customer satisfaction research example

23 Excellent Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples [+ Templates]

Published: May 30, 2023

Your product or service revolves around your customers and their experience.

How do you gauge their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your products? And, how do you decide to work on a new feature if you don’t know whether the customer needs it or not?

This is where customer satisfaction surveys come in, as their results let you know exactly how your customers are feeling — how satisfied they are.

This journey of providing your customers with a positive experience starts from the moment they land on your website and extends beyond the moment they become your customer. Without question, delighting them and encouraging them to become loyal customers is a never-ending commitment. As Derek Sivers from CD Baby puts it, “Customer service is the new marketing.” And that couldn't be truer.

In this post, we’ll cover:

The Importance of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Customer satisfaction survey questions, best practices for creating customer satisfaction surveys, customer satisfaction survey template.

• Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples

5 Free Customer Satisfaction Survey Templates

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• Net Promoter Score
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Customer satisfaction surveys help businesses better understand and utilize the voice of the customer to sustain growth. There are several key reasons above and beyond this overarching goal that make customer satisfaction surveys a top priority for customer centric businesses.

1. Identifying negative themes in the customer experience: By conducting customer satisfaction surveys, companies can pinpoint negative themes that customers are having and work to resolve them. This helps improve the overall customer experience and increases customer loyalty.

2. Gauging customer loyalty: These surveys give customers a chance to share feedback that yields their propensity to be a loyal customer. Companies can use this information to better retain customers.

3. I dentifying customer trends: Surveys allow companies to identify trends in customer satisfaction over time. For example, if several customers have the same complaint about a product, there may be a shift happening in the market that your business hasn't noticed yet. Acting on this feedback can keep your business ahead of the curve to not only keep existing customers, but acquire new ones who are interested in that same trend.

4. Providing a competitive advantage: Companies that regularly conduct customer satisfaction surveys and make adjustments based on feedback are likely to outperform their competitors. This is because they are better able to meet customer needs and expectations.

5. Validating business decisions: Customer opinions and feedback are two of the most essential factors that validate decisions within your business, allowing you to become more equipped to meet their specific and immediate needs instead of basing your strategy on assumptions.

6. Shaping the customer lifecycle: Their opinions also shape the customer lifecycle. If you don’t know their thoughts, you have a lower chance of retaining them, delighting them, or enticing them to make future purchases.

With all of this in mind, you get opinions and information about satisfaction levels through your customer satisfaction surveys. Without them, you’d never know how your customers were feeling, and you’d never be able to meet their needs.

• What is your level of education?
• What is your approximate annual household income?
• Where do you work and what’s your job title?
• What industry are you in?
• What’s your most important priority when (insert something related to your industry)?
• What’s your biggest roadblock when (insert something related to your product)?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your in-store experience today?
• How likely are you to recommend (insert product or service) to others?
• Rate your satisfaction with our team in resolving your issue.
• Did you feel that our team answered your inquiry promptly?
• Do you agree or disagree that your issue was effectively resolved?
• How likely are you to purchase again from us?
• How likely are you to return to our website?
• In your own words, describe how you feel about (insert company name or product here).
• How can we improve your experience with the company?
• What's working for you and why?
• What can our employees do better?
• How can our employees better support your business’s/your goals?
• How can we improve your experience with the website or the in-store location?
• Why did you choose our product over a competitor’s?
• What would be one word you’d use to describe us and why?
• May we contact you to follow up on these responses?
• In the future, would you be willing to take this survey again?
• If we were to update (insert product feature here), could we reach back out to talk about these changes?
• Can we connect you with a customer success manager via chat?
• Would you be open to discussing upgrade options for your product?
• Can we send you a list of useful resources for getting the most out of your product?
• How long have you been using the product?
• Which alternatives did you consider before purchasing the product?
• How often do you use the product or service?
• Does the product help you achieve your goals?
• What is your favorite tool or portion of the product or service?

If you want to obtain valuable feedback from your customers, then you have to ask them the right questions. Sharing information isn't always an easy task, and it's not the customer's job to provide your business with constructive criticism. Instead, it's the surveyor's responsibility to create a thought-provoking prompt that engages the participant.

