customer satisfaction survey methodology

For example, a customer that has had three continuous, negative CSAT scores and is also a detractor on NPS would be an immediate at-risk customer. A customer with positive CSAT and a promoter on NPS are potentially the best source of advocacy and candidates to cross-sell or upsell since they already have seen the value in their interactions with the process and product."

Additionally, I recommend always appending a qualitative, open-ended question, regardless of the survey you use. Without an open-ended question, you risk limiting your insight into “why” the dissatisfaction may be occurring. Qualitative user feedback can give you tons of ideas when it comes to implementing solutions.

Here's how Luke Harris, Customer Success Director at Wayin , puts it:

“Qualitative data is the nirvana many of us are searching for, because it provides us with the most human version of customer satisfaction with the added benefit of scale and replicability. To be able to unbiasedly, capture and track qualitative data helps - especially a scaling business - to quickly ascertain where it should focus, both in terms of product support and development.”

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5. determine your survey's trigger..

This step is all about who you‘re sending the survey to and when you’re sending it.

If you go back to your goals outline, this shouldn‘t be too hard to determine, at least strategically. People tend to forget this step, but it’s crucial as it affects the quality and utility of your data.

Tactically, you can trigger a survey pretty much anywhere, at any time, and to anyone. But, doing it strategically, depends specifically on when and where it's triggered.

Good examples of event data that can be used to fire a survey are:

• Time since sign up
• Key actions taken in your app — for instance, Qualaroo asks right after you receive your 10th survey response
• Complete user onboarding

Surveying too often will result in low response rates, so we recommend sending a customer satisfaction (NPS) survey seven days after signup, 30 days after the first survey, and every 90 days during the customer lifecycle.

Additionally, different questions require different survey triggers. You also need to take into account longitudinal data — how customers‘ satisfaction scores change over time. Here’s how Nils Vinje , VP of Customer Success at Rainforest QA, put it:

“The best time to trigger/send a customer satisfaction survey is after a meaningful part of the customer lifecycle is completed. ”

Best Practices for Survey Triggering

With all the options for triggering let's start with some best practices:

• The closer the survey is to the experience, the better.
• People forget how they felt the longer you wait.
• Who you survey changes what insights you get. If you survey website visitors about their satisfaction, the respondents are anonymous and may be a customer or they may not. This will bring you different data than sending an email to recent customers.
• You should survey your customers more than once to see how things change longitudinally. Especially if you operate a SaaS company or a subscription service, regular NPS surveys can help you analyze trends at the aggregate and individual levels.
• Survey people after a key moment of their customer journey.
• If a respondent gives you a high score, think about adding a follow-up question. For instance, Tinder asks you to rate its app in the app store if you give it a high score.

6. Select your survey medium.

In general, there are three primary methods by which you can send customer satisfaction surveys:

• In-App or On-Site Surveys
• Post-Service or Post-Purchase Surveys
• Long Email Surveys

Each of these may require a different software or tool . For instance, Usabilla or HotJar specialize in triggered in-app surveys. But if you're sending post-purchase surveys, you may need something that offers a web interface, like Typeform. Email surveys can usually be performed with any survey tool , like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms.

Matt Hogan , Head of Customer Success at Intricately , also emphasizes the need to collect continuous and real-time feedback, regardless of major feature launches or company-based events:

“I recommend surveying in-app and on a rolling basis. This will keep the constant feedback loop going. The technology available makes it easy to manage this.”

7. Analyze your survey data.

Once you‘ve collected your data, make sure it doesn’t just sit there dormant and unused. You‘ve got all this customer insight, and it’s just waiting to be uncovered!

Most NPS tools give you the ability to easily segment respondents based on their category, and they usually integrate with products where you can take action based on each segment. For instance, HubSpot users can easily integrate with their survey tool of choice to trigger emails based on survey response score .

Price is a crucial component of any customer experience. How much a customer pays for your product or service will dictate the level of satisfaction they expect to receive from your business. If you charge for an experience that you can‘t provide, customers won’t be satisfied with your company and will start to look elsewhere.

2. Onboard new customers with educational content and training.

Some products are easier to learn than others, and some customers are faster learners than others. Customers shouldn‘t be dissuaded from using your product because they don’t know how to operate it.

Instead, you should teach new customers how to use your product and how to get the most value out of it. Having an effective c ustomer onboarding program will ensure new users won‘t get frustrated with roadblocks early on and will continue to work with your product until they’re comfortable with its features.

3. Offer 24/7 customer support across a variety of channels.

When customers do get stuck, it‘s important that they have a way to contact you for help. Offering 24/7 support provides peace of mind because customers know they can reach you whenever they’re in trouble.

That being said, manning the phones all day and night can get expensive for a customer support team. So, the best way to optimize efficiency is to adopt multiple service channels and create an omnichannel experience. For example, you can assign bots to reply to live chat messages when your team is out of the office. And, reps can use help desk software to reply to customers from their mobile devices or via social media if they don't have access to their work computers. Depending on the size of your business, industry, and business needs, there are a number of alternatives and use cases you can trial and see if they fit your workflow.

4. Build digital and in-person communities.

Whether in-person or held on an online forum, communities are excellent for networking and educating customers. Customers can communicate with each other and learn how to best use your product, and your team can record feedback from these conversations that will help you improve products and services over time. Plus, these groups are typically formed by your most loyal users, so a forum provides you with a channel to engage a high-value audience with exclusive content or promotions.

5. Host in-person and digital networking events.

Networking events, like professional training sessions and educational webinars, are another way to gain favor with your customers. However, instead of discussing topics that are focused on your products or company, expand your sessions to include broader conversations that are relevant to your customers‘ needs and goals. This will increase audience participation because you’re trying to provide more value to the customer experience than capitalizing on a conversion opportunity.

6. Make it easy to change or cancel contracts/subscriptions.

In customer service, we often talk about earning your customer‘s trust. But, as soon as a customer signs up for a product, businesses make it nearly impossible to cancel a subscription or contract. Customers feel tricked by the business and now they’re trapped in a bad deal that's taking too long to get out of.

