a product or service

Ask your customers for honest feedback about your actual products and services to learn what pleases them and what isn’t working. Continue to refine and improve your offerings to better meet customer needs.

21. What do you like most about our [product/service]?

It’s always good to know what parts of your products please customers. Make sure to maintain or expand on those attributes in new product iterations.

22. What do you like least?

Likewise, it’s important to identify areas for improvement based on the product feedback you collect.

23. What [feature/option] could we add to make your experience better?

Even satisfied customers may have ideas for new features or ways to improve your product.

24. How could we have gone above and beyond?

Learn what would make your customers sit up and say “wow!” These suggestions may not be obtainable, but they’re a good window into what delights your customers.

💡 Pro tip: integrate the feedback you collect from customer surveys into your overall business strategy and continue to loop in your product, marketing, and support teams. You can automatically share survey responses with your team using Hotjar’s Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations to make sure everyone is up-to-speed on your customer experience performance.

Hotjar lets you auto-share survey responses with your team

Customer feedback questions to measure the customer experience

Proactively promoting customer success is a key factor in maintaining strong customer retention and satisfaction levels. The concept of “a good customer experience ” can seem a bit intangible and difficult to measure—and this is exactly where the next three customer satisfaction questions come in.

25. Net Promoter Score ® (NPS): how likely are you to recommend our [product/service]?

Studies have shown that customers’ willingness or reluctance to recommend your product to friends and family is an excellent indicator of their level of satisfaction.

Ask customers to rank, on a rating scale of 0–10, how likely they are to recommend your products. This information will allow you to calculate your customers’ Net Promoter Score®, or NPS , which is particularly helpful when you want to improve customer loyalty .

26. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): how satisfied are you with our [product/service] ?

How happy are customers with your product? Instead of posing this as an open-ended question, you could also ask “Are you satisfied with our product?” in a pop-up poll to calculate a customer satisfaction (CSAT) score . If you want more than just metrics, ask them to explain their answer.

27. Customer Effort Score (CES): how easy did [feature/process] make it for you to solve your issue?

In general, customers want to spend the least amount of effort when completing a task or solving a problem. When you ask them to score how much effort it took to complete a task or solve an issue, you can expose pain points along the customer journey and get a clear picture of where to improve your processes moving forward.

One final question

At the end of multiple-question surveys, we like to add one final follow-up question.

28. Is there anything you’d like to add?

Always give your customers a chance to offer feedback at the end of a survey. Many people will leave this section blank, but a surprising number of people will have a burst of insight or a helpful answer to a question you never even thought to ask.

Our biggest survey tip is simply to encourage people to be honest. Really emphasize that you want them to be brutally, 100% honest, and that all feedback is helpful. This will free them up to tell you what they really think.

Final tips: getting the customer feedback you need

Customer feedback is extremely valuable because it gives your customers a voice and an opportunity to share what parts of your business are working or not working for them. However, to get reliable and useful information, you must ask the right customers the right questions in the right way. Here are four final tips for honing your customer feedback strategy :

1. Know what information you want to collect

Before you even start writing any of the questions, pin down exactly what you’re hoping to achieve. Do you want to:

Improve your marketing techniques?

Brainstorm new services to offer your existing user base?

Know how people experience a specific web page or customer process?

Your goals will dictate the kind of questions you need to ask customers.

2. Keep your survey short

Filling out a feedback survey can be a big ask for busy customers, so keep yours as brief as possible. You probably won’t be able to ask every question you’d like, so prioritize the information that’s most useful to you.

3. Pick the right format

There are two major formats of customer surveys: long multiple-question surveys and very short on-page polls .

Longer surveys help you collect more in-depth information, but the more questions you ask, the fewer responses you’re likely to receive. As a rule of thumb, ask as few questions as possible to get the information you need.

On-page polls typically consist of only one or two questions and are perfect for collecting a snapshot of information about a specific page or process. Because they take almost no time to complete, response rates are usually high.

Test the survey before sending it to customers

If you’re new to customer surveys, start off with a single-question on-page poll. Then, work your way up to longer multiple-question surveys.

If you’re sending out a longer questionnaire, ask coworkers or other connections to make sure that it’s well worded. The questions should be clear and concise so that customers know exactly what kind of information you’re looking for.

Build and send a survey today 🔥

Use Hotjar to build your survey and get the customer insight you need to grow your business.

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Customer satisfaction informs you about customer happiness . It tells how satisfied your customers are with your products, services, and capabilities. Along with product reviews and ratings, customer satisfaction helps you improve your services , develop your products, and make the overall experience with your site more user-friendly.

Here at Survicate , we are obsessed with client satisfaction , and you should be, too. After all, providing high-quality products, services, user experience, and customer care brings money to the bank.

But, how do you find out if your customers are truly satisfied? It's simple! Start sending customer surveys frequently and asking the right customer satisfaction survey questions .

‍ In this article, we will show you 21 perfectly designed examples of customer satisfaction survey questions for SaaS and free, ready-to-use survey templates . Depending on their goal, we divided the questions into four groups:

• Product feedback
• Customer effort while dealing with the website and the product
• The position of your company against the competition
• The general experience with your company

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey

The most basic way of measuring customer satisfaction is by using the CSAT question . Here are the questions it comes with and how you should use it.

1. How satisfied are you with [product name]?

This question measures customer satisfaction overall. Responses will help you discover your customers’ needs and give you ideas for changing and improving. The score is a widely recognized customer experience metric. It helps predict company growth and reduce customer churn .

This question is usually measured on a five-point rating scale. (However, you some choose to use other Likert scales, eg. 1-to-10 rating scale surveys .) You can use numbers or a star rating system. A great tool like Survicate will also let you take advantage of the Likert or smiley  scale.

Product feedback survey questions

Simply put, a product survey is a powerful way to discover what your customers think about the products or services you offer.

‍ Running surveys before launching a new product means you get to see what people expect. Product research cuts the risk of developing good-for-nothing features.

Plus, depending on the survey questions you include, it can help you create and design what you’re making.

You can also use product feedback surveys for existing products to see how users enjoy the experience. So they’re always helpful.

2. Which of the following words would you use to describe our product?

Why should you care how people would describe your product? Because it’s an important issue when your product gets described as ‘buggy’ instead of ‘life-saving.’

If you don’t want to give your users any suggestions, you can use the open-ended variation of this customer survey question and ask "How would you describe our product?”.

Answers to any of those will show you how well you communicate your value proposition and product vision to users . If your goal is to provide them with the world’s most sophisticated graphics software and people describe it as ‘Paint with 1 cool feature,” it means that the communication is broken.

Hint: Check what are the most common positive words used to describe your product. If they are very frequent, it may indicate that this is what your customers are looking for in your product. You can use such words in your future marketing campaigns.

💡 YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN: Product research survey templates library

3. How well does our product meet your needs?

This broad product question is nonetheless specific enough to provide actionable results. Offering a product or service that meets customer needs is a prerequisite to providing high customer satisfaction. If the product doesn’t meet the needs of users they are more likely to churn .

‍ Hint: To make this customer feedback question even more actionable, ask the following two questions.

4. Which 3 features are the most valuable to you?

This question is vital for SaaS companies . Their products tend to offer dozens of features and most of the customers use only a handful of them.

Researching which ones are the most important and valuable to users will help you understand how customers interact with your product and what they really need .

Don’t be surprised when people say that the most important to them are features you consider secondary. We discovered exactly this with our exit intent survey —a simple feature that turned out to be a must-have for many customers.

5. What are the 3 most important features we’re missing?

Offering exactly what your customers need helps improve retention . If the product doesn’t offer everything your customers need, sooner or later they will find another provider.

The same goes for e-commerce —customers are more likely to return if you offer what they are searching for and want to buy.

Answers to this customer survey question will help you minimize risks associated with building a product roadmap or planning expanding inventory.

6. If you could change just one thing about our product, what would it be?

This is a variation of question 4. This time you're asking about just one change your customers would like you to introduce.

Now, you're not considering consider any missing features. What you do take into account is that your customers may have very specific needs regarding the products you already have.

As with the question above, the main purpose is to improve customer retention . Take into consideration all the suggestions made by your customers.

Firstly, focus on the most frequent ones. Act on any feedback you receive as failing to do so is a mistake that may cost you too much too soon.

7. What problem would you like to solve with our product?

This question asks for information that usually cannot be gauged by analytics which is the type of solution your customers search for.

Knowing the answers to this question allows you to focus on the strongest features of your product and helps to prioritize any future improvements that could be made.

‍ Hint: It’s great to ask this question even before finalizing the sale. Your potential customers might be looking for something different than what the product they've picked offers.

If you have other products that would suit their needs better, it’s great to point them towards them before it’s too late and they get disappointed with a product that was not designed for what they actually need.

8. How would you rate the value for the money of the product?

That is a very valid customer satisfaction survey question. First and foremost, you should use it while considering any changes to the pricing of your product or service.

If the feedback you receive proves that your customers think that your product is too expensive, you should definitely reconsider your plans to increase your prices. Maybe you could reach your financial goals by introducing some sales or discounts instead.

‍ Hint: It’s great to ask your customers these questions after they've used your product for some time. You might want to follow up with them after a finalized purchase, e.g. two weeks or one month after the sale.

‍ Further Reading: Top 10 Product Surveys and Product Survey Questions

Customer Effort survey questions

9. how easy is it to navigate our website.

