Product survey questions you need to ask

Product surveys can provide your team with a wide range of information about what your customers or other members of your target audience think about your current products, potential future products, and overall user experience, which can be used to make various decisions for your company. 

Knowing the most beneficial product survey questions to ask and how to word them so your customers understand them is an important step in making your surveys as effective as possible. 

Here’s an overview of what product surveys are, how they benefit your business and your customers, and how to select questions that give you the results you want!

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Product surveys ask your audience a series of questions about what they like or dislike about a product and whether it’s meeting their expectations. This information can be used to give you an overall idea of how well your business is serving your customers and where you may be falling short. 

Other types of product surveys can be used to evaluate interest in possible future products, determine underlying motivations, or uncover additional opportunities within your user base. All product surveys can help to inform your team about what your brand is considering investing into before starting or launching something new. 

Product surveys can provide a wealth of information about the products your business offers and the experience your customers have using them. Choosing the right survey model will help guide you to discoveries most relevant to your goals. 

Idea validation surveys, concept testing surveys, customer satisfaction surveys, and product feedback surveys are among the most common and beneficial types of product surveys that can serve a wide range of businesses. 

Idea validation surveys

Knowing whether a new product idea has a high level of potential to capture the interest of your target audience and result in a reasonable number of sales is an important step in determining whether pursuing the idea is worth the time, money, and other resources it will take to bring it from your mind to your store shelves or eCommerce website. 

A product that you personally think would be a hit may not gain the traction you expect it to, and it’s a good idea to learn about what your audience may think in advance to prevent this from happening. Failed products can result in a significant amount of wasted resources throughout the development process, which may be difficult for your business to recover from.

An idea validation survey can help you gauge the overall level of potential interest in the new product or service you’re considering to help you make a more informed decision about whether it’s likely to provide the desired results before moving any further in the process. 

This type of survey can help you learn more about what types of products or services your target audience is most interested in and whether the idea you have in mind aligns with concepts they’re most likely to be willing to spend money on. 

Concept testing surveys

Before releasing a new logo, slogan, marketing campaign, individual advertisement, or other element of your brand's overall design, it’s best to determine whether it creates the impression you want among members of your target audience. Doing so will help increase the likelihood of it being successful. 

Concept testing surveys can help you avoid missing the mark with concepts that turn out to be uninteresting, in poor taste, or interpreted differently from the impression you were trying to create. 

A concept testing survey serves a similar purpose to an idea validation survey, but instead of asking about a product, it asks members of your target audience for their thoughts about an element of your brand or marketing that you’re considering. 

Customer satisfaction surveys

Your business's responsibility to your customers doesn’t end when you’re paid, and going the extra mile to make sure your customers are satisfied with their purchase and the overall experience they had interacting with your business is an important step in showing them that their opinions are important to you.

After your customer receives their order, sending them a customer satisfaction survey asking about their overall experience can give you a wide range of insights. It can tell you what they thought of the product or service, customer service interactions, shipping time, branding, value for the price they paid, and a wide variety of other aspects of their overall experience. 

Your business can then use this feedback to improve your products, customer service, and other aspects of your business to make them better align with your customers' expectations and preferences. 

Product feedback surveys 

Product feedback surveys function similarly to customer satisfaction surveys, but they only focus on gathering information about what your customers think about your products instead of their overall experience interacting with your business. 

Your business can use concepts that come up frequently to identify areas that a large percentage of your customers would like to see changed, which can be a helpful starting point for making continuous improvements to your business. 

NPS surveys

An NPS or Net Promoter Score survey attempts to take an overarching sentiment of your company. It comprises a 1–10 rating scale depicting how likely a customer would be to recommend your product to a peer. 

Respondents ranking between 1–3 are considered “detractors.” Those who give a rating between 4–7 are labeled neutral parties. And the term “promoters” is given to respondents who answer 9 or 10. 

Giving a follow-up question asking why they gave the score they did can be helpful for all respondents. NPS is a proven metric to measure company success, but in practice, it can be extremely difficult to do well in. 

It's agreed upon that an NPS between 0 and 30 is a good starting point. Companies with NPS ranging above 30 up to 70 are considered to be doing great work, while scores 70 and above are considered companies of excellence.

Product surveys give you honest and detailed insights into what your customers think about your business, which can be a valuable tool for making product decisions. Here are three helpful ways product surveys can benefit your business and your customers:

Quickly and easily gather user insights 

Product surveys make it easy to reach a large number of customers or other members of your target audience at once to obtain a significant number of responses. By using a streamlined method for reaching as many people as possible, you can compile enough data to reduce your margin of error and give you the most accurate results possible. 

Gather information to assist your business in making decisions 

It’s important to make business decisions with both you and your customers in mind, and asking customers what they want from your business is an important step in making updates align with their preferences. 

Ensure and validate assumptions

Collecting insights can lead to contradictions, assumptions, or gaps in your data collection and analysis. Sometimes it’s necessary to conduct surveys on broad-reaching audiences with statistical relevance to your user base or entire market. Results can turn confusion and misalignment within a company into clearer findings, more opportunities, and irrefutable figures, all while validating broader concepts.