To avoid this feeling of entrapment, your cancellation process should be clear and concise. While that may seem counterintuitive, your goal as a business is to help customers succeed. If they're not accomplishing their goals, then your product or service may not be the right fit for them. Forcing your brand on a customer will only further damage the relationship and can even result in a negative review of your company.

7. Create customer loyalty programs.

For the customers who love interacting with your brand, there are still opportunities to add more value to their experience. Customer loyalty programs accomplish just that by providing loyal users with incentives for frequent engagement, repeat purchases, and customer advocacy. These programs keep your most valuable customers happy as you continue to reward them for long-term loyalty.

8. Ask for customer feedback on a consistent basis.

Customers will provide your team with feedback whether you ask for it or not, but proactively seeking out their opinions shows that you're invested in improving their experience. Rather than waiting for customers to reach out with complaints or suggestions, provide channels where they can submit these ideas independently. This could be as simple as adding a form to your website or creating a forum page dedicated to customer ideas.

9. Build channels for marketing, sales, customer service, and product teams to collaborate.

The information that your customer service department gathers isn‘t just valuable to that specific team. It’s useful to your entire business and should be shared with all departments throughout your organization.

However, to do this you'll need a sufficient internal communication system that enables teams to easily access and exchange information. Typically, most businesses use a messaging platform, like Slack, along with an internal knowledge base. These tools break down data silos while simultaneously protecting your private customer data.

Taking Customer Satisfaction Into Consideration

The customers you’re selling to can both buy your product, and tell you how to keep them coming back. Figuring out what’s going right or wrong during the buyer journey is invaluable when looking to innovate and grow your business. Measuring customer satisfaction will help your company meet the needs of its customers, and we hope this guide will help you incorporate more customer opinions into your business strategy.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How to measure customer satisfaction: 4 key metrics.

22 min read Customer satisfaction is about more than just minimizing complaints. Here’s an introduction to the subject, along with 4 key customer satisfaction measurements that are critical to your business success.

Customer satisfaction is a common method used to determine how well you meet – or exceed – customer expectations . It is used as a key performance indicator of customer service and product quality.

Customer satisfaction may be best understood in terms of customer experience. Customer experience (or CX) is the total sum of a customer’s perceptions , interactions, and thoughts about your business.

Customer satisfaction is a composite of many different aspects, and it is likely to change over time. Here’s a model of the various facets that contribute to customer satisfaction (or not):

Get started with our free CSAT survey template

Why should you measure customer satisfaction?

Customers who develop attitudinal brand loyalty – that is, they have a positive emotional connection to a brand – have been shown to be less price sensitive than their less-loyal counterparts. They’re also more likely to convert when they buy from you. Highly satisfied customers are also likely to tell friends and family about their experiences and to promote your brand.

According to Mckinsey, you can see the impact when you improve customer satisfaction below:

The cost of serving customers decreases, while revenue increases when customer satisfaction improves.

Customer centricity pays off, as meeting – or better yet exceeding – customer’ expectations makes you more competitive. You’ll be more likely to keep your customers, and prevent them from going to a competitor. Merkle found that 66% of consumers care more about their experience than the costs when making a brand decision . But in times of economic uncertainty, if the experience isn’t worth the cost, they’ll go elsewhere. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) estimates that good experience reviews spread by word of mouth recommendations account for 13% of consumer sales and represent $6 trillion in yearly consumer spending . It’s clear there are tangible benefits to improving customer satisfaction.

These are good reasons to aim for a level of customer experience and customer satisfaction that exceeds rather than simply meets customers’ expectations. But accurately knowing that you provide great customer service can be difficult without measuring customer satisfaction.

So how do we start effectively measuring customer satisfaction?

4 key customer satisfaction metrics to track

Here are 4 key customer satisfaction measurements that are critical to your business success. They take into account the different dimensions of customer satisfaction, such as affective (emotional) and cognitive (rationally judged) reactions to a product or service and behavioral intentions (such as likelihood to recommend or repurchase) as well as taking overall scores of satisfaction as judged by the respondents.

1. Overall Satisfaction Measure (Attitudinal)

This question reflects the overall opinion of a consumer’s satisfaction experience with a product he or she has used.

The single greatest predictors of customer satisfaction are the customer experiences that result in attributions of quality.

Perceived quality is often measured in one of three contexts:

• Overall quality
• Perceived reliability
• Extent of customer’s needs fulfilled

It is commonly believed that dissatisfaction is synonymous with purchase regret while satisfaction is linked to positive ideas such as “it was a good choice” or “I am glad that I bought it.”

By using the perception of quality and product satisfaction as a guide, we can better measure customer satisfaction as a whole.

2. Customer Loyalty Measurement (Affective, Behavioural)

This single-question measure is the core NPS (Net Promoter Score) measure.

Customer loyalty reflects the likelihood of repurchasing products and services. Customer satisfaction is a major predictor of repurchase but is strongly influenced by explicit performance evaluations of product performance, quality, and value.

Loyalty is often measured as a combination of measures including overall satisfaction, the likelihood of repurchase , and the likelihood of recommending the brand to a friend (as measured by Net Promoter Score).

A common measure of loyalty might be the sum of scores for the following three questions:

• Overall, how satisfied are you with [brand]?
• How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase [brand]?
• How likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend or family member?

Understanding customer loyalty in this form of metric helps you to measure customer satisfaction from the angle of future behavior. It can be helpful not only for understanding customer satisfaction now but also for developing future purchase predictions.

3. A series of Attribute Satisfaction Measurements (Affective and Cognitive)

Example question: How satisfied are you with the “taste” of your entre at La Jolla Grove?

Example question: How important is “taste” in your decision to select La Jolla Grove restaurant?

Affect (liking/disliking) is best measured in the context of product attributes or benefits. Customer satisfaction is influenced by the perceived quality of product and service attributes and is moderated by expectations of the product or service. The researcher must define and develop measures for each attribute that is important for customer satisfaction.

Consumer attitudes toward a product developed as a result of product information or any experience with the product, whether perceived or real.

Again, it may be meaningful to measure attitudes towards a product or service that a consumer has never used, but it is not meaningful to measure customer satisfaction when a product or service has not been used.