This is a must-have question to use when there are any changes in the UX design of your website . What you consider innovative, easy, and user-friendly , may not be seen the same way by your customers .

Take into consideration any feedback you receive. Unheard complaints from your users may result in churn, so make sure they are happy with what they see and find on your website.

When it comes to new users or potential customers, it is also great to ask them this customer satisfaction survey question .

Your customers may see your website from a totally different perspective. It is worth taking their opinion into consideration.

10. Were you able to find the information you were looking for on our website?

It’s obvious you want your visitors to find the information they need as easily and as quickly as possible. The happier they are with the navigation of your website and the time they take to get the information they need, the higher the chance they will return and bring new customers with them.

‍ Hint: If there is certain information that seems to be particularly hard to find for your visitors, make sure it’s somewhere they will have quick access to. It may be worth a shot to add another section to the menu that would link directly to that subpage.

11. How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?

Customers’ need for support is the one thing that you should always take into consideration, whether it's with your website or the product. It’s crucial that your customers are able to fill their complaints and get support quickly.

Quick actions to fix bugs and support your customers can enhance retention and make your workflow much smoother.

12. How did this effort compare to your expectations?

This is a satisfaction survey question that can give you a clear indication of whether what you are doing is a reflection of customers’ needs. If the effort your customers had to put in was greater than they expected, it should give you some food for thought.

It may be beneficial to reconsider the stages where your customers faced difficulties. Maybe some processes need simplification?

It’s possible that your customers expected your product or service to be more difficult than it really is. If you managed to exceed your customers’ expectations, keep going, and keep moving forward!

‍ Hint: Send this question, along with question number 10, in a follow-up survey after providing customer support. It should happen no later than a day or two afterward to get a fresh insight into the quality of provided support.

13. How responsive have we been to your questions or concerns about our products?

This customer satisfaction survey question is wonderful at the end of any interaction with a customer that required support. This is a clear indicator of making sure you spend enough time supporting them to make them feel well taken care of.

14. To what extent do you agree with the following statement: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue.

This customer survey question is great because it encompasses a lot of issues at the same time. You can use it to monitor your customers’ overall experience with your website, your products, or any requests they may have.

Allow them to, first, give a specified rating and, later, to express their opinion in their own words. Any feedback you may receive in this case is very valuable, as it gives you information on whether there are any hot spots in your workflow that require immediate action.

‍ Hint: As with questions 10, 11, or even 12, this customer satisfaction survey should be sent to your customers very soon after providing support. The fresh perspective can give you a clear indication of what you are doing right or wrong.

Feedback on your position against your competition: survey questions

15. compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same.

This is a wonderful satisfaction survey question: it’s straightforward and very measurable. It gives a very clear image of the quality of your products in comparison with your competition .

It may and should be followed by questions that will go into greater detail on your customers' opinions, but it is a great starting point for taking any further actions.

‍ Hint: Send such customer satisfaction survey somewhere between two weeks and one month after the purchase. Let your customers take some time with your product and get to know it a bit better before judging it against your competitors.

16. Why did you choose our product rather than a competitor’s?

Here, you ask for information on the things that differentiate your product from your competition. You want to know what tipped the balance in your favor.

It’s not only important to know what can be improved, but also what is noticed by your customers as good and valuable. You want to take this into account while considering any changes or improvements in the strategy of your product.

17. Which other options did you consider before choosing our product?

You may think you don’t need this customer feedback question to know what your competition is. The truth is, it’s good to know exactly which products your customers believe to be your competition .

Sometimes they take into account companies that you would never think of.

It is especially useful to know if they happened to compare you with a totally different type of product. Then, it is worth a while to check if your communication with potential and current customers creates a clear image of your product that is coherent with your own vision .

Besides, the odds will be in your favor if you use the feedback to constantly improve what you provide to your customers and make sure that you are a better option than your competitors.

Feedback on the general experience with the company: survey questions

18. on a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague.

This simple customer feedback question (followed by the question ‘Why?’) changed the way marketers see customer satisfaction. Net Promoter Score®, otherwise called NPS, introduced hard data to the world of quantitative data and assumptions.

Measuring and improving your NPS should be the first step in improving customer satisfaction.

‍ Recommended reading: What is Net Promoter Score? The Guide to Top NPS Surveys

‍ Hint: The standard for NPS is to research it using email surveys . However, if you run a news website or other type of business where you don’t really have customers, NPS can also be effectively used. Just run the survey on a website using targeted website surveys .

Target either returning users or use the more elaborate technique based on viewed URLs or cookies.

19. How likely are you to buy again from us?

Why bother researching repeat purchase intention when you can see in Google Analytics how many people actually bought something again? However, GA won’t help you if you’re just starting a business or if you sell durable goods.

Think about cars or furniture. People don’t buy them once a month. So, if you want to see how many customers will come back, you need to wait as long as several years to get the data. But you can capture intent sooner. Just ask your customers.

‍ Hint: Send such client satisfaction surveys to your customers on a regular basis, e.g. once a year, depending on your industry and Customer Lifecycle. The best idea would be to observe the medium frequency with which your customers are making their purchases.

Observe trends and find out what are the reasons for increasing or decreasing the intent of buying again. Plus, you can then check how answers translate into actual acquisition. It will allow you to build a model of repeat purchases.

It will just require integrating your survey tool with Google Analytics or a similar tool you’re using. Learn more about this in our article on measuring customer satisfaction .

20. What would you say to someone who asked about us?

You should not be fishing for compliments with this customer survey question. What you can measure here is the customer’s general perception of your product and your brand. It will help you to check if what you consider your company to be is really what your customers truly see.

It will help you specify the image you want your company to have and implement actions that will allow you to achieve it.

21. What else would you like us to know?

This is a truly universal customer feedback question. No matter what the subject of your survey is, it is always valuable to ask if your customers have anything else to say.

It can give you additional insights, sometimes on issues that you would not expect. This, in turn, allows you to take necessary actions much more rapidly.

‍ Hint: You can either send this customer satisfaction question in a targeted website survey (e.g. after the website visitors respond to your questions regarding the pricing while on the pricing page), in-message surveys via email (either with the follow-up surveys after the purchase or providing the customer support), or in your exit/return intent surveys (it can give you the actual answer why they decided to churn or return the product).

‍ Recommended reading: If you are working in marketing, spend another minute to read Top 10 Marketing Surveys and Marketing Survey Questions.

Why are customer satisfaction surveys important?

Customer satisfaction surveys are essential because you can check if providing the best customer service or product checks out with reality. You can keep a high level of customer satisfaction that can be a strong predictor of customer retention, loyalty, and product repurchase by quickly responding to negative experiences.

Satisfied customers are more likely to purchase again and recommend the shop to their friends and coworkers. A loyal customer is worth even up to 10 times more than their first order.

Check out our infographic on the importance of customer satisfaction for more statistics that prove you can't ignore measuring your clients' happiness!

How long should a customer satisfaction survey be?

Customer satisfaction surveys should be as short as possible . No one wants to spend 30 minutes answering questions. People are busy, your customers/leads included. Surveys with 1-3 questions have the highest average completion rate (83.34%).

Think hard about what you want to achieve with your survey or what information you want to get. The more questions your questionnaire includes, the longer it takes to fill it in, the lesser the chance your respondent will complete it, especially if it's a mobile app survey since mobile users tend to have shorter attention spans.

‍ FURTHER READING:

• How To Get Survey Completion Rate of Over 80% [Real Study]
• How To Get People to Take Your Survey & Get More Responses
• Top 11 Survey Incentive Ideas to Use Without Breaking the Bank (Ultimate Guide)

When should you send a survey to your customers?

To get the most reliable answers, you should send satisfaction surveys to your customers right after they have experience with your products or services—it's called a post-purchase survey .

This way, your customers' experience will be fresh enough, and you’ll be able to make sure you’re offering a perfect experience or quickly make amends. On the other hand, you want to measure customer experience with your product or services constantly, so we suggest you set up customer satisfaction surveys on a regular basis (daily, weekly or monthly). Just don't be too offensive to your customers.

Ready-to-use free survey templates

Survicate is a powerful customer satisfaction tool . Here are the top 15 ready-to-use survey templates used by Survicate customers - so you never run out of ideas on what survey to run next.

• NPS (Net Promoter Score) - Ask how likely customers are to recommend you. Predict repurchases and referrals.
• Product-Market Fit - Discover what’s the key benefits people get from your product. Build products people love.
• Website Experience - Get people to rate your website’s usability, then make the right improvements!
• CSAT ( Customer Satisfaction Score ) - Establish if customers are happy with your product or service. Fix what’s not working well.
• CES (Customer Effort Score) - Measure if doing business with your company is as easy as pie.
• User Experience - Ensure your users are happy with the experience they get.
• Brand Awareness - Validate your product position on the market.
• Churn Reason - Reduce churn by collecting insight on why your customers cancel their accounts.
• Exit Intent - Uncover why visitors leave your website or product. Remove the obstacles to reduce lost leads.
• Reader Interest - Get new content ideas. Find out what your audience would like to read about next.
• Buyer Personas Research - Learn more about your leads and customers so you can sell to them more effectively.
• Content Rating - Establish if your audience enjoys your content, and what you can do to make it better.
• How Did You Hear About Us - Find out where your clients first came from and which channels are worth investing resources in.
• Likert Scale - Let your audience rate the different aspects of your business with just one question.
• Coronavirus returning to the office check-in - Find out how your employees feel about returning to work in the office and how to support them.

