Feedback survey questions for genuine customer insights

The success of your products or services revolves around your customer’s experience and how they perceive your organization. But how can you gauge what your customer base thinks about your company? And how will you know if you need to make changes to your products or services?

This is where customer satisfaction surveys come into play. They can provide valuable insights into how customers perceive your brand.

Customer surveys are the most direct and effective way to gather constructive feedback from customers about your company’s strengths and weaknesses. You can also use them to find out where there’s room for improvement.

However, the feedback you collect is only valuable if you ask the right questions.

To help you get the most out of your customer feedback surveys and understand your customers’ needs, take a look at the question examples below. They are grouped into specific categories to help you find the best ones for your goals.

When sending out customer feedback surveys, you need to ask questions about their overall experience with your company. Delivering a quality customer experience is essential for building brand loyalty.

Being proactive by approaching customers about their experience can help you ensure you’re taking steps to maintain customer retention and satisfaction.

Below are some questions you can use to assess customer experience:

On a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied), how would you rate your experience with our brand?

Type: rating question

This is the most important customer satisfaction score (CSAT) question. It measures your customers’ overall satisfaction with your brand and their experience using your product or service.

It can be a helpful question to send customers at specific intervals after purchasing your product or service to gauge the success of your overall brand experience.

To calculate the CSAT score, divide the total number of customers who selected “very satisfied” (5) or “satisfied” (4) by the total number of survey responses.

Next, multiply that result by 100 to get your customer satisfaction percentage.

On a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied), how would you rate your in-store visit experience today?

Type: rating question

Even if you offer a great product or service, you may notice a dip in sales if customers are dissatisfied with their store or site visit experience. This customer satisfaction question could be essential in evaluating what your front-line staff are and aren’t getting right.

You may find it helpful to include sub-questions asking customers to rate their experience with aspects like billing, facilities, and in-store customer support.

Please share your experience with our brand in your own words

Type: open-ended question

This open-ended question is a great follow-up to the previous questions. Rather than being restricted to a set of choices or rankings, this gives customers a chance to describe their experience in detail using their own words.

You may find that certain aspects of their in-store visit affected their perception of your brand in ways you were not anticipating (either good or bad). This can help give you insight into how your store experience is affecting your brand’s image.

How could we improve your experience with our company?

Type: open-ended question

Customers often refrain from complaining about an issue unless they have a truly terrible experience. Yet, even minor problems and inconveniences can negatively affect a customer’s perception of your brand, reducing customer retention.

Including this question in a survey after customers make a purchase can be invaluable. You can encourage customers to share any challenges they experience, no matter how minor they may seem. This can help you better address your customers’ needs and expectations—a key step in building a reputation as a customer-centric brand.

Collecting feedback about your product or service is essential. Product feedback questions can collect valuable information on things like product quality, pricing, and ease of use.

If you don’t ask product-specific survey questions, how can you be sure that your product is meeting your customers’ needs? Finding out how satisfied customers are with your products can help you identify customer needs and make effective changes to improve product quality and customer retention.

Regardless of what product or service you offer, you can restructure the five questions below and use them to collect valuable customer feedback.

How would you rate your satisfaction with the product on a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied)?

Type: rating question

You can use this simple product satisfaction question to quickly gather data on how customers view your product. Ask them to rate their overall satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5. This question will provide general feedback, but it’s also a valuable opening question that can help you quickly assess how your customers perceive your product.

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

Type: open-ended question

This is an open-ended question, but you can make it close-ended by adding options for the customer to select relating to your product’s features, marketing, design, or popularity.

This question can give you valuable insight into why customers are buying your product and where your marketing strategies are succeeding so you can replicate this in the future.

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

Type: open-ended question

This open-ended question allows your customers to express what they liked about their recent experience with your product. You can use it to discover where you are succeeding. This is extremely valuable information to have as you will want to maintain and enhance successful features moving forward.

What did you like least about your recent experience with our [product/service]?

Type: open-ended question

Gathering detailed information about why customers may have been dissatisfied with their recent experience with your product/service is equally important. Even satisfied customers may have certain complaints that could help you make improvements. 