Cognition refers to judgment: the product was useful (or not useful); fit the situation (or did not fit); exceeded the requirements of the problem/situation (or did not exceed), or was an important part of the product experience (or was unimportant).

Judgments are often specific to the intended use application and use occasion for which the product is purchased, regardless of whether that use is correct or incorrect.

Affect and satisfaction are closely related concepts. The distinction is that satisfaction is “post-experience” and represents the emotional effect produced by the product’s quality or value.

Using this metric to measure customer satisfaction helps you to narrow down the causes of customer satisfaction levels. Unhappy customers may have a particular emotive response to products and services, rather than quality being the issue, for example.

4. Intentions to Repurchase Measurements (Behavioural Measures)

When wording questions about future or hypothetical behavior, consumers often indicate that “purchasing this product would be a good choice” or “I would be glad to purchase this product.” Behavioral measures also reflect the consumer’s past experience with customer service representatives.

Customer satisfaction can influence other post-purchase/post-experience actions like communicating to others through word of mouth and social networks.

Additional post-experience actions might reflect heightened levels of product involvement that in turn result in an increased search for the product or information, reduced trial of alternative products, and even changes in preferences for shopping locations and choice behavior.

How to use these metrics to develop customers satisfaction KPIs

Measuring customer satisfaction to gather your customer feedback , illuminate the risk of customer churn , and discern loyal customers is useful, particularly over time.

However, it is better to measure customer satisfaction with particular goals in mind. By having scores you’re aiming to meet, whether that is an internal or industry benchmark, you’re able to track your progress over time and react to how you’re doing. If your actions aren’t improving your CSAT score, you might need to re-evaluate where you’re going wrong.

So how do you set a realistic goal for your customer satisfaction score that can act as your KPI?

Improve on your past customer satisfaction score

The most obvious answer is to consistently be improving customer satisfaction feedback. Taking an initial score as a benchmark and taking stock at regular intervals will help to not only measure customer satisfaction over time but to constantly improve your service. Your score might refer to one part of the customer journey – for example, ordering a new car, or picking it up. Try to figure out what is causing the scores you’re receiving – speak to customers, product teams, frontline staff – all of them have useful insights to help you improve. Of course, customer satisfaction will continue to change and evolve and you should treat it as such.

Just because your score is high doesn’t mean it will stay that way – constantly look to improve customer satisfaction! Customer expectations will flux and evolve, and your efforts to create happy customers will need to follow suit.

Take a look at the competition

Your competition will almost certainly be measuring customer satisfaction. Understanding – to whatever extent you can – where you stand in comparison to your competitors will help you to set yourself customer satisfaction goals for the future. They are likely seeing the importance of customer satisfaction – so don’t get left behind.

Judge by industry benchmarks

Your industry will almost certainly have customer satisfaction benchmarks that will provide you with a solid guideline for measuring customer satisfaction. If you’re not meeting your industry’s baseline, then it’s likely that your customer experience is falling short of the expectations of your consumer base.

How to measure customer satisfaction for increased performance

You understand each customer satisfaction metric you need to score – but how do you actively gather your data on the customer experience? What are the best practices for gathering customer satisfaction information, and once you have it, what do you do with it?

Here are ways of measuring customer satisfaction for more happy customers and business growth, as well as recommendations for best practice:

Use agile customer satisfaction surveys to gauge success and take action

Gathering customer satisfaction data and developing KPIs is an important process, but measuring customer satisfaction is often seen as a rote exercise to complete.

A customer satisfaction survey is a useful tool in a brand’s arsenal for gauging success, but it is often seen as a “must-do” action rather than a useful tool. Instead, to prioritize customer success, brands need to develop an agile, adaptable approach to customer surveys.

Developing a system of delivering customer surveys that is agile and well-targeted will help you to not only take the pulse of customer sentiment , but it will also help to create targeted actionable insights on an ongoing basis.

A quarterly or an annual measurement will only provide you with a snapshot of customer success. It won’t help you to measure the reaction to a new launch, or the integration of a new system. It also won’t help you to narrow down whether overall customer sentiment has changed, or whether specific actions you’re taking have had an effect.

Collecting customer feedback in an ongoing approach will help you to see the micro-trends of customer satisfaction. You can quickly adjust your customer journey to help new customers experience the best of your brand, rather than take delayed action.

Always be listening to your customers, no matter where they are

Your customer satisfaction scores aren’t everything. Though they’re very useful, improving customer satisfaction is about understanding the underlying reasons why loyal customers and satisfied customers feel the way they do – as well as finding out what would make dissatisfied customers stay.

For example, using natural language understanding (NLU) and conversational analytics to gauge how customers are feeling in real time as they speak to you or about you allows you to see the reasons behind the scores. Is it that your customer support efforts are lacking, causing feelings of frustration? Have you provided a particularly exceptional customer experience that left customers feeling elated?

Understanding this type of customer feedback gives you more detail and background information than metrics or customer surveys can. It gives you insight into how customers feel, and that is vital when looking to increase customer satisfaction. Positive customer emotions can lead to a high customer satisfaction score and repeat customers, while failing to make customers happy can drive down customer satisfaction scores.

Taking action to improve customer satisfaction

As outlined previously in this article, there are four key metrics that you should use to help you improve customer satisfaction.

However, simply gathering this customer satisfaction data isn’t enough to help your business thrive. Narrowing down the key triggers for unhappy customers and taking action to improve customer satisfaction is the most vital part of the process.

Whether it’s poor customer service or customer frustration at a particular ordering process, finding the core causes of customer dissatisfaction – and conversely, what makes customers happy – is the right approach. Ideally, you’re completing these actions in real-time, using conversation analytics and other tools to resolve issues in the moment.

The customer satisfaction process will constantly need improvement to meet new demands and to avoid stagnation in a highly competitive market.

For example, this diagram shows a potential customer satisfaction process improvement cycle:

Here, customer follow-ups and customer satisfaction surveys are a fundamental part of the development of customer experience. At each stage of the customer interaction, gathering customer data and formulating a response is a given part of the process – meaning your customers’ satisfaction is never left to chance.