How brands use surveys to get more value

Droplr used surveys to determine what their users thought about the app and learn why some of their users remain inactive.

The NPS survey allowed Droplr to identify promoters and detractors and target each group with a different Intercom campaign.

Promoters as a group of delighted users were invited to write a product review. With this approach, Droplr managed to increase the number of reviews 16 times!

Droplr also started to survey inactive users by asking, “Did you have any problems after signing up on Droplr?”. They quickly discovered that some of the users got lost in the product, their onboarding wasn’t smooth, while for others, it was difficult to understand the product value.

Thanks to surveys, Droplr started to better educate its users with guides, tips, and case studies. Read the complete Droplr case study .

Looka surveyed its customers to find out why they failed to finalize a logo purchase.

Respondents had five options to select from:

• Not ready to start my business
• The logos are too expensive
• I can’t perfect my logo design
• Too busy to finalize my logo
• I used one of your competitors

Looka learned that many customers who didn’t purchase their logo package found it too expensive. This led them to develop a new pricing package that was location-dependent.

While $65 for a premium logo package may be reasonable in North America, entrepreneurs in developing countries can find it cheaper to hire a graphic designer.

Pricing changes allowed Looka to increase its ROI by 2400%.

Weex used surveys to identify churn reasons. The company sent out an email survey to their churned customers saying: “We’ve noticed you’ve recently ported out. Can you tell us what was the reason?” (In telecommunication, the term “port-out” means to switch between mobile operators).

As soon as Weex discovered the two main reasons for churn—inadequate network coverage (which was beyond their control) and a lack of understanding of the product offering, they could address the issue.

Weex changed its product communication and presented it more transparently. Read the complete Weex case study .

Looking for more inspiration? There are many more customer stories to explore!

The easiest way to measure customer satisfaction

Asking the right question is the key to researching customer satisfaction. Of course, you can ask questions such as ‘How satisfied are you?’ but the answers won’t provide you with very detailed and substantive conclusions.

It’s always better to ask more specific questions . The answers will clearly show you what works well and which areas of your activity need improvements and how urgent they are. While creating a survey , you can also include questions that are not directly related to customer satisfaction but are important to you.

‍ For example: Ask how customers found out about you, what their demographics are (roles, parental status, etc.—anything that will help you tailor services to their needs), or whether they used any similar products before.

The choice depends on what exactly you want to research and your target audience.

You can learn how to build your ideal customer audience in order to better tailor your services or products with our customer segmentation guide .

Often, it’s better to create and send one survey with six to eight questions than to create one survey with five questions to research customer satisfaction, and send another short survey later on to research something else.

Regardless of what kind of survey you'd like to send, we have over 400 templates for you to choose from. With our free trial , you'll get a taste of our Business plan for 10 days. What's not to like? Sign up for free and start measuring customer satisfaction today!

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• Customer Experience Build loyalty and lasting relationships across the entire customer journey
• Product Experience Combine feedback with product analytics, build products that customers love
• Feedback Analytics Extract meaningful insights from customer feedback using text and sentiment analysis

• See all integrations →
• Software & SaaS
• Technology & Services
• Digital Agency
• Logistics & Transport
• Ecommerce & Retail
• Financial Services
• Telecom & Media
• NPS Benchmarks (2024)
• CSAT Benchmarks (2024)

35 Essential Questions for Your Next Customer Feedback Questionnaire

Creating an insightful customer feedback questionnaire can seem daunting. What questions do you include to not only garner responses but also drive your business forward? Our guide walks you through crafting a compelling questionnaire with 35 essential questions you can use immediately. Dive into the steps for effective questionnaire design, crucial areas for feedback, and tactics for maximizing the valuable data you collect without the fluff.

Key Takeaways

• Customer feedback questionnaires are a valuable resource for understanding customer expectations and experiences, shaping products/services, and fostering brand loyalty, all of which fuel business growth.
• Effective customer feedback surveys require setting clear objectives, choosing suitable question types (e.g., open-ended, multiple-choice, and scale questions), and balancing quantitative and qualitative data for a comprehensive view.
• To gather actionable customer insights, surveys should cover key areas such as product/service satisfaction, customer support experience, pricing perception, and brand loyalty and further be analyzed to drive improvement.

The Importance of Customer Feedback Questionnaires

Customer feedback surveys, also referred to as customer surveys, are not only a means of measuring satisfaction levels but also an opportunity to look into your customers’ thoughts and experiences with your brand. These invaluable insights can steer the course of your products/services to align closely with what truly matters to your customers. In doing so, you’ll elevate the quality of your offerings and foster brand loyalty in the long run.

Moreover, customer satisfaction surveys can turn satisfied and loyal customers into advocates for your brand. By sharing their positive experiences through word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals , they boost both credibility and cost-effective acquisition of new customers for businesses.

Ultimately, feedback from these questionnaires lays the groundwork for informed decisions that drive positive changes within your company and contribute to sustained success.

Designing an Effective Customer Feedback Questionnaire

Crafting a successful questionnaire for collecting customer feedback is a deliberate task that requires careful thought. It is essential to personalize your survey in terms of visuals and tone so it effectively connects with your target audience while also reflecting your brand’s identity. Defining specific goals, selecting appropriate question formats, and striking a balance between quantitative and qualitative data are all crucial elements in this process.

Each aspect will be discussed in depth below.

1. Determine Your Objectives

When crafting a survey, start by clarifying the purpose of gathering customer feedback. Whether it’s for refining products, gauging satisfaction with services, or assessing responses to new features, defining this objective ensures that all questions remain relevant and focused on the respondent’s experience. Asking irrelevant questions can lead to disengagement, potentially resulting in less accurate responses.

Setting the right tone at the beginning of the survey is equally crucial, as it encourages respondents to share honest feedback. Reassuring them that constructive criticism is valued creates a valuable means for pinpointing areas for improvement and identifying strengths within the products/services offered.

2. Choose the Right Question Types

To capture a wide range of customer opinions, it is essential to incorporate various question types in your questionnaire. You can achieve this by using different formats, such as open-ended questions – the “tell us more” type of questions – where customers are encouraged to provide detailed feedback in their own words. Multiple choice questions – the “pick one or more from a list” type of questions – allow for quantification of specific aspects of the customer experience. And Likert scale or rating scale questions – ask customers to rate their agreement, satisfaction, or frequency regarding a statement on a scale, typically from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” or from 1 to 5 (or 10) – which offer insight into changes over time and measure satisfaction levels.

Combining these gives you a more rounded understanding of your customers. However, it may also prove beneficial to include additional question types that enhance these basic formats:

• Change-Impact Inquiries : These questions are designed to assess the tangible benefits that customers experience from using your products or services. Essentially, they aim to uncover how it has changed the customer’s life or business operations.
• Emotional Response Prompts : This type of question focuses on understanding customers’ emotional reactions when interacting with your company, products, or services. The goal is to gauge the emotional impact of your customer experience , whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral.
• Matrix-Style Formatting: This format presents a series of statements and asks customers to rate each one, usually on a scale. It’s like giving them a table with different aspects of your service and asking for their opinion on each. This method helps compare several items at once, providing a comprehensive view of customer attitudes towards various aspects of your business, from quality and usefulness to customer support and pricing.

Experimenting with different scales or changing how rating questions (like Likert scales) are set up can make it easier to get precise customer feedback. This can also help better understand how customers feel about their overall satisfaction with what they’re getting from you.

3. Balance Quantitative and Qualitative Data

To gain a thorough understanding of customer experiences and behaviors, use both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative methods can measure how involved users are in their journey with your business, helping you align your goals accordingly. Meanwhile, through qualitative feedback , one can delve into the reasons behind customer actions, adding depth to your analysis.

The mix of these two data types helps spot patterns and connections that can be further tested to improve the overall customer experience. By incorporating quantitative and qualitative information into an effective feedback loop system, ongoing collection and analysis become possible, ultimately leading to regular product updates based on customer input.

4. Tailor Questions to Audience Segments

To further enhance the relevance and impact of your questionnaire, consider segmenting your audience and personalizing questions accordingly. Tailoring questions to reflect the diverse experiences and perspectives of different customer segments can uncover deeper insights.

Segmentation can be based on customer demographics, purchase history, or interaction patterns. Personalized customer surveys can improve response rates and also yield more precise insights into specific customer groups. Incorporating questions that resonate with the unique experiences of each segment ensures that feedback is directly applicable to improving targeted aspects of your product or service.

For instance, questions designed for first-time buyers might differ from those engaged with long-term customers to capture the nuances of their experiences. This approach improves the relevance of your questions and shows your customers that you value their unique relationship with your brand.

5. Incorporate Visual Elements

Kick off your survey by weaving in your brand’s identity – use your unique colors and text styles for customization. This approach makes customers feel connected, boosting engagement and response rates. It transforms the survey into an extension of their relationship with your brand, elevating their experience from the get-go.

Dive deeper by incorporating interactive and visual elements that resonate with the mobile user. Sliders for satisfaction, image selections for preferences, and clickable options turn feedback into an engaging conversation, making the process not just easy but enjoyable.

You can enrich this experience further with visual aids like infographics, charts, and videos to clarify the scope of the survey and add a visual punch. This breaks up the text and ensures your survey is appealing and easy to understand.

Make sure your survey software supports these features and is responsive across all devices. This seamless experience across desktops, tablets, and smartphones enhances feedback quality and shows your audience they’re truly valued. Personalizing and streamlining your survey invites deeper insights while reinforcing the bond with your customers.