Of course, you can offer a great product or service and still lose customers if your team doesn’t offer a good customer service experience. Asking the right questions about how a customer’s experience was working with one of your agents can help you assess how well your team helps and retains customers.

Please rate your satisfaction with our team in resolving your issue on a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied).

Type: rating question

Some customers will encounter problems with your product or service. This is inevitable. When they do, they will seek support from a customer service agent.

How well your agents handle these interactions can ensure your customers are satisfied, improving retention rates. This question can help capture general feedback on how well customers feel your agents did in helping them address their problems or concerns.

On a scale of 1 (not at all well) to 5 (very well), how well did our team answer your questions?

Type: rating question

This question can be vital in helping you understand whether customers feel they are getting the level of support they expect from your company. You can couple it with an open-ended question, allowing customers to express where your team succeeded or where they feel your team could have done better.

Based on your customer service experience, how likely are you to recommend our brand to others?

Type: rating question

Providing a quality customer service experience is just as vital to your brand’s reputation as your product quality. This question can help you gauge the effect your customer service experience is having on customer loyalty and retention. Respondents provide their feedback on a scale of 0 (very unlikely) to 10 (very likely).

This is a net promoter score (NPS) question. The NPS metric gives you the numerical ratings of the likelihood of respondents recommending your brand to other people—in other words, the likelihood of business growth.

Respondents fall into the following categories:

• Detractors (0–6)

• Passives (7–8)

• Promoters (9–10)

Here’s the formula you’ll need to use to calculate your NPS:

Percentage of promoters – percentage of detractors = NPS

What could we have done better to improve your customer service experience?

Type: open-ended question

This is a great open-ended question to end a customer service experience feedback survey. Customers are given the chance to share what they think you could do to improve. This feedback can then be relayed to your agents to help improve your overall customer service experience.

Regularly gathering feedback on your website is essential. A website that is slow, unappealing, or difficult to use could deter prospective customers.

You can use on-page surveys to gather information to help you improve your overall customer service experience. Asking the following questions can help you reduce bounce rates and increase conversion rates on your website.

How would you rate our website on a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied)?

Type: rating question

This simple rating scale question can be used to gather quick data about your customer’s overall satisfaction with your website. However, since it doesn’t provide information on what customers do/don’t like, it’s best to ask it alongside questions that collect more detailed data on how your website is performing.

How likely are you to recommend our website to others on a scale of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (very likely)?

Type: rating question

When customers like your website’s design or content, they are likely to share it with a friend. This question—another NPS-style question—can help you measure brand loyalty and determine whether your website’s design is effectively engaging readers and spreading brand awareness.

What do you think our website is missing?

Type: open-ended question

Even if a customer enjoyed your website and decided to make a purchase or share your content with others, there’s always room for improvement.

You can use this question to find out what customers would have enjoyed seeing on your website or what feature would have made it easier/more enjoyable to use.

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

Type: open-ended question

This pop-up question can provide valuable data on what is holding your customers back from making a purchase or doing whatever you want them to do.

Is there not enough information on the product listing? Is shipping too expensive? Is your product significantly more expensive than competitor products?

Feedback from customers who didn’t make a purchase can be just as valuable as feedback from those who did.

Sending periodic employee experience surveys is a great way to evaluate how your brand is perceived and how you could improve your company’s overall service quality. Without happy employees, you’ll struggle to make your customers happy.

Here are some good examples of employee feedback survey questions:

How would you rate your overall satisfaction of working with our organization on a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied)?

Type: rating question

This is a quick and effective way to anonymously gather data on how satisfied your employees are working for your company.

You may also choose to add sub-questions measuring employee satisfaction in specific areas of their job, such as teamwork, compensation, and work–life balance. This can help give you an overview of where you are succeeding and failing as an employer. You’ll be able to see what changes you need to make to improve employee satisfaction.

On a scale of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (very likely), how likely are you to recommend this organization as a good place to work?

Type: rating question

You can use this essential NPS question to evaluate your employees’ loyalty to your brand and their overall satisfaction with you as an employer.

Employee loyalty is just as important as customer loyalty. Employees who are enthusiastic about your brand and willing to refer employees are also more likely to refer friends and family as customers.

What do you like/dislike about this organization?