Your internal process should include a number of stages that will form an understanding of  customer sentiment and take appropriate action :

1. Customer satisfaction data gathering

Listen to what your customers are saying on a rolling basis. This data can be gathered effectively through customer satisfaction surveys , but it can be bolstered by social listening and unsolicited customer feedback (customer lifetime value, etc). Conversational analytics can be used to analyze customer emotion, sentiment and intent in real time, no matter where the conversations are being had or with whom.

Often, a customer satisfaction survey will return insights at the extremes, such as highly negative feedback and a very positive review. Customer interactions at particular points in the customer service journey (such as customer service conversations) may also generate more extreme results. Gathering further data, particularly in real time, and collating it all within one platform can help you to tease out the truth of customer satisfaction.

2. Understanding customer journey touchpoints and their effect

Knowing the particular journey your customer has experienced is important for determining touchpoint value. This is again why ongoing customer satisfaction surveys or conversational analytics can be more effective than taking a static, scheduled approach. When you track customer satisfaction across the customer journey, you’re able to take the best action, rather than applying the same approach to the pre, during and post-checkout experiences.

Once you understand how customer satisfaction is tied to particular touchpoints , you can prioritize action more effectively. Fixing issues in the moment – such as increasing customer support efforts when emotions are volatile – can go a long way to get more positive reviews and achieve customer satisfaction.

 3. Narrowing down the drivers of customers satisfaction

It’s not enough to know how your customer base feelsl – discovering the drivers of their satisfaction is key for progress. There are many deciding factors behind customer satisfaction, and they’re likely to differ between customers. Determining which drivers affect each audience segment helps you to better meet their needs and expectations.

For example, a key driver could be communication. How long has it taken for a customer to get a response? How quickly was their query resolved? Did you provide status updates throughout, and were they given on the channel they’d prefer? Customers might expect that you’ll acknowledge and resolve issues quickly – but if you’re only getting back to them a week after they reach out and they’re constantly asking you for updates, you’ll get negative customer feedback from dissatisfied customers.

4. Empowering your employees to take action

Brands need to evolve their internal processes to help drive customer satisfaction, but they also need to empower their employees to take action. Employee coaching can also help to create customer experiences that are not only satisfactory, but memorable.

Creating a culture of action – where issues are identified and closing the loop is consistently achieved – will help your employees to be proactive in their approach to making customer satisfaction important. Enable your entire company, from frontline employees to sales team to marketing and more, to see relevant insights that will improve your overall customer satisfaction.

For example, it’s no good if your customer service team is the only one seeing a disconnect between what you promise your company’s products can do and how they actually perform. Your marketing team, sales team and product teams should know if repeat issues are being flagged in customer feedback, word of mouth reviews or social media posts. Use the right tools to not only track customer satisfaction, but share key insights as well.

5. Automating your actions

Another way to ensure your employees are able to take quick, effective action is to automate the process. Rather than relying on human effort to ensure that tickets, alerts, and follow-up actions are scheduled, use technology to improve customer satisfaction at scale.

You can deliver actionable insights to the right teams at the right time automatically – meaning you’re never missing a step when it comes to addressing customer dissatisfaction. By uncovering and taking actions for problems on a micro level, your team has the time to tackle wider strategic and macro issues more effectively.

Why you should use customer satisfaction measurement tools

Learning how to measure customer satisfaction is only part of the wider customer experience picture. Customer satisfaction is complex and ever-changing, and as a result, it’s important to take frequent measurements across a range of metrics in order to get the most accurate picture possible.

The wider measurement picture

Your customer satisfaction score should always be considered among a broader picture of data, including customer effort score, Net Promoter Score (NPS), conversational analytics and more. This will help you to understand customer sentiment and customer loyalty in relation to the service you’re providing.

As mentioned, there are more ways of measuring customer satisfaction than a customer satisfaction survey. Social media monitoring, focus groups, customer retention data, and more can help you to establish why existing customers stay and why new customers might not develop their customer relationship with you.

But how do you keep track of all those customer satisfaction metrics, and how do you analyze them relative to one another to one-another and gather actionable insights?

Measure customer satisfaction with Qualtrics

As mentioned, we recommend taking an ongoing approach to customer satisfaction along with other metrics as part of a broader customer experience program .

Increase satisfaction, boost loyalty and lower customer churn by listening to what customers are saying to or about you, all the time. Using Qualtrics XM™ allows you to listen 24/7, schedule surveys, automate tickets, send actionable insights and more to ensure you’re tracking satisfaction at every part of the journey, and improving broken experiences in real-time. Use our customer service support products to understand how customers feel in real-time to enhance your customer satisfaction efforts.

By measuring and analyzing your customer satisfaction metrics within a single platform, you’ll not only benefit from powerful analytic tools and easy-to-interpret results, but you’ll also be able to integrate your findings with other elements of your customer experience data. But most importantly, you’ll be able to take action on your insights across the organization far more easily, resulting in more satisfied customers.

Start measuring customer satisfaction today with our free CSAT survey template

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Customer Satisfaction Surveys: A Comprehensive Guide

While one of our favorite ways to gather customer feedback focuses on active listening during one-on-one sessions with customers, customer satisfaction surveys provide an opportunity to poll users on questions that might otherwise go unanswered.

But here’s the thing: Customer satisfaction surveys are only valuable if you ask the right questions, in the best way, at the perfect time. That’s why building and deploying an effective and valuable customer satisfaction survey is no small feat.

Today, we’ll look at some proven ways to turn your surveys into a reliable source of insightful customer information.

Why customer satisfaction surveys are important

Let’s first talk about why customer satisfaction surveys matter for today’s businesses.

Customer satisfaction is one of the few levers brands can still pull to differentiate themselves in crowded and competitive marketplaces. Today, the brand with the best customer experience usually wins.

That’s because, as Qualtrics put it , “High levels of customer satisfaction … are strong predictors of customer and client retention, loyalty, and product repurchase.”

Not to mention, poor customer satisfaction can actively harm your brand. The average American consumer will tell 16 other people about poor customer experiences, and it takes brands an average of 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience.

In other words, the stakes are high when it comes to customer satisfaction and experiences today, and customer satisfaction (or CSAT) surveys are one of the most effective ways for your brand to keep a pulse on how customers are feeling.