Improve your user experience and customer satisfaction 

Learning as much as you can about how your customers feel about your products, customer service, and other aspects of your business is an important step in making decisions that make them happier with your business.

Based on current sales trends and other metrics, you can probably make educated guesses about what your customers think about your brand. But directly asking them what they like about your company and what they would like to see changed from time to time can give you more accurate information to work with when considering ways to grow and improve your business. 

Customers need to know exactly what you’re asking in order for your company to make discoveries they can act upon. Questions that are unclear, include too many aspects at once, or are too complicated may cause your customers to skip questions they don’t know how to answer or provide answers that aren’t exactly what you’re looking for. 

Here are four helpful tips for asking the right questions to get the results you want:

1. Keep it precise 

Survey questions that are clear and direct are easier for your customers to understand and typically result in better responses. It’s important to ensure your questions are to the point and not overly detailed or complicated so that your customers can easily tell what you’re asking. 

2. Let your customers know why your survey benefits them 

Asking your customers to take your product survey is asking them for their precious time, which they might prefer to spend on other things, meaning that it’s important to make it clear how it will benefit them from the beginning. 

Although product surveys benefit your business, it’s also important to ensure your customers understand that the information they provide will be used to create better products and experiences for them. Taking this step will often make the difference between convincing your customers to fill out your survey and having them delete emails without responding. 

Additionally, in certain cases, providing an incentive to participants can conjure up more responses.

3. Take partial responses seriously 

Sometimes your customers may not even know exactly what they think about a particular product, especially if the product is particularly complex or requires a significant amount of use before they can develop a definite opinion. This means that these customers may only provide the details they’re sure of at the time. However, you can still gain several types of insights from compiling the information you’re able to obtain. 

All information is beneficial in some way, including limited amounts of potentially negative information. But it’s also a good idea to think about what may be going on if an unusually high percentage of your customers only provide partial responses, as it may indicate a potential problem in your survey. 

4. Ask your customers for any additional information after your product survey questions 

The questions you use make up the majority of the information you’ll obtain from that particular survey. But it can also be an excellent opportunity to ask your customers to provide any additional information they want you to know. 

This section gives your customers the opportunity to bring up additional aspects of the topic you’re asking about that you may not have previously considered, which can help you learn even more about how your customers are reacting to your product. 

Some customers may take this section more broadly than you intend and use it to provide feedback about unrelated aspects of your business, which can still be beneficial even if unrelated to the topic at hand. 

Creating strong product survey questions starts with thinking carefully about the types of information that will best inform your efforts to improve your business. 

Considering what types of details will be the most relevant when considering potential product upgrades, new products, and other product changes can help you develop survey questions that give you the specific information you need to plan, justify, and implement upcoming changes. Ensuring each question supports a specific goal will make it relevant and to the point. 

You also want to make sure you’re not just asking questions directly. A better practice would be to structure questions around a topic you’re concerned with. For example, asking if they were able to achieve their desired outcome or if they’d recommend it to a friend would be better than asking if they like your product directly.

Asking the right questions is key to obtaining the most beneficial information. So, when writing your survey questions, take the time to carefully consider what goals you want each survey to accomplish—this will ensure you're doing as much for your business and customers as possible. 

Some of the most helpful questions to consider include:

• What do you like and dislike most about this product? 

• How frequently do you use (or intend) to use this product?

• Do you think this product's durability will withstand your intended use? 

• What features of this product do you consider to be the most beneficial? 

• What would you like to see changed in an updated version of this product, and what recommendations do you have for improving it? 

• Would you recommend our company or this specific product to a friend or family member with a similar need that asked for your opinion on what to purchase? 

• Do you think this product provides good value for the price you paid for it? 

• Is this product as easy to set up and use as you expected it to be? 

Here are some of the most common questions we get about creating product surveys that bring in the best possible results:

Creating a product survey is as simple as writing a list of questions to ask customers or other members of your target audience. Their answers will provide insights into what they think about your brand and its products. 

While you can simply write a list of questions, it may help you to use a survey writing software program to optimize your questions and obtain the best results. Keep in mind that asking questions that are too direct won’t always lead to the best results. 

The specific list of questions that make the most sense to ask your customers often depends on the nature of your business and its products, the type of product survey you’re creating, what you plan to do with the information you gather, and the specific goals you want it to accomplish. 

However, there are certain basic questions you should nearly always ask to give you a general understanding of how your customers feel about your products and your business. Some of these questions include:

• What do you like best about this product or your experience with our company, and what would you like to see improved? 

• Rate your overall satisfaction with your experience with us.

Asking your customers about their experience means asking them for their time, which means that it’s important to be exceptionally respectful when approaching them. However, being too cold could make customers hold back without giving you the honest feedback you need to improve. 

This is an important time to be intentional about putting your customers first and making sure that they know how much providing honest feedback will ultimately benefit them and other customers like them. Because accurate feedback will ultimately benefit your business, this should be your focus when considering how to word your requests.