6. Ensure Ethical Practice and Data Privacy

When data breaches are all too common, ensuring the privacy and security of respondent information is not just a legal requirement but a fundamental component of customer trust. Be transparent about your data use, informing participants how their feedback will be used and safeguarded. This transparency reinforces their confidence in your brand and encourages more honest and valuable responses.

Implement strict measures to protect customer data, including secure data storage, encrypted survey submissions, and restricting data access to authorized personnel only. Additionally, offer anonymity options and ensure the confidentiality of survey responses, further assuring participants of their privacy.

Regularly review and update your data protection practices to comply with evolving regulations like the GDPR. Putting privacy first when you collect feedback shows how much you value customer opinions. It’s a great way to build a strong relationship with them, which can lead to lasting loyalty.

Key Areas to Cover in Your Customer Feedback Questionnaire

To acquire valuable information, it is essential for your customer feedback survey questions to address important aspects, including:

• satisfaction with the product
• experience with customer support services
• perception of pricing
• loyalty towards the brand

Each category offers crucial data that can inform business strategies and enhance overall customer experience. It is imperative to thoroughly analyze these areas to gain insights that will benefit your company.

Product/Service Satisfaction

Evaluating satisfaction with a product or service is essential to any customer feedback form. It allows you to determine how well offerings meet customer needs and address their issues through targeted questions on satisfaction levels. A basic inquiry like “How pleased are you with our [product/service]?” can yield valuable insights as to where they stand in terms of Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) . A ready-made customer satisfaction survey template designed specifically for this purpose can streamline the process and ensure that relevant queries covering all aspects of your offering are being asked.

Another way to measure product or service quality is by asking about the likelihood of recommending it to others via NPS surveys . Open-ended questions focused on goals such as “Can you provide insights into what prompted you to use this [product/service]? Understanding your objective will enable us to tailor our services better towards meeting your requirements.” helps understand why customers choose certain products/services and set expectations accordingly. 

You can effectively refine your value proposition by understanding the challenges your offerings help address. Open-ended questions allow room to explore how consumers perceive the fulfillment levels of core needs met by your products or services.

Customer Support Experience

The feedback questionnaire should include a section dedicated to evaluating the customer support experience. One way to assess this is through the Customer Effort Score , which measures how easily customers can resolve their issues. Additional questions could focus on support teams’ speed and efficiency of resolution, as well as perceived professionalism and empathy.

Hence, among the main areas for measuring satisfaction with customer service representatives are hold times, problem resolution effectiveness, and both knowledgeability and attitude of customer service representatives. It’s also relevant to gauge whether or not customers feel that their feedback is valued and leads to tangible improvements in the quality of support services. This data can inform future strategies to enhance overall customer satisfaction.

Pricing and Value Perception

Gaining an understanding of how your customers view the price and value of your product or service is crucial in influencing their purchasing decisions and fostering loyalty. Asking questions such as “Do you believe our [product/service] justifies its cost?” can directly assess the perceived value customers associate with your offering.

Using rating scales to gauge customer satisfaction with pricing, comparing competitors’ offerings, and surveying opinions on pricing plans are effective ways to measure a customer’s perception of value for money. These insights into their satisfaction levels can guide strategic price adjustments while ensuring the delivery of satisfactory quality at competitive rates, ultimately improving the overall value proposition.

Brand Loyalty and Advocacy

The success of your business hinges heavily on brand loyalty and advocacy. A crucial aspect in measuring these factors is evaluating the alignment between customers’ personal values and those of your brand, as well as understanding why they choose to purchase from you over competitors. One effective way to gauge customer likelihood for recommending a product or service is through specific questions like the Net Promoter Score found on feedback questionnaires.

When seeking insights into the overall market perception of your brand, it can be beneficial to include advocacy questions that explore both positive and negative sentiments among customers. By understanding these perceptions, businesses can shape their strategies accordingly in order to foster loyal customers who actively advocate for their products or services.

Alternative Approach to Customer Survey Questions

As we shift our focus to specific question types aimed at comprehensively gauging customer sentiment, here is another approach to various inquiries tailored to uncover insights into the customer journey:

• questions to understand customer satisfaction
• questions to measure customer experience
• questions digging into customer loyalty
• questions fueling future progress

We’ll go through all of them for more details.

Questions to Understand Customer Satisfaction

1. general satisfaction questions.

When it comes to the health of your business, customer satisfaction sits right at the heart. It’s the pulse that tells you how well you’re delivering on expectations and where you need to improve. Starting with general satisfaction questions in your customer feedback questionnaire is like asking, “How are you feeling?” . It’s a broad question that opens up the conversation.

These queries offer a snapshot of customer sentiment and can highlight areas that require a deeper dive:

• “On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with our product/service overall?”
• “How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?”

2. Specific Product/Service Feedback

After establishing a general understanding of customer satisfaction, let’s zoom in further with questions focused on particular aspects or features of your product/service. This section of your customer feedback questionnaire is where you get to the heart of what works, what doesn’t and why.

These questions should be carefully designed to extract detailed feedback about the different components of your offering. For instance, if you’re a software company, you might ask about the user interface, speed, or specific functionalities like data integration. If you’re in retail, questions might target product quality, variety, and the shopping experience. This approach helps you understand customer satisfaction at a granular level and identifies strengths to build on and weaknesses to address.

Here are some questions ensuring a nuanced understanding of customer preferences:

• “How satisfied are you with the level of customization options available for our software?”
• “How would you rate the clarity and effectiveness of the instructions provided with our product?”

3. Promise & Delivery Gap

Moving further into the depths of understanding customer satisfaction, these questions encourage customers to reflect on their initial expectations versus their experiences, providing clear insights into where you stand.

Understanding these gaps is important for several reasons. First, it provides an opportunity to realign your offerings with customer expectations, either by enhancing the product/service or adjusting the messaging to set more realistic expectations. Second, it can guide your marketing team to craft messages that more accurately reflect the customer experience, thus building trust and credibility with your target audience. Moreover, this feedback acts as a direct input into your improvement processes.

Peering into the gap between promise and delivery, here are some question examples that gauge whether the product or service met or exceeded customer expectations:

• “Were there any features or functionalities that fell short of what you expected?”
• “Did our product/service meet your expectations based on our marketing materials?”

Questions to Measure Customer Experience

Now, let’s delve into questions that gauge the overall customer experience. From ease of use to interactions with customer service representatives, these inquiries provide valuable insights into every aspect of the customer journey.

4. Ease of Use and Accessibility

The rationale behind focusing on ease of use and accessibility is straightforward. When customers find your product or service easy to navigate and use, their overall experience improves. This not only boosts their satisfaction but also significantly increases their likelihood to stick with your brand. A low-effort experience can be a key differentiator in markets where competition is fierce.

Here are some question examples on how easy it is for customers to navigate and use the product/service:

• “How easy was it for you to find the information you were looking for on our website?”
• “On a scale of 1 to 5, how straightforward was it to set up your account with our platform?”

5. Customer Service Interaction

Customer service representatives are often the human face of your brand during critical moments of the customer journey. Incorporating these dimensions into your customer feedback questionnaire offers a dual benefit. It provides actionable insights to improve customer service quality and communicates to your customers that you value their opinions and are committed to providing exceptional service. This commitment can strengthen customer relationships and their perception of your brand as one that genuinely cares about their experience.

Questions aimed at evaluating customer service interactions should delve into both the effectiveness and the emotional aspects of the experience (how customers felt about the interaction). For example, you might ask:

• “How satisfied are you with the response time of our customer support team?”
• “How satisfied are you with the level of expertise demonstrated by our customer support team?”

6. Problem Resolution

Feedback in this area can reveal much about the operational strengths and weaknesses of your customer service team. These questions can help identify if your processes are streamlined and effective or if there are bottlenecks and areas needing improvement. Questions in this section can be structured to gauge both the timeliness and the outcome of the resolution process:

• “Were you able to resolve your issue with our product/service in a timely manner?”
• “How satisfied are you with the solutions provided to address your problem?”

Questions Digging into Customer Loyalty

In the attempt to understand your customers better, measuring customer loyalty is akin to discovering a treasure map that guides your business toward long-term success. This is where Net Promoter Score (NPS) comes into play, a powerful tool that helps you see beyond the horizon of customer satisfaction to gauge the strength of your customer relationships. Our journey begins with questions that identify Promoters, Passives, and Detractors with NPS. 

7. Customer Loyalty: Identify Promoters, Passives and Detractors

NPS simplifies the complex landscape of customer loyalty into a single, understandable metric. By asking one straightforward question, you can measure customers’ willingness to become brand ambassadors. Typically scored on a 0 to 10 scale, the responses categorize your customers into Promoters, Passives , and Detractors .

Why is this important? Because Promoters are more than just satisfied customers; they are the ones who will fuel your growth by recommending your brand to others. On the other hand, Detractors are unsatisfied customers who can harm your brand’s reputation through negative word-of-mouth. Understanding the balance between these groups gives you a clear indication of your company’s health and customer loyalty levels.

These queries gauge customer likelihood to recommend your product or service and delve into the reasons behind their score:

• “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to others?”
• “What is the primary reason for your score?”

8. Repeat Business and Recommendations

After understanding the broad strokes of customer loyalty through NPS, it’s essential to zoom in on the specific behaviors that signal strong loyalty: repeat purchases and recommendations. These indicators reflect the health of your customer relationships and directly impact your business growth and sustainability.