When you have access to the data customer satisfaction surveys provide, you can actually take action to improve your customer satisfaction and get proactive about the problems customers face.

That means you can turn negative customer experiences around and improve your overall product and service to delight more customers — leading to better loyalty and retention, higher sales, and less churn overall.

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10 customer satisfaction survey best practices

The efficacy of your customer satisfaction data relies on getting honest and accurate answers from your customers. So it’s no surprise that most of the problems we see with customer satisfaction surveys revolve around getting accurate answers from respondents:

No matter what you do, research has shown that there will always be a small minority of people who will lie on your survey, especially when the questions pertain to the three Bs: behavior, beliefs or belonging. ( Here’s a review of this topic from Cornell University.)

Furthermore, sometimes people will give inaccurate answers completely by accident. Numerous publications have noted that predicting future intentions can be quite difficult (like whether or not they’ll buy from you again), especially when done via survey.

Fortunately, research also offers solutions to these consistent problems with surveys. A joint study by Survey Monkey and the Gallup Group offers some good insights on creating and structuring surveys that can keep these problems to a minimum.

Below, let’s look at the study’s most important takeaways so you can get a clear picture of how to improve your surveys.

1. Keep it short

Your main goal is to be clear and concise, finding the shortest way to ask a question without muddying its intent. It’s not just about reducing the character count — you also need to cut out unnecessary phrasing from your questions.

At the same time, overall survey length remains important for keeping abandonment rates low. Think about the last time you sat around and excitedly answered a 30-minute questionnaire. It’s probably never happened.

2. Only ask questions that fulfill your end goal

In short, be ruthless when it comes to cutting unnecessary questions from your surveys.

Every question you include should have a well-defined purpose and a strong case for being included. Otherwise, send it to the chopping block.

For example, depending on the survey’s purpose, it may not matter how a customer first came in contact with your site. If that’s the case, don’t ask how they found out about you. Do you really need to know a customer’s name? If not, again, don’t ask.

Including questions you thought “couldn’t hurt to ask” only adds unnecessary length to your survey — length that could send survey respondents hunting for the “back” button.

3. Construct smart, open-ended questions

Although it’s tempting to stick with multiple-choice queries and scales, some of your most insightful feedback will come from open-ended questions that allow customers to spill their real thoughts onto the page.

However, nothing makes a survey more intimidating than a huge text box connected to the very first question. It’s best to ask the brief questions first and create a sense of progress. Then give survey takers who’ve made it to the closing questions the opportunity to elaborate on their thoughts.

One strategy is to get people to commit to a question with a simple introduction, and then follow up with an open-ended question such as, “Why do you feel this way?”

4. Ask one question at a time

We’ve all been hit with an extensive series of questions before: “How did you find our site? Do you understand what our product does? Why or why not?”

It can begin to feel like you’re being interrogated by someone who won’t let you finish your sentences. If you want quality responses, you need to give people time to think through each individual question.

Bombarding people with multiple questions at once leads to half-hearted answers by respondents who are just looking to get through to the end — if they don’t abandon you before then. Instead, make things easy by sticking to one main point at a time.

5. Make rating scales consistent

Common scales used for surveys can become cumbersome and confusing when the context begins to change.

Here’s an example: While answering a survey’s initial questions, you are told to respond by choosing between 1-5, where 1 = “Strongly Disagree” and 5 = “Strongly Agree.”

Later in the survey, however, you are asked to evaluate the importance of certain items. The problem: Now 1 is assigned as “Most Important,” but you had been using 5 as the agreeable answer to every previous question. That’s incredibly confusing. How many people missed this change and gave inaccurate answers completely by accident?

6. Avoid leading and loaded questions

Questions that lead respondents toward a certain answer due to biased phrasing won’t get you valuable or accurate feedback. SurveyMonkey offers a great example of a leading question to avoid:

“We have recently upgraded SurveyMonkey’s features to become a first-class tool. What are your thoughts on the new site?”

This is a clear case of letting pride in your product get in the way of asking a good question. Instead, the more neutral, “What do you think of the recent SurveyMonkey upgrades?” is a better option.

When the goal is to honestly learn something, don’t risk annoying your participants (and muddying your data) with leading questions or other tactics designed to get the responses you want to see.

7. Make use of yes/no questions

When you’re asking a question that has a simple outcome, try to frame the question as a yes/no option.

The Survey Monkey study showed that these closed-ended questions make for great starter questions because they’re typically easier for customers to evaluate and complete. For example:

“Did our support team make you feel valued as a customer?”

The response to this question doesn't require a scale — "highly valued," "valued," "not valued," etc. — a simple yes-or-no option is simpler for the customer and should give you all the information you need. Plus, you can follow it with an open-ended question, such as:

"What did our team do to make you feel valued?"

8. Get specific and avoid assumptions

When you create questions that assume a customer is knowledgeable about something, you’re likely going to run into problems (unless you are surveying a very targeted subset of people).

One big culprit is the language and terminology you use in questions, which is why we recommend staying away from industry acronyms, buzzwords and jargon, or references.

Similarly, one of the worst assumptions you can make is to assume people will answer with specific examples or explain their reasoning. It’s better to ask them to be specific and let them know you welcome this sort of feedback:

“How do you feel about [blank]? Feel free to get specific; we love detailed feedback!”

9. Think about your timing

Interestingly, the Survey Monkey study we referenced above found the highest survey open and click-through rates occurred on Monday, Friday, and Sunday, respectively.

There was no discernible difference between the response quality gathered on weekdays versus weekends, either, so your best bet is to seek out survey-takers first thing during a new week or to wait for the weekend.

Many companies conduct customer surveys once a year, or at most, once per quarter. And while that’s great, it’s not enough to keep a real pulse on customer satisfaction — you don’t want to wait 90 days to find out your customer is unhappy.

Between full surveys, you’ll want to keep a keen eye on your customer satisfaction ratings and other metrics. Reporting tools (such as Help Scout reports ) can help you turn every conversation with a customer into a feedback session.