Customer Feedback Questions

To get the most out of customer feedback you’ll need to make sure you’re asking the right questions. Open-ended questions are a great way to gain more thorough explanations about your customer’s experience with your brand, but they’re not the only types of questions you can ask.

If you're getting stuck on deciding what to ask your customers, here are some of the types of questions we recommend including on your customer satisfaction survey:

Product Usage

When it comes to customer success and satisfaction, your business must collect feedback about your product or service. If you don't, then it's more difficult to assess customer needs and provide effective solutions.

Finding out how satisfied your users are with your offer provides your marketing and product teams with valuable information that can be used to improve customer retention .

Some questions that you could ask in this section are:

• What would you improve if you could?
• Which product features do you consider the most valuable?
• Which product feature do you use most often in your day-to-day ?
• What points of friction have you encountered while using the product?
• If there was one new feature you could suggest, what would it be and why?

Demographics

Demographics are essential to marketing and sales teams because they make it easier for companies to segment customers into buyer personas . By grouping customers based on key characteristics, this categorization helps employees visualize their target audience. Marketing and sales teams can then use that information to pursue leads that are most likely to convert.

When asking these types of questions, be sure to embrace a proactive and inclusive approach. These questions shouldn't be mandatory, so always provide an option for customers to omit an answer. Your goal is to extract honest information, but you don't want it to come at the expense of the customer's comfort.

Here are some demographics questions that you should consider including in your next survey:

• How old are you?
• Where are you located?
• If applicable, what gender do you identify as?
• What is your employment status?
• What is your marital status and do you have children?

Psychographics

Psychographic questions dig deeper than demographic questions, uncovering information relating to your customers’ preferences, habits, behaviors, and tendencies. It’s not about who your customer is, but why they do what they do.

Psychographic questions may seem intrusive, but they’re highly valuable pieces of information that give you a glimpse into the reasons for your customer’s buying habits. They’re usually phrased concerning your industry and not specifically about your product.

These questions are instrumental in customer satisfaction surveys because you can indirectly find out how you can better serve your customers.

Here are a few questions you might ask:

• Do you prefer to shop on your phone or your laptop?
• E.g. if you’re a mortgage lender, you might ask, “What’s your most important priority when buying a home?”
• E.g. if you’ve created a recipe-sharing app, you might ask, “What’s your biggest roadblock when trying to access the best recipes online?”
• How much time do you spend on (insert social media platform you’d like to use for advertising)?
• How much does sustainability matter to you in purchasing a product?
• How do you feel about (insert product type)?
• E.g, if you sell women’s razors, you might ask, “How do you feel about women’s razors?”
• What do you dislike about (insert product type)?
• How many hours a day do you spend doing (insert something that relates to your product)?
• E.g. if you sell ergonomic car seats, you might ask, “How many hours do you spend driving?”

Satisfaction Scale

Sometimes there are aspects of your offer or business that you want feedback on, but they aren't things that your customers are actively addressing. In these cases, it helps to be direct and ask customers how they feel about these specific details.

Before you do, you'll have to determine a quantifiable way to measure their responses. Adopting a satisfaction scale section is a great way to create a consistent approach to quantifying this subjective survey feedback. A few ways that you can implement this scale are:

• A scale measuring from 1 to 10 (or another number). 1 means the customer was extremely unsatisfied and 10 means the customer was very satisfied.
• A descriptive scale that measures a customer's response from unsatisfied to satisfied. The customer is given a shortlist of responses to choose from that range from “very unsatisfied” to “very satisfied."
• A picture scale that uses images to symbolize customer satisfaction. For example, you can use happy, sad, and indifferent emojis to quickly gather customer feedback.

Example questions include:

Open-text questions are survey questions that allow the participant to write out their response within a text box. This allows users to fully express their opinions using the customer's voice instead of the company's pre-written responses.

While they can sometimes be time-consuming to analyze, these questions encourage the participant to be honest and give them the freedom to address any topic. Open-text questions can be an instrumental asset when determining the core values of your customers.