Type: open-ended question

The previous questions just give you generic data on how happy or loyal your employees are, but they won’t reveal why.

Asking this question is your opportunity to learn more about why your employees feel the way they do about your organization.

You could make this a close-ended, multiple-choice question where your employees select answers about issues relating to culture, compensation, management, and other things. However, your employees may appreciate the chance to write their thoughts in more detail.

What has your overall experience working with this organization been like?

Type: open-ended question

This question builds on the previous one and provides employees with an opportunity to go into greater detail about their positive and negative experiences working at your company.

It gives you valuable insight into what you are getting right and what changes need to be made within your organization. It also fosters company loyalty as your employees will appreciate feeling heard and having a chance to express their opinions.

Designing an effective feedback survey takes time. You’ll want to ensure that you get reliable and useful information that will help you improve your customer service experience.

Here are five tips to help you increase response rates and get valuable data from your customers or employees.

1. Know what information you want to collect

Before you start writing survey questions, take some time to think about what exactly you are hoping to achieve with your survey. Are you hoping to improve your online shopping experience? Do you want to test new potential service offerings? Having a specific goal in mind will help you determine what kind of questions to ask.

2. Keep your survey short

Let’s face it: your customers are busy, and they don’t want to have to fill out a lengthy survey. If it looks overwhelming, they might not complete it at all. For this reason, try to keep it as brief as possible. You might not be able to ask every question you’d like to, so take some time to determine which questions are the most valuable to you.

You should also aim to keep questions short and to the point. Make sure they are easy to understand so that customers can give you accurate, genuine feedback.

3. Pick the right format

As you start designing your survey, you’ll need to decide whether a long survey or a short on-page poll will better meet your needs. Longer surveys help you collect more in-depth information, but as the number of questions increases, so does the risk that fewer people will complete your survey.

On-page polls typically consist of only one or two questions. They don’t provide as much data, but they do have high response rates due to how quick they are to complete.

Ultimately, you’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of these two formats and decide which works best for you.

4. Test the survey before sending it to customers

Once you have created a survey you are happy with, don’t make the mistake of sending it out right away. You’ll need to test it first. Ask coworkers or other people in your network to test the survey before you send it out to ensure it works well, is worded properly, and is easy to understand.

You want to ensure that the final survey you send to customers is concise and clear about what information you’re looking for.

5. Analyze the data

Once you send out the survey, it will be a waiting game to see how many people participate. Once your data comes back, spend some time analyzing it to see what you can learn about how customers perceive your services and your brand as a whole. You can then assess what changes you need to make to your company and product offerings to improve or maintain customer satisfaction.

Determine what you hope to accomplish with your survey to figure out which questions you should ask. What answers do you hope to get? And what would you like to learn from the information? For instance, are you hoping to learn whether your customers would buy your product again?

Once you know what you are hoping to learn from your survey, it should be easy to write questions that will get you those answers.

Customer satisfaction surveys can help businesses better understand how consumers perceive their brand and whether their company’s initiatives have been successful.

Asking the right questions can help give you the tools you need to continue providing a high level of customer service, increasing customer retention and loyalty. It also informs you where your brand is failing, allowing you to make adjustments to your services before your revenue is significantly affected.

While your customer satisfaction survey provides you with a valuable opportunity to learn more about your customers and what you need to do to improve brand loyalty, be careful not to overwhelm the customer.

Try to keep surveys as short as possible so participants don’t lose interest. No one wants to spend 30 minutes answering questions about a product they have purchased. Time is valuable. The shorter a survey is, the more likely customers are to complete it.

Take some time to decide what your specific goal is for the survey you are creating, and try to choose no more than 5–10 questions to achieve this goal.

Offering a reward for completing a survey is a common strategy that businesses and researchers use to encourage participation and increase response rates. The idea is to make the survey participation experience more attractive and valuable for the respondents, ensuring a higher completion rate.

If you want to get timely, accurate information from your customer surveys, send them to customers right after they experience your products or services. This way, their experience will be fresh enough in their mind to provide reliable answers. You will also be able to make quick amends if they encounter any problems.

Of course, if you have customers you work with regularly, you should consider sending out surveys periodically to measure their happiness and ensure they are still satisfied with your services.