10. Offer survey respondents a bonus

In some cases, it makes sense to entice customers to take your survey: A variety of data show that incentives can increase survey response rates. These incentives could be a discount, a giveaway, or an account credit.

The key here is to find a balance between incentivizing customers enough that they’re willing to take the survey without giving away the farm. Your incentives need to be something your brand can financially handle — which is why we often recommend credits or free trials in lieu of unrelated gifts or extensive discounts.

Now, you may worry that offering survey respondents a freebie may detract from the quality of your responses. But studies show that likely isn’t the case.

Customer satisfaction survey examples

Now that we’ve talked about best practices for customer satisfaction surveys, let’s take a look at how those look in the wild. Here are a few examples of brands doing customer satisfaction surveys right, highlighting what makes each example great.

In-app examples

The project management tool Asana makes a point of gathering feedback on customer satisfaction regularly throughout its software. Occasionally, when working in the tool, a survey will appear at the top of the screen asking how likely you are to recommend the tool:

Asking for feedback while someone is actively using your product is great because they're engaged with the product and their experience with the product is fresh in their minds.

Of course, Asana knows that busy business professionals don’t have time to complete a lengthy survey while they're in the middle of working, so they keep it short and simple. Customers only have to click a rating to provide their feedback. After clicking the rating, customers are provided with an opportunity to submit written feedback if desired.

Another great example is Twitter. Twitter makes a point to regularly survey users about all manner of product usage and satisfaction, and their surveys get several things really right.

For one, the copy that invites users to take part in the survey appears right on their Twitter timeline.

The copy also does a great job of setting expectations — it promises “a few quick questions,” and that’s exactly what the survey delivers. Twitter keeps their questions (and the survey as a whole) brief, showing users a progress bar so they always know where they stand within the survey.

Plus, the experience of going from tweet to survey and back to the user’s timeline is seamless and natural.

Email examples

This email survey from Amazon is a great way to gather specific feedback that helps other customers when shopping on the platform. Instead of asking the customer to write a review, it simply asks about the fit of a recently purchased piece of clothing.

Some people simply will not take the time to write a detailed review of a purchase, but with this simple, targeted, one-question survey, Amazon can gather the feedback it needs to make sure future purchasers of this item know which size they should buy to be satisfied with their purchase.

At Help Scout, we regularly check in with customers to gauge their satisfaction with our software and support. At times, we've sent new customers this onboarding email to find out how they're feeling about their ability to use Help Scout:

If a customer clicks on the survey question, they're taken to a succinct, five-question Typeform survey with only one open-ended question to save customers' time.

We also make it easy for customers to provide feedback after every interaction with our Customers team with a brief two-question survey:

Sample customer satisfaction survey questions

Now, we know it can be difficult to come up with customer satisfaction survey questions that tick all of the best practice boxes we mentioned before. So to make things a little easier on you, we’ve pulled together 19 sample questions, based on common customer satisfaction survey questions. You can pull these questions directly and copy/paste them into your own surveys, or tweak them as you see fit.

General survey questions

In your own words, describe how you feel about [brand or product].

How can we improve your experience with the company?

What's working for you and why?

What can our employees do better?

Do you have any additional comments or feedback for us?

Product and usage questions

How often do you use the product or service?

Does the product help you achieve your goals?

What is your favorite tool or feature?

What would you improve or add if you could?

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

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

Customer support questions

How would you rate the quality of your customer support experience?

Did our support team completely resolve your issue?

How long did it take us to resolve your problem?

Did our support team make you feel valued as a customer?

How easy did we make it to handle your issue?

Loyalty and retention questions

How likely are you to buy again from us?

How likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?

What would you say to someone who asked about us?

Get valuable feedback with a customer satisfaction survey

Customer satisfaction surveys are a potent and valuable tool in your brand’s fight to win customer hearts and loyalty. With the feedback they provide, you can improve your product, your service, and the overall customer experience — leading to higher revenue and more loyal customers.

If you’re ready to build your survey right now , here are a few high-quality customer satisfaction survey templates we recommend:

A simple and comprehensive customer satisfaction survey template from Survey Monkey

A short and sweet customer survey template from Microsoft Office

A dynamic and customizable customer satisfaction survey template from Typeform

A short and simple customer survey template from JotForm

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Kiera is a a content writer who works with SaaS and ecommerce companies. Located in Boston, MA, she loves cinnamon coffee and a good baseball game. Catch up with her on Twitter or KieraAbbamonte.com

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Customer Satisfaction Survey: 35 Questions to Ask + Templates and Examples

13 min read

A customer satisfaction survey can help you avoid getting fired. Not by your manager, though. But, by your customers.

That’s because they allow you to understand how well your product meets their needs and how you can improve it to improve user experience so that they don’t switch to a competing solution.

In this article, you will learn how to conduct customer satisfaction surveys to gather user feedback effectively.

You will discover:

• Different types of customer satisfaction surveys.
• Customer satisfaction survey templates and questions to ask (35 of them).
• How to create satisfaction surveys in Userpilot.
• Satisfaction survey best practices.
• Five examples of excellent satisfaction surveys from leading companies for inspiration.
• Answers to some frequently asked questions.

What is a customer satisfaction survey?

A customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire designed to gauge how well your product satisfies customer needs and how happy they are with the overall customer experience.

Why should you care?

Satisfied customers stay with your company, upgrade to higher plans , and recommend your product to their mates – all of which are essential for sustainable growth.

3 types of customer satisfaction surveys (+templates)

Growth teams use 3 basic types of customer satisfaction surveys.

1. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

The customer satisfaction score (CSAT) survey asks the customer a direct question: How satisfied are you with the product/feature?

It asks customers to rate their satisfaction on a scale, typically 1-5, where 1 indicates very unsatisfied and 5—very satisfied.

To calculate the score, divide the number of positive responses by the total number of respondents and multiply by 100. So if 150 out of 200 users respond they’re satisfied or very satisfied, your CSAT score is 75.

The main advantage of this type of survey is that it’s easy to design, and you can use it to measure satisfaction at various touchpoints in the customer journey.

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys ask customers how likely they are to recommend their product to friends or colleagues on a scale of 1-10.