Here are open-text questions you can ask in your next survey:

• Do you have any additional comments or feedback for us?

In the last section of your survey, you'll want to include questions about the steps that'll happen after submission. These questions permit your team to follow up with the participant in the future.

This comes in handy when you roll out changes and want to get updated feedback from the same customers that were surveyed earlier. You can phrase these types of questions in a few different ways:

While measuring customer satisfaction can be tricky to manage, asking effective questions can reveal highly valuable customer insights — and the questions we’ve listed above will do the trick.

Next, we’ll go over best practices for creating customer satisfaction surveys.

• Make sure you choose the right survey tool.
• Always ask short and relevant survey questions.
• Send the surveys at the right time.
• Always A/B test your surveys.
• Thank your customers for their feedback.

Designing a customer satisfaction survey is no easy task. Luckily, there are a few best practices that will help you increase response rates and get much-needed feedback from your customers.

1. Make sure you choose the right survey tool.

Choosing the right survey tool is important because it can significantly impact the quality of your results. A good survey tool should be easy to use, customizable, and be able to provide in-depth analytics. It should also have the ability to automate survey distribution and analysis.

Without the right customer survey feedback tool , you’ll have a whole lot of data and no way to distill it or glean valuable insights from it. Choose a tool that gives you the ability to ask different types of questions, examine basic metrics such as response rates, and track customer sentiment over time.

2. Always ask short and relevant survey questions.

No one enjoys spending a lot of time answering surveys, so be sure to keep your survey questions short and to the point. Asking short and relevant survey questions is the key to earning high completion rates. Long and complex survey questions can be overwhelming and may discourage customers from providing any feedback at all.

On the other hand, shorter questions allow customers to easily comprehend what is being asked and are more likely to provide accurate responses. When asking open-ended questions, keep the minimum character count short, make the question optional, or offer an incentive.

3. Send the surveys at the right time.

Give a lot of thought to the placement of your surveys throughout the customer journey. It wouldn’t make sense to send a survey to someone who’s only just subscribed to your blog — nor would it make sense to send one year after a customer stopped doing business with you.

Sending surveys at the right time is critical to getting accurate feedback. Customers are more likely to provide feedback when they are in a position to evaluate their experience with your company.

When do you send a customer service survey? Send it after a lengthy interaction with one of your teams, a few weeks after purchase or onboarding, and a few times throughout the year to measure the customer’s happiness.

4. Always A/B test your surveys.

A/B testing is an excellent way to find out whether your surveys are as effective as they can be. Simply create two versions of the survey with minimal changes. You can change the order of the questions, the number of questions, the wording, and even the color of the buttons. (Change only one thing at a time so you can accurately measure its impact on the survey.)

By comparing the results of each version, you can determine which version yields the highest response rate and provides the most accurate feedback. This can help you refine your survey strategy and improve the overall quality of your survey data.

5. Thank your customers for their feedback.

Thanking customers for their feedback is important to show that you value their opinion and are committed to improving the customer experience. It also helps to improve customer loyalty and increases the likelihood that they will provide feedback in the future.

Whether it’s through a gift card, a discount, or simply a nice email, always thank the customer for their time, regardless of the nature of the feedback.

By thanking customers for their feedback, you signal that you take their opinions seriously and are committed to addressing their concerns. This can help you maintain strong relationships with your customers and drive long-term business success.

Ready to craft your own customer satisfaction survey? Use the template in the next section to get started.

How To Use Customer Satisfaction Survey Results

1. define customer segments..

Customer satisfaction surveys can be used to segment customers based on their preferences. With these survey results, you can tailor your approach to specific customer groups and provide more personalized experiences.

2. Track customer satisfaction over time.

Identifying changes in customer sentiment can be difficult if you don't have multiple data points over a long period of time. Regular customer satisfaction surveys can be used to track this and address issues before they become systemic problems.

3. Benchmark against competitors.

Customer satisfaction survey results can be used to benchmark your company’s performance against competitors. This way, you'll identify areas where your company may be falling short and implement changes to improve your standing in the market.