These inquiries might serve as an example:

• “How likely are you to purchase from us again in the future?”
• “How likely are you to recommend our product/service to friends or family? Why or why not?”

9. Customer Sentiment and Future Intentions

Beyond loyalty metrics and the likelihood of repeat business, understanding the broader sentiment customers hold towards your brand and their future intentions is essential for long-term engagement and growth. This segment of your customer feedback questionnaire focuses on capturing the emotional and forward-looking aspects of customer relationships with your brand.

Asking about future intentions allows you to gauge customer commitment and identify upcoming trends or changes in preferences that could affect your market position. Meanwhile, asking direct feedback on potential areas for improvement can provide a roadmap for innovation and refinement. It encourages customers to share their ideas and suggestions, making them feel valued and part of your brand’s journey.

Here are just a couple of examples:

• “How do you feel about the direction our company is heading in?”
• “What improvements would you like to see from us in the future?”

Questions Fueling Future Progress

These inquiries encourage honest feedback, invite suggestions for improvement, and gather contextual insights, empowering businesses to evolve and excel.

10. Open-Ended Feedback for Qualitative Insights

In the quest to truly understand and serve your customers, the richest insights often come not from checkboxes and scales but from the unfiltered, open-ended feedback they provide.

Gathering actionable insights from open-ended feedback involves careful analysis to identify common themes, suggestions, and areas of concern. It requires a willingness to read between the lines, recognize patterns, and prioritize changes that will significantly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Our exploration begins with questions designed to elicit honest and constructive criticism of the customer experience:

• “Do you have any additional comments or suggestions about your experience with our product/service?”
• “What one thing could we do to improve your experience with us?”

11. Suggestions for Improvement

Actively seeking suggestions for improvement from your customers is not just about identifying what needs to be fixed; it’s about opening the doors to innovation with those who use your products or services daily. This part of your customer feedback questionnaire should include open-ended questions encouraging customers to share their ideas and visions for brand improvement.

These types of questions serve multiple purposes. They signal to your customers that their opinions are valued and considered while providing a treasure trove of ideas to drive your business forward. Customer suggestions can highlight unseen opportunities, suggest new features, or point out areas of friction that your team might not have previously identified. You might use:

• “How can we enhance our product/service to meet your needs better?”
• “Is there a feature or service you wish we offered that we currently don’t?”

12. Demographic and Contextual Questions

Tailoring your questions to gather context-specific insights allows for more targeted improvements. It ensures that changes are not just based on general feedback but are informed by a deep understanding of how different customer segments use and benefit from your product/service. This approach can lead to more meaningful and impactful updates.

And here are some questions examples to explore:

• “Which devices do you primarily use to access our product/service?”
• “What is your preferred method of communication for receiving updates or promotions from us?”

35 Essential Customer Feedback Question Examples

In the quest to understand customer satisfaction, strategic questioning is paramount. Businesses can uncover invaluable insights to refine their offerings and fortify customer retention by delving into specific areas and gauging feedback across various touchpoints.

Below are some additional practical customer feedback questions that can be used to gain insights into your products or services.

• Which aspects of our product/service do you find most beneficial?
• Which specific feature of our product/service could you not do without, and why?
• How often do you use our product/service in your daily activities?
• In what scenarios or environments do you find yourself most frequently using our product/service?
• Can you share your challenges while navigating our product/service?
• What is your favorite feature of our product/service, and why?
• In what ways has our product/service made a positive impact on your daily routine or work?
• Can you share a specific instance where our product/service significantly benefited you or your business?
• What key factor led you to choose our product/service over competitors?
• Compared to other options you’ve tried, what aspects of our product/service do you find more beneficial or lacking?
• Can you describe what specifically prompted your decision to purchase from us?
• Were there any hesitations or concerns you had before purchasing with us?
• How did you first learn about our product/service, and what influenced your purchase decision?
• Looking forward, what are the must-have features or improvements you would like to see in our product/service?
• If you could request one feature or improvement that isn’t currently available, what would it be?
• Have you encountered any significant issues or limitations while using our website or product/service?
• Are there any concerns or questions you have about our product/service that we can address? Please name them.
• Do you know someone who might benefit from our product/service? What are their needs or interests?
• How can we exceed your expectations and deliver an exceptional experience with our product/service?
• What differentiates our product/service from others in the market?
• How would you describe the quality of the customer support you’ve received from us?
• How would you rate your experiences with our customer support team? What improvements, if any, would you suggest?
• Could you share an instance where our product/service exceeded your expectations?
• Is there a feature you expected to find in our product/service but didn’t? What is it?
• In terms of pricing, how do you perceive the value of our product/service compared to its cost?
• Do you feel our product/service offers good value for the price? Why or why not?
• What personalized experiences or customizations do you wish our product/service offered to suit your needs better?
• What factors influence your decision to renew or not renew your subscription with us?
• How do marketing communications influence your perception of our product/service?
• How user-friendly do you find our product/service? Any suggestions for improvement?
• Could you provide feedback on the onboarding process for our product/service?
• Have any features of our product/service negatively impacted your experience? How can we improve?
• Can you share a feature you rarely use or find unnecessary? Why?
• Are there any industry-specific features you wish our product/service included?
• How satisfied are you with the updates/maintenance frequency of our product/service?
• What’s the one thing you wish you had known before you started using our product/service?
• Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your experience with our product/service?

Analyzing and Acting on Customer Feedback

Effectively leveraging customer feedback involves more than just examining it. Taking action is even more important. This includes identifying patterns, sharing findings with appropriate departments, and monitoring results.

These measures guarantee that the gathered information is successfully implemented into plans and initiatives to improve the overall experience.

1. Identify Trends and Patterns

Understanding customer perceptions and experiences is key to any business and achievable by identifying trends and patterns in their feedback. There are useful features available, such as word clouds or text analytics, which can help visualize common terms used by customers, as well as sentiment analysis of their feedback. These allow businesses to prioritize areas that need attention based on root causes or impact.

Analyzing customer feedback yields numerous advantages, from streamlining operations and strategic improvements to uncovering customer challenges and aligning with broader business objectives through customer experience metrics. By qualitatively analyzing responses, businesses can pinpoint recurring themes and pain points, fostering ongoing product and service improvements.

2. Share Results with Relevant Teams

Effective communication of customer feedback among teams is crucial for promoting a customer-focused approach within your organization. Qualitative data offers valuable insights for sales, marketing, product development, and customer success strategies. Directly sharing unfiltered comments with employees maximizes the feedback’s impact.

Using a centralized dashboard or reporting system enables real-time distribution of customer feedback across teams. Regular cross-departmental meetings to discuss this information and develop collaborative plans ensure that all areas focus on enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

3. Close the Feedback Loop with Effective Communication

After gathering and analyzing customer feedback, it’s time to close the loop with your respondents. Communicate your actions in response to their feedback to reinforce their value to your business and your commitment to excellent experiences. This follow-up not only strengthens customer relationships but also encourages future engagement. Whether through email updates, website announcements, or social media posts, keeping your customers informed about taken action demonstrates transparency and accountability.

Here’s how you can transform customer insights into meaningful improvements and communicate these changes effectively:

• Whenever possible, personalize your follow-up communications. A personalized email thanking a customer for their feedback and detailing the steps you’ve taken in response can significantly impact them. It shows a genuine appreciation for their input and reinforces their value to your business.
• For broader feedback trends or suggestions that have led to significant changes, consider public acknowledgment through your blog, newsletter, or social media channels. Sharing stories about how customer feedback has shaped your product or service builds a community around your brand.
• Be transparent about the feedback process. Share not just the changes made but also insights into the decision-making process. If certain suggestions cannot be implemented, explain why. This level of transparency builds trust and helps customers understand the complexities and limitations that businesses face.
• Invite customers to continue the conversation. Whether through a follow-up survey to gauge their reaction to the changes made or a forum where they can share ongoing thoughts, keeping the lines of communication open is key to a responsive customer feedback loop.
• Highlight customer success stories that have resulted from this feedback loop. Sharing real-life examples of how feedback led to improved customer experiences can be powerful in demonstrating your commitment to customer satisfaction.

4. Monitor Progress and Iterate

The implementation of a feedback loop for continuous improvement allows for consistent monitoring and iterative enhancement of progress. This process incorporates both quantitative and qualitative data, enabling ongoing collection, analysis, and implementation of improvements. Sharing direct customer feedback within the company encourages a strong culture of learning and results in more impactful changes in attitudes and actions compared to feedback delivered by management.

To promote a customer-centric approach among the team, you can integrate customer satisfaction metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), or Customer Effort Score (CES) into decision-making processes. Regularly reviewing these metrics will help identify any shifts in overall sentiment from customers. It is important to have systems in place that track the impact of implemented enhancements on satisfaction levels based on insights gained from customer feedback.

5. Leveraging Digital Tools

Building on the capabilities of specialized survey software, integrating advanced digital tools into our feedback mechanisms takes our customer engagement strategies to the next level. Beyond just collecting responses, interactive technologies embedded within these platforms can delve deeper into customer emotions and preferences, providing instant, actionable insights.

This evolution in feedback collection, powered by AI and machine learning, allows for nuanced analysis of open-ended responses, quickly identifying underlying sentiments and trends. It transforms feedback from a static input into a dynamic source of strategic intelligence, enabling businesses to adapt and respond quickly.