Based on the responses, you classify users into detractors (0-6), passives (7-8), and promoters (9-10).

To calculate the score, deduct the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. So, if you surveyed 200 users, 120 of them were promoters and 40 detractors, the score would be 40 (60%-20%).

Some say NPS is a better measure of customer satisfaction than CSAT because users are less likely to recommend a product they’re not satisfied with. Because their reputation is at stake.

Build and Analyze Customer Satisfaction Surveys with Userpilot

• 14 Day Trial
• No Credit Card Required

3. Customer effort score (CES)

Customer effort score (CES) surveys focus on how easy it is to use the product or perform an action.

Just like the other satisfaction survey types, it asks users to rate their experience on a scale, usually 1-5, sometimes 1-3, where 1 is ‘very hard.’

CES surveys measure customer satisfaction indirectly: users aren’t likely to be satisfied with products that are difficult to use. And the harder the action to complete, the less likely they are to complete it. This means low CES often translates into high customer churn rates .

35 customer satisfaction survey questions to ask for better insights

There are more customer satisfaction questions you can ask than the CSAT, NPS, or CES ones. Here are 35 of them, conveniently divided into 4 categories.

Product satisfaction questions

• How satisfied are you with the quality of the product?
• How well does our product meet your expectations?
• Does our product help you achieve your goals?
• How often do you use our product?
• How would you rate the value for money of our product?
• On a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with the ease of use of our product?
• How likely are you to continue using our product?
• Are there any features you would like us to add to our product?
• How does our product compare to others you’ve used?
• On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your overall satisfaction with our product?

Customer loyalty questions

• How likely are you to recommend our product to others?
• Would you purchase our product again?
• How likely are you to try other products from our company?
• How long have you been a customer of our company?
• What was the primary reason for choosing our product over competitors?
• Have you ever recommended our product to someone else?
• How likely are you to stay with our company over the next 12 months?
• If you could, would you choose to switch to a competitor’s product?
• How would you describe your loyalty to our brand?
• What factors would increase your loyalty to our company?

Customer experience questions

• How satisfied are you with your overall experience with our company?
• How easy was it to find the information you were looking for on our website?
• Was our product/service delivered on time?
• How would you rate your experience with the checkout process?
• How seamless was your experience on our website?
• Did you have any problems during your purchase?
• How would you rate the quality of communication from our team?
• Did our product meet your expectations in terms of quality?
• How easy was it to interact with our brand?
• How satisfied are you with the personalization of your experience ?

Customer support satisfaction questions

• How satisfied are you with the support you received?
• Was your issue resolved in a timely manner?
• How would you rate the professionalism of our customer service team?
• Was the support provided clear and easy to understand?
• How helpful were the knowledge base resources?

How to easily create a customer satisfaction survey in Userpilot?

Customer satisfaction surveys can help you improve customer loyalty and retention. For example, Unolo , one of our customers, managed to reduce their user churn rate by 1% by acting on the insights from the NPS surveys. That’s huge!

And the best part?

Creating the surveys took them minutes, thanks to Userpilot’s intuitive design and template library.

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1 : In the menu, click on Feedback and choose Surveys. On the dashboard, click on the Create Survey button in the top-right corner.

Step 2 : Pick a template from the library. If you’re after a specific survey, like the CSAT or CES survey, use the search bar for efficiency.

Step 3 : Alternatively, create your own customer satisfaction survey from scratch by clicking on the button at the bottom.

Step 4 : Name your survey, choose the folder where you want to save it, and select one of the two views:

• Step view : questions appear on separate pages.
• List view : all questions appear on the same page.

Step 5 : Tailor the survey to meet your needs: add the questions, customize the style, choose when to trigger the survey (specific time/day or event-based), and determine which customer segments to target.

You can also translate your survey for users who don’t speak your language.

Looks like a breeze, doesn’t it?

If you’d like to learn more about Userpilot surveys, book the demo!

Best practices for creating customer satisfaction surveys

Now that you know how to create in-app surveys in Userpilot, let’s look at a few best practices. So that you can get the most out of them.

Include both closed- and open-ended questions

The CSAT, NPS, or CES questions above are all closed-ended questions, which means users can only choose one of the answers. These questions are quick to answer and provide quantitative data that is easy to analyze. They are great for tracking shifts in customer satisfaction over time.

But here’s the thing:

They don’t tell you why customers feel about the interactions with your product in a particular way.

To gain more granular insights, you need open-ended questions , so that users can freely write what’s in their hearts and on their chests.

Don’t make them compulsory, though, or your response rates will take a hit.

Translate the customer surveys to increase response rates

Talking about response rates: if your respondents don’t speak your language as a native tongue, they’re less likely to engage with the surveys.

And even if they do, the insights might not be valid because of limited understanding or ability to articulate their thoughts.

The solution?

Translate the surveys . With Userpilot, you can do it automatically, thanks to the AI-powered localization feature.

Trigger customer feedback surveys contextually

To get valid insights, you want users to respond to the survey when the experience is still fresh in their minds. Otherwise, they won’t remember. And might even not respond to the survey at all.

You can achieve this by using event-based triggering. This allows you to send surveys to users when they complete a specific action. For example, immediately when they use a feature, complete a task, or engage with your customer service representatives .

Event occurrence is one of the three triggering options in Userpilot.

Trigger Event-Based Customer Satisfaction Surveys with Userpilot

Use a multichannel approach to measure customer satisfaction.

Such contextual in-app surveys are excellent because they allow you to reach the users when they’re engaging with the product, which increases the chance they will respond with valuable information.

But what if the user is inactive?

Use a different channel to send the survey, like email or SMS.

Userpilot offers a 2-way integration with HubSpot so you can target your inactive users with surveys via email. You can also trigger surveys via other channels with webhooks.

Schedule customer satisfaction surveys routinely

A one-off customer satisfaction survey gives you limited insights. It’s good to take the baseline, but it doesn’t tell you much about the changes in customer sentiment over time.

That’s why we recommend conducting customer satisfaction surveys regularly. Every 3-4 months is the norm for general surveys, but you can run them more often if you’re optimizing a particular aspect of user experience and want to keep the feedback loops tight.

However, running surveys too frequently can lead to survey fatigue and negatively affect response rates in the long run.

Add a progress bar to ensure survey completion

Progress bars don’t just make your surveys look more professional, but they enhance user experience and can increase your response rates.

They set realistic customer expectations as to the survey duration and give them a sense of how much is left. A user is unlikely to drop off if they see they have only 1 question left.

In fact, the progress bar can motivate them to finish it because it triggers a strong psychological mechanism called the Zegairnik effect.

Monitor survey analytics and iterate your strategy accordingly

Survey analytics can help you monitor your survey performance and adjust it if necessary.

For example, if you discover that users tend to skip a particular question, you can reword it to make it easier to understand. Or remove it if it isn’t absolutely necessary for your research .

And if they drop off at a particular stage, shortening the survey may increase completion rates.

Userpilot offers detailed survey analytics that provides such insights. The scoreboard shows you:

• Total surveys shown.
• Total surveys completed.
• Completion rate.
• Average completion time.

You also get a graph that shows survey performance over time.

Examples of great customer satisfaction surveys from leading companies

To see how to implement these best practices, let’s have a look at a few customer satisfaction survey examples from well-known SaaS brands.

RecruitNow CSAT survey

RecruitNow is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that allows employment agencies and hiring managers to streamline the recruitment process.

The company uses CSAT surveys created in Userpilot to measure customer satisfaction and identify opportunities for improvement . These take place every six months.

As RecruitNow has expanded into the German and Austrian markets in recent years, Userpilot’s localization features are invaluable. It lets them quickly translate the surveys into different languages for higher user engagement .

Wise email NPS survey

Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, is a leading international money transfer service. To collect valuable customer satisfaction data, the company employs email-based NPS surveys .

Why choose email?

Since many of Wise’s customers don’t use the service daily—often reserving it for tasks like monthly invoice payments—email is a more suitable medium for reaching them when it’s time to gather feedback .

See how concise and direct the email is?

A quick greeting, a brief introduction, and right into the standard Likert-scale NPS question. To make it even more intuitive, two emojis flank the scale and clearly indicate the negative and positive ends. This reduces any chance of confusion.

The design is simple, with just the company logo and minimal elements to keep the customer focused on the primary task – completing the survey.

HubSpot onboarding satisfaction survey

HubSpot, a leading CRM and marketing automation platform, uses a simple in-app survey to gather feedback during the onboarding process.

When a user reaches the halfway point, Hubspot triggers this non-intrusive in-app survey to capture real-time insights on the onboarding experience.

Why this works:

• The survey is seamlessly integrated into the app experience. It appears when the user is already engaged with the platform.
• Its timing is strategic. HubSpot asks for feedback at a critical point in the onboarding process . Users have had enough experience to provide meaningful insights but are still early enough for adjustments to improve their journey.
• The in-app survey is simple and visually engaging. It uses three universally recognized smiley faces. This makes it quick and easy for users to provide feedback without any friction .
• It provides users with the option to give more detailed feedback after they answer the closed-ended question. This layered approach helps HubSpot capture both quantitative and qualitative data .

Jira CES survey

Jira, the well-known project management platform from Atlassian, uses CES surveys to collect real-time feedback on a specific task (editing a page in this case).

What makes the survey successful?

• Contextual triggering : It appears immediately after a user completes a specific task—publishing a page. This ensures more accurate and relevant feedback.
• Visual simplicity : The survey uses a row of expressive emojis to capture the user’s effort in completing the task. This reduces friction and makes the feedback process quick and intuitive.
• Follow-up open-ended question : There’s a text box for users to expand on their experience. This invites additional qualitative insights that can be used to identify areas for improvement. This is optional, however. Users who prefer quick responses can choose to only rate the experience and move on.

Userpilot customer feedback survey

Let’s wrap up with a customer satisfaction survey example you may have seen if you’re a Userpilot user.

The survey starts with a one-sentence greeting—”Thanks a lot for helping us make Userpilot even better”—and gets right to the question: “How was your experience with Userpilot?”

This is a rating question, and it uses smiley faces to help users quickly describe their satisfaction level .

The open-ended follow-up—”Do you have any specific feedback that you’d like to share with us?”— invites users to share their thoughts in more detail.

The slideout format of the survey makes it quick and easy for users to provide feedback without disrupting their workflow, which improves the chances they respond.

Having said that, the users can also quickly dismiss the survey if we catch them at the wrong time.

Frequently asked questions about customer satisfaction surveys

To finish, here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about customer satisfaction surveys.

What is the importance of using customer satisfaction surveys?

Customer satisfaction surveys are crucial for understanding your customer needs and preferences. By collecting satisfaction feedback, you can:

• Gauge user sentiment towards your product.
• Track your product performance over time and measure the impact of product changes.
• Identify ways to add value to the product.
• Spot signals of customer discontent and pinpoint its causes before they escalate.

Customer satisfaction is closely linked with their retention. Satisfied customers are also more likely to upgrade to higher plans and recommend your product via word of mouth , driving your customer acquisition and account expansion.

How to measure customer satisfaction?

Measuring customer satisfaction involves using various tools and metrics.

Common methods include customer satisfaction score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score (CES) surveys.

These surveys ask customers to rate their experience on a scale and provide insights into what’s working well and what needs improvement.

What is the best customer satisfaction survey?

The best customer satisfaction survey is one that is well-designed, relevant, and tailored to your business objectives.

For example, if you aim to improve customer loyalty, an NPS survey is more suitable. To enhance product usability , you will use a CES survey.

Best customer satisfaction surveys are also concise, easy to understand, and avoid double-barrelled questions. Like ‘How would you rate your experience with the product and why did you like it?”

Breaking it down into ‘How would you rate your experience with the product? and “What made you like this about the experience?” will give you more helpful insights.

A customer satisfaction survey is an essential tool in your toolkit, whether you’re a product, customer success, or customer support manager. It allows you to understand how your users feel about your product experience and nip potential issues in the bud before they lead to churn.

If you’d like to learn more about Userpilot feedback functionality and how it can help you collect customer satisfaction feedback effectively and efficiently, book the demo!

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