Social listening capabilities further extend the reach, capturing spontaneous conversations and opinions shared across social media platforms. This adds an invaluable layer of insights and offers a broader perspective on customer sentiment.

This integrated approach marks a significant leap forward, positioning businesses as leaders in customer-centric innovation and continuous improvement.

Tips for Maximizing Response Rates

Ensuring a high response rate is crucial in obtaining enough data for effective analysis. This can be achieved by minimizing the length and complexity of questionnaires, selecting an appropriate method of distribution, and strategically timing their administration. But let’s dive deeper into each:

Keep It Short and Simple

To improve customer engagement, it is essential to keep surveys concise and straightforward. It is recommended to limit the number of questions in a questionnaire to 5-10 for optimal length. Keeping surveys brief (around 3 minutes) or even just asking a single question can prevent respondents from dropping out mid-survey and increase completion rates.

In order to encourage customer participation, keep survey questions clear and easy to understand. For example, the use of simple rating scales such as five-star ratings can make it easier for customers to browse through the survey and provide feedback. This approach also shows value towards the customer’s opinion by acknowledging their honest feedback upfront and highlighting its importance in shaping future improvements.

Choose the Right Delivery Method

Choosing the appropriate platform for survey distribution is crucial in effectively reaching customers and aligning with their communication preferences. For example, younger demographics may respond better to SMS surveys, while in-app messages can generate higher participation rates and offer valuable contextual feedback from active mobile users.

Maintaining a clean email list ensures that surveys are only sent to engaged customers. Integrating surveys into various communication channels makes participation easier. By combining multiple survey channels such as email, web links, SMS messaging, and even on-site kiosks, businesses can cater to the preferences of different customer segments.

Employing a diverse range of platforms allows companies to gather insights from a wider pool of respondents without limiting themselves solely to one channel or age group’s perspectives. This multi-channel approach also enhances user convenience by meeting consumers where they prefer to engage, whether through traditional methods like emails or newer options like text-based interactions.

Time Your Questionnaire Appropriately

It is important to have a good understanding of the behavior and availability of your target audience in order to determine when it is best to send surveys for maximum engagement. Sending surveys immediately or within 24 hours after an interaction occurs has proven most effective in gathering transactional feedback. On the other hand, for relationship NPS feedback , intervals of every 30, 60, or 90 days are suitable.

For more relevant and timely customer feedback, survey distribution should occur right after purchase completion, following any customer support interactions, and promptly upon completing specific tasks such as online bookings. 

Furthermore, in regards to B2B/SaaS customer journeys , it would be most beneficial to wait between two weeks and one month post-implementation before sending out a survey. This timing ensures that customers have enough time since their initial experience with the product/service to evaluate its effectiveness fully. It is also recommended that ecommerce companies gather information through surveys approximately seven days after delivery.

Wrapping up

A customer feedback questionnaire is more than a tool for gathering data – it’s a strategic asset, helping businesses understand their customers’ experiences, needs, and expectations. They offer valuable insights that can guide business decisions, drive product improvements and foster customer loyalty. To ensure meaningful feedback is gathered, they need to be well-designed with areas such as product satisfaction, customer support experience, and pricing perception covered.

However, the effectiveness of a feedback questionnaire depends on its ability to cater to different customer needs and touchpoints across the customer journey. From initial interaction to post-purchase experiences, different stages require tailored questions to capture relevant insights. This might involve measuring the customer effort score (CES) to assess ease of use, leveraging the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge loyalty and the likelihood of recommendations to others, or measuring the customer satisfaction score (CSAT) to explore the nuances of the customer service experience.

Incorporating a blend of question types, from quantitative ratings to open-ended prompts, is essential. It paints a complete picture of customer sentiment across every interaction with your product or service.

But the journey doesn’t end with data collection. Thorough analysis, team collaboration, and strategic action turn insights into impactful change. Specialized survey software optimizes this process, empowering you to build deeper customer connections and drive sustained growth.

Ready to harness the power of customer feedback? Start today by incorporating Retently into your strategy and unlock the invaluable potential of data. Gather actionable insights that inform better decision-making and improve customer satisfaction for existing customers.

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The Art of the Customer Visit: How to Plan One + Why You Should

When was the last time you visited a customer? Customer visits might seem extravagant and unnecessary on the surface.

Why not just get on a phone call or Zoom meeting? Or follow up with them via email? You could just send them a survey, or even dig into your product analytics to surface insights.

That said, if I’m talking to another entrepreneur and say something like, "It's super crucial you physically visit your customers", they all look at me as if I just said the most obvious thing in the universe.

Visiting customers is like working out or eating healthy: everybody knows they should do it, but very few people actually do.

And we’re not excluding ourselves here: We launched Close in January of 2013, but our first customer visit was more than a year later!

Some businesses put off visiting customers because it takes time, and it’s easy to push down on your long to-do list. Or, it may seem more urgent to focus on getting new customers to sign on, rather than visiting existing customers.

If this sounds like you, let’s discuss the benefits of visiting your customers, and how you can set up successful customer visits.

What Are the Benefits of Visiting Your Customers in Person?

It’s true: COVID has permanently altered the way B2B sales works. Studies by McKinsey show that companies have reduced their in-person efforts as a go-to-market strategy by more than 50 percent since the pandemic started.

That said, a decent number of B2B buyers still prefer in-person contact during the customer journey.

And this is exactly where the opportunity lies—fewer companies are vying for your customer’s attention in person. This opens the playing field for your company to perform more customer visits.

And trust me—it’s worth the effort. Here's a quick rundown of the value we got from our first customer visits.

Motivate Your Team to Serve Customers Better

Seeing real people use your product is incredibly inspiring. It energizes you. It recharges your batteries. It gives you a visceral sense of how your work actually impacts the life of your users, rather than just an intellectual understanding. It's like pouring gasoline on the fire that fuels your engine.

Everybody on your team—from the CEO to the intern—should visit a customer, for this reason alone.

It is different from hearing customers tell you how much they love your product or how great they think it is. You just have to experience customer satisfaction happening in real-time. You need to see real human beings depending on what you built. You need to witness how your product helps them to operate better, to be better at what they are doing.

The impact you make on other people's lives is a much stronger driver than any number on a spreadsheet can ever be. Do not underestimate how much this affects you. It's powerful.

Build Better Customer Relationships

Meeting someone in person adds another dimension to your relationship with your customer. You can do a lot of relationship-building via email, chat, phone, and Zoom, but nothing has the same effect as meeting someone in person. It creates a human bond between the two of you.

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr says he never lost a customer whom he had personally visited while he was CEO of EchoSign. Spending time with your customers transforms a transactional relationship into a partnership. It builds empathy on both sides, which ultimately leads to better business.

In-person customer visits are one of the best ways to build customer intimacy . It deepens the commitment on both sides. If one of the people we met needs help one day, we'll be more eager to support them. And I'm pretty sure they'll be more forgiving if there's ever an issue with Close and be more loyal to our product.

Get In-depth Product Feedback on the Customer Experience

Your customers are more than the sum of all their clicks on your product. Yes, you might be monitoring product usage and reading all the feedback people send you via email or even tell you on the phone, but you're missing a lot of crucial context if you can't see your customers using your product within their work environment.

• How exactly are they using your product?
• What's happening around them?
• What else is on their screen?
• What's competing for their attention?
• What's their workspace like?

When you visit your customers, you get to see the environment in which they use your software. You experience your product embedded into a user's workday and get a sense of the entire puzzle, rather than just a single piece of it.

And it's little things, like...

• What kind of headsets /chairs/desks are they using?
• What other software/apps are they using during their day?
• Which little hacks did they come up with to make them more productive and efficient?
• What makes them smile, and what makes them frown when interacting with your web or mobile app ?

It just gives you a better picture of what's working and what's not.

Here’s a real example: during one customer visit, we saw that the customer was using a TV to display our reporting in Close . But at the time, our reporting page wasn’t optimized for full-screen display—it looked crappy.

I remembered that one of our engineers had worked on a quick fix that would make this look better, but we had never released it. I sent a message to the team, and within an hour, this feature was released by our VP of Engineering, Phil Freo . It looked fantastic, and our customers loved it.

While visiting customers, you can gather more in-depth feedback about how they’re using your product and where they would like to see improvements in the customer experience. Product managers can then use this information to build out improvements.

Find Opportunities to Upsell

Years ago, during one customer visit, we found the customer was on a basic plan that didn’t include a specific feature. Instead, they were using a third-party provider to get this feature for their sales team.

Talking with the founder, we faced some resistance to upgrading their plan. But we gained an internal champion during that customer visit by chatting with the sales team manager. We gave him everything he needed to make the transition happen, and they soon upgraded their plan to start using this feature again.

Visiting customers in Germany in 2015

This is the power of in-person visits—not only did the extra revenue help us, but by upgrading their plan, the customer’s success with our product was significantly increased.

Create New Case Studies and Customer Stories

Using case studies and real-life examples of how your customers use your product is an excellent digital marketing strategy and one that will help build trust in your brand.

When planning customer visits, think about the customers you may want to interview for video testimonials or case studies on your website. Having these real customer stories also helps build better marketing alignment with your ideal customers and their needs.

All of these are examples of the kinds of benefits you can get from visiting your customers. You can't predict which benefits precisely you'll get—but you will always get value from a customer visit!

Get Your Copy of Talk to Your Customers →

How to Plan a Client Visit That Boosts Customer Loyalty in 7 Steps

By now, you should be sufficiently motivated to actually visit your customers. But what do you say and do? How do you get the most value out of these visits? How do you prepare for them? How do you wrap them up? How do you get started when you visit their office?

1. Identify Which Customers to Visit

Whether you have 10 customers or 10,000, it’s probably not feasible to visit everyone. So, which customers should you visit?

To start, make a list of the customers who already have a good rapport with you—your partners, advocates, and overall best customers.

Next, include customers who are using your product or purchasing from you on a regular basis. Learning about how they use your products and services, or why they keep coming back to you, will be great for your team.

Finally, make sure to include the customers who consistently give you critical feedback. These customers are already pushing your team to do better, and they will likely have super valuable insights to share with you when you visit in person.

2. Decide Who You’re Meeting With

Once you know which companies you’ll visit, decide which individuals inside the company you’ll need to meet with.

First of all, you set up a meeting with the founders or CEO. That's the person you'll be officially meeting. But it's not necessarily the person you'll spend most of the time with.

For SaaS companies, focus on the person managing the team that's using your product, as well as the end-users. If you’re a service-based business, talk to the people who are mainly affected by using your services.

The Close team visiting customers in Ottawa, Canada, 2014

3. Spend Time Getting to Know the Business Beforehand

Just like when prospecting, spend time doing research before the meeting—whether that’s on social media sites like LinkedIn, on the company’s website, or in B2B databases like Crunchbase.

When you walk into that client visit, you should know exactly who you’re talking to, what kind of business they are, which customers they serve, and how your product or service fits into that workflow.

4. Prepare and Share an Agenda

Having a clear agenda for your customer visit is essential to get the most out of the time you spend with your customers.

Start by setting out the agenda for your main meetings with the C-suite and with the managers of the teams that use your product. Set up talking points: such as updates to your product pricing, or upcoming feature launches in your product. Also, leave room in the agenda for their team to add any questions or comments. Leave a clear space for them to give you feedback.

Once your customer visit agenda is prepared, share it with their team. Let them have editing access so they can include their ideas. Make sure that expectations between you and your customer are aligned before you start asking them a lot of questions. Create a setting that encourages them to discuss and share their concerns openly.

Also, make sure to discuss confidentiality. If you plan to report back to your team after your customer visit, explicitly ask them if they're fine with you sharing their business processes, revenue numbers, etc, with your team. (If not, that's fine too—you can still share the learnings, without actual specifics, with your team.)

That way, both teams will be ready to get started when the day comes.

5. Learn About the Customer Experience in Real Time

So, the day of your customer visit has finally arrived! Start by talking in general, broad terms about their business and your business. Then, progress to more specific topics and product use cases.

Be both a student and a mentor. Learn as much as you can about your customers, and look for opportunities to help them. Learn about their workflows, and your product fits into those workflows.

Here are some questions you might ask during a client visit:

• How often do you use our product?
• Which team members use our product the most? How often do they use it?
• Are there secondary users that only use our product occasionally? If so, for what? How often?
• What are your business goals?
• How do you implement our product in your daily workflow?
• What bugs have you encountered?
• What features are you missing within our product?
• What do you like most about our product?
• What do you hate about our product? Which limitations do you find particularly frustrating?
• Which metrics does your team track within our product? (Or which KPIs does our product impact for your team?)
• If our product ceased to exist tomorrow, what alternatives would you consider to replace us?
• Are there any trends or changes in the industry that could affect the way you use our product in the future?

These questions and others like them will give you a clearer picture of how your customers use your product, and how it impacts their business.

The Close team doing a customer visit

6. Ask for and Give Referrals

Visiting customers is a great opportunity to get referrals . And to refer them to others as well. Don't just limit referrals to potential customers—any reason to put them in touch with other people is fair game, as long as you can see potential value for both parties.

Sometimes we see companies serving the same audience with complementary services—that's potential for a co-marketing initiative. If you introduce two happy customers to each other, and they collaborate together, and both get a ton of value out of it, you generate a lot of goodwill, and oftentimes very vocal brand advocates.

If you have a partner program set up, try to see if the customer you’re visiting would be a good candidate for that program, and help them understand how it works and the benefits they could get.

7. Create a Customer Visit Report for Your Team

If you do conduct a customer visit, make sure to document your learnings and take note of memorable moments. Then, you can share these insights with your team.

It's important that all the insights you gain during a customer visit actually become organizational knowledge—otherwise, your customer visits are basically useless.

So, set up a structured customer visit report that your team can peruse and learn from, both now and in the future. Inside this document, note specific items that will be of interest to the different teams in your company—for example, product feedback that your product managers may want to look at, customer journey insights that the marketing team should keep in mind, or product knowledge gaps that the customer success team may need to address.

To make sure everyone in the company benefits from customer visits, we try to share some pictures or highlights from our customer visits in Slack, and then during our weekly team meeting, a team member might give a quick 2-minute summary of their customer visit.

How Often Should You Plan Customer Visits?

There's no one-size-fits-all formula. It depends on your startup, but in general: you should meet them more often than you're meeting them now.

Jason Lemkin recommends every co-founder, CEO, and Customer Success Manager should meet on-site with five customers a month.

Being able to see the environment in which your customers use your product, the atmosphere at their workplace, and talking with the people who use your product daily is always an insightful experience.

Customer visits have been a crucial market research method for traditional businesses for many decades—but they're even more crucial for startups and SMBs . Your most powerful asset when you're in a market with established, large companies is your ability to understand your customers better and focus on their needs better than a large corporation can.

Michael Seibel, Managing Director at Y Combinator, said : "If you look around the startup ecosystem, you can find too many founders who believe that famous investors + lots of employees = winning. I bet most of our VC-backed competitors feel this way, and you can use this to defeat them (they aren't talking to customers nearly enough).”

Want more insights on talking to your customers? Get my book and learn more about building customer intimacy.

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What are questionnaires.

Questionnaires are a series of questions used to gather information. Questionnaires are usually standardized, meaning they will present the same exact questions in the same exact order for multiple participants. These questions are usually open-ended in order to gather as much information as possible. With a custom online Jotform questionnaire , you can gather answers to your questions more quickly and easily.

How do I make a questionnaire?

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What’s the difference between a survey and a questionnaire?

A questionnaire is used to collect data for a variety of purposes, whereas a survey is made with the intention of analyzing responses and finding big picture trends or patterns in the data. The intention of a questionnaire is usually to gather as much information as possible using open-ended questions — whereas a survey is a quantitative research method that usually involves close-ended questions, designed to drive results.

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What are the elements of a questionnaire?

When creating your questions, there are a few question types you can choose from to make the most of the data you collect — you can ask yes–no questions, include dropdown menus and tables, have participants fill in the blanks, and even use text boxes to allow people to elaborate on their answers. And don’t forget to collect the contact details of the person filling in the form, so you can get in touch later if needed!

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65 Best Sales Questions to Determine Your Customer's Needs

Published: April 01, 2024

Thoughtful, well-structured, strategic sales questions and needs analysis questions are central to any sales professional's ability to provide value to prospects.

We‘re in the age of the empowered buyer, and potential customers are as complex as they’ve ever been. They're busy, well-informed, and often reluctant to share information — with a diverse array of wants, needs, interests, and buying preferences.

Whether you're new to sales and looking for a go-to list of sales qualification questions or a manager looking to test new questions with your team, this list of great sales questions to ask customers will help you identify your prospects' core needs.

Table of Contents

Sales Questions to Ask Customers

Strategic questions to ask customers, needs analysis questions about goals, needs analysis questions about weaknesses, needs analysis questions about buying processes, questions to ask customers about your product, questions to ask customers to close the deal.

Here are some of the most critical questions salespeople should ask their prospects.

• “Do we need to include any other decision-makers in our conversation?”
• “If timeline or budget were not constraints, what would your ideal solution look like?”
• “Why is this a priority for you now?”
• “What challenges do you think will come up as you try to purchase the product?”
• “Are you currently using another solution? If so, why are you switching?”
• “Has your team tried to use a similar product? If so, how did it go?”
• “How can I make this process as easy as possible?”
• “What’s your approximate budget for this project?”
• “What other tools do you use in your day-to-day?”
• “What challenges have you experienced in the past year related to [product-related goal]?”

Asking the right questions is crucial when speaking with a prospect for the first or second time. As a salesperson, your job is to discover their core needs quickly and succinctly. The questions above will uncover needs — while also helping you figure out whether this customer is the right fit for your product.

After you get your customer’s answers, you can customize your sales presentations and pitches to their specific circumstances.

Next, we‘re going to cover some key strategic questions from real sales leaders. Let’s take a look.

According to Magee Clegg , CEO of Cleartail Marketing , “This question does two things incredibly well — it helps prospects articulate their short-term goals, giving you insights into their immediate needs, and it positions your services as a solution within the context of their strategic planning. It’s a question that naturally leads to a deeper dialogue about how your offerings align with their objectives.”

2. “What does the ideal outcome look like for you with this project or service?”

This question is essentially a bit more of a focused play on the sixth question on this list. Clegg says that this question "allows the prospect to envision the future success that your service can bring them. It turns the conversation into a more positive, forward-thinking one, where the prospect isn‘t just focused on what’s wrong now but on the potential for improvement and growth. “This question has helped me transform sales conversations at Cleartail Marketing into collaborative strategy sessions, where the prospect sees us as a partner in achieving their vision, rather than just another vendor.”

3. “What outcome would make this investment worth it for you?”

This question is another way to phrase the previous one with a bit more of a product-specific, value-oriented edge. Bayu Prihandito , Founder of Life Architekture , suggests you ask it because it helps with “Understanding your prospect's definition of success helps align your offer with their expectations. It clarifies their goals and sets the stage for how your product or service can meet them.”

4. “Why did you consider our services/products just now?”

Prihandito recommends asking this question because it can help you “find out the 'why' behind their interest, understanding the urgency and any immediate motivations for them to look for solutions.”

5. “Can you describe a challenge you're facing that you hope we can address?”

Prihandito says salespeople should ask this question because “[being] able to directly pinpoint specific problems allows you to understand where your offering will fit best into their current situation.”

6. “How does solving this challenge fit into your big picture?”

Prihandito suggests asking this question because “linking your prospect's immediate need to bigger goals gives you an understanding of their values and long-term plans. Then, you can align your solution within a larger context, which will increase its perceived value.”

7. “What barriers do you face in your attempt to scale your business?”

According to Baidhurya Mani , Founder of SellCoursesOnline , “Scaling the business is often the number-one reason business leaders integrate technology into their operations. When you can pinpoint what their barriers to scaling are, then you can also determine what solutions to offer them in this scenario. Whatever challenge is preventing them from growing their business, that is your prospect's premium priority at the moment, and that is the number-one need they need you to meet.”

8. “How does your current solution fall short?”

Casey Jones , Founder of CJ&CO , says asking this question can help you identify key gaps in your prospect‘s operations. According to him, this question helps you "[dig] for dissatisfaction — this is where you’ll find the gap your product or service can fill."

9. “What's the impact of not addressing [your key] challenges?”

Jones also suggests asking this question because it allows you to “[emphasize] urgency. It makes the cost of inaction real, often a powerful motivator to move forward.”

10. “Can you walk me through your decision-making process?”

Jones says that this question “unpicks the power structure, timelines. We understand the 'how'—crucial to tailor the pitch.”

11. “What barriers do you face in your attempt to scale your business?”

12. “which potential deal-breakers would keep us from working together”.

Johannes Larsson , Founder and CEO of JohannesLarsson.com , “This will allow your prospect to voice any concerns or reservations they might have about the product or service. By addressing these upfront, you can demonstrate your commitment to understanding and resolving issues, which builds trust and rapport with the prospect. This question will also help you gather valuable insights into the prospect's priorities and non-negotiables so you can tailor your approach accordingly.”

Free Guide: 101 Sales Qualification Questions

101 Questions to Ask Contacts When Qualifying, Closing, Negotiating, and Upselling.

• Budget Questions
• Business Impact Questions
• Competitor Questions

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Needs Analysis Questions

• What is your boss or team hoping to accomplish in the next year?
• What do you perceive as your team’s greatest strength? Weakness?
• From your perspective, what do you perceive your needs to be? How important are they?
• Which resource could you use more of?
• What are your buying criteria and success criteria?
• What do you like best about your current system? What would you like to see changed?
• Would you rather cut costs, save money, or increase productivity?

13. “What are your short-term goals? Long-term goals?”

According to Uka Tomikis , CEO of Messente , asking this question is important because “[understanding] a prospect's goals enables you to align your solution with their objectives and demonstrate how you can contribute to their success. This indicates your interest in their business success rather than just completing a transaction.”

14. “What's been preventing you from reaching these goals?”

Tomikis says that asking this question is crucial because “[identifying] hurdles allows you to directly address how your product or service will overcome these limitations. It also helps to prioritize which demands are most urgent.”

15. “How are you currently addressing these challenges?”

Tomikas recommends asking this question because “knowing a prospect's current solutions lets you differentiate yours by emphasizing new features or benefits that fill gaps in their current strategy.”

16. “What does the ideal solution look like to you?”

Tomikas asserts that asking this question “lets you grasp the prospect's expectations and tailor your pitch accordingly. It highlights their top features or outcomes, allowing you to focus on the most important components of your service.”

17. “What criteria will you use to evaluate solutions?”

Tomikas recommends asking this question because “[understanding] your prospect's evaluation criteria provides insight into what is most important to them, whether it be cost, ease of use, scalability, or support. It enables you to adapt your proposal to fit these criteria.”

18. “Have you ever solved this problem before? What worked and what did not?”

Tomikas recommends you ask this question because “[learning] from previous attempts allows you to understand what not to propose and what might be a better strategy, preventing recurrent failures and building trust by respecting their experience.”

19. “What is your boss or team hoping to accomplish in the next year?”

This is another question that covers a prospect‘s goals — but this one adds an element of specificity that the previous ones don’t, enabling you to really hone in on what the business is hoping to achieve.

Pro-Tip: Be sure to stress that you want to know company leadership‘s or the broader org’s goals here. This question is meant to get prospects thinking beyond themselves. You can ask how your solution will improve their day-to-day later — here, you want them to place your offering in a “bigger picture” context.

20. “What deadlines are you currently up against?”

Add more urgency to the conversation by explicitly asking your customer if they’re up against any deadlines. Once you find out if they have a set date where they must achieve or do something, you can highlight your solution as a tool for getting there more quickly.

Pro-Tip: This question is good for disqualifying prospects. If your prospect is working on a timeline you can't realistically accommodate, you can end the engagement and spare yourself crucial time and resources.

21. "How do your team’s objectives play into your department's strategy?”

This question might seem extraneous, given that we’ve already covered two questions about objectives and goals — but knowing the role of their team in the department’s larger strategy can hint at the needs of the entire department.

For instance, if you’re selling an SEO software solution, you might want to listen for the team’s role in increasing traffic, meaning that the business is intending to grow its organic acquisition. If your software also offers acquisition tools, you can pitch those as well.

A better alternative to “ What are your needs?” , this question will specifically ask for your customer’s perception of their needs, not necessarily their actual needs. After asking a series of needs analysis questions, you’ll likely have a better understanding of your customer’s needs than they do. But it’s important to understand what they perceive their needs to be.

26. “Do you struggle with [common pain point]?”

This is a classic question to uncover your customer’s challenges. It works because it puts a name to the pain point. Your customer might not even know what their pain point is until you mention it outright. Sometimes, they might be used to dealing with the challenge and not even bring it up. By posing this question, you force them to reckon with it.

Pro-Tip: This is a good opportunity to raise pain points that your solution is uniquely positioned to address, but you need to understand your vertical as thoroughly as possible to touch on reasonable, relevant ones. “Common pain points” vary by factors like scale and industry — so don't just throw random examples out for the sake of throwing them out.

27. “Which resource could you use more of?”

Ask this question to not only understand what resources you could offer right then and there — but to see the types of resources your team could create to convert more prospects. You can send this information straight to your marketing department so you can begin to nurture leads with this new resource.

Pro-Tip: Your customer might also respond in general terms: They might need a bigger budget or a bigger team. Use this information to further qualify them or figure out if you could create a better package for them.

Is it by attending a team-wide meeting, and everyone votes on whether to adopt a solution or not? Does it depend on the contract value of the product? If you’re selling a cheaper product, your customer might have a much more speedy process. But if your product is pricier, they might have a different process.

38. “Would you rather cut costs, save money, or increase productivity?”

This is another way to uncover where your customer’s priorities lie. The fun part is that it offers choices in a “Would you rather” format, making it easier to ask and leading to a more conversational or casual answer.

39. “Which product features would lead to a purchasing decision?”

Some product features might not be necessary to your customers, while others might be critical. Whatever your customer mentions here, use that to highlight that exact feature in your product.

40. “If you’ve considered a similar product in the past but didn’t purchase it, why?”

Has your customer come close to making a similar purchase, but pulled back at the last second? This question will give you insight into potential objections you could face as you near a closed deal.

41. “On average, how long does it take for your team to purchase a product?”

Take advantage of this question to find out how long you could potentially be in conversation with this customer.

When you‘re checking in with current clients with the hope of either upselling, cross-selling, or renewing, it’s imperative you ask the right questions.

If you fail to ask tough questions about the good and bad of your product/service, you risk missing warning signs they're unhappy and would consider churning to a competitor.

Don't leave the door open. Close it with these questions:

• “On a scale of one to 10, how happy are you with our product?”
• “Why did you give us that score?”
• “Can you explain the weaknesses or challenges you've found in our product/service so far?”
• “What do you love about our product/service?”
• “How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?”
• “How has adoption and internal use gone in your team?”
• “Do you feel you've received outstanding customer service?”
• “Are you ready to renew today?” (Only if the first seven questions have had positive answers)
• “What can we do to earn your business for another year?”
• “Would you be interested in our new add-on Feature X?”

As you near the end of your conversation with a customer, you want to find out, in no uncertain terms, how you can get their business. Use your customer’s background as a guidepost for how you’ll word this question.

If you get the sense your customer doesn’t like being pushed or is on the fence, try to close in a more circumventive way. Here are some options:

• “What will it take for us to do business?”
• “How soon can we begin?”
• “What is my best shot for winning your account?”
• (If they’re a returning customer) “What did we do in the last sale that impressed you most?”
• "What’s the best time to touch base before you present the product to stakeholders?”

Ask Better Questions to Analyze Your Customer’s Needs

Great sales questions enable you to tailor your messaging to your prospects' goals and show them your solution is the best choice. By asking the right questions, you can further qualify your prospects, close more deals, and increase recurring revenue at your company.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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