The following customer satisfaction survey template can help you get answers from your customers in one easy step. It asks one simple question: “How satisfied were you with your experience today?” If you’d like, you can add more questions to get more details from your customers.

To make a copy of this template and get 4 bonus templates, click here .

Now you’ve got a template and are ready to create your customer satisfaction survey. In need of some inspiration? Take a look at these examples we pulled from different companies.

Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples from Real Brands

We’ve covered why asking for customer feedback is important and the types of questions to include, but you still might be wondering how to put it all together. Let’s check out the customer feedback example questions below from real companies to gain insight into how to roll out a survey of your own.

HubSpot is another company that uses NPS surveys to assess customer satisfaction. This score primarily comes into play with its customer support and success teams, who can be reviewed after each new interaction.

HubSpot's engineers then use these responses to address areas in their software that could use improvement. By using this scoring system, HubSpot can attain both qualitative and quantitative data to direct its product development efforts.

What we like:

HubSpot uses its surveys to create product-level improvements, and the best part is that for customers, answering one question is an effortless way to give feedback. So it’s a win-win on both sides. When you carry out surveys, be sure to forward the feedback to the right department to address any issue that your customers brought up.

The Hilton Hotel company provides its customers overnight stays with promising customer service, upholding its century-old reputation.

To better understand what people’s stays were like, it offers a one-page survey where customers can willingly submit their feedback. It’s just a few questions long, most of which are logistical (such as where the visitor stayed and how long they stayed there for). Users then have the option of elaborating.

This seemingly simple survey from Hilton gives unhappy guests an easy, friction-free opportunity to submit feedback about their recent stay. It’s hosted on a public URL that guests can access without needing to get through any barriers. The questions are simple and easy to answer.

Uber has two target audiences — the drivers and the passengers — and it does a great job collecting opinions and reviews from both. The passengers give ratings after every ride, and the drivers rate the passengers as well.

This survey makes it fair and transparent for both the driver and the passenger, and these ratings affect both parties’ reputation as well. If a passenger has a lower rating, the driver has the authority to decline the booking. If you run a business with two target audiences, create a survey for both.

Netflix provides its customers with curated entertainment recommendations that would not be possible unless they had a great understanding of customer satisfaction.

Overall, Netflix brings out its A-game when it comes to customer experience. With its recommendation system, it is as customer-friendly as one can get. Netflix studies the behavior of all of its customers and recommends movies and shows per their ratings, likes and dislikes, or just what they have been watching. It also collects feedback periodically to improve its offerings.

In this survey, Netflix tries to better understand users’ behaviors and preferences. This shows that even if you dominate the market like Netflix does , you shouldn’t stop there. Continue collecting feedback from your customers and users, and don’t be afraid to get granular to understand their needs.

Slack is a business messaging app that helps professionals connect from anywhere. It bases its product development entirely on customer feedback.

In fact, customer feedback is at the epicenter of its efforts. For instance, there's a command within the application where users can send feedback to the Slack team, or just tell them what features the users would like to have. The co-founders read all the user feedback and made sure they responded to every ticket raised.

In the email above, Slack invites the user to take a survey to improve its offering. The email is short and to the point.

Slack’s commitment to collecting customer feedback is commendable, and so are its invitations to take the survey. In the above example, Slack makes the survey seem more exclusive by mentioning that it was only sent to a few people. Don’t be afraid to curate a short list of customers to send the survey to, especially if it seems like those customers would be more likely to answer.

Drift provides businesses with a revenue acceleration platform that caters to a buyer-centric world. The above survey asks one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend Drift to a friend or colleague?” Sometimes, that’s really all you need.

Drift sends Net Promoter Score®, or NPS, surveys. NPS is a critical SaaS metric used to measure customer satisfaction. The only question it asks is whether the customer is likely to recommend the business to a friend or colleague — and this can be enough of an indicator of a customer’s happiness with your brand.

Paytm has always taken customer opinions into account and has taken serious steps to improve the customer experience.

Taking customer experience and security to another level, Paytm has created a “ bug bounty ” to catch fraudulent merchants. If customers accidentally buy fake movie tickets through the platform, for example, Paytm allows them to get refunds on their bookings.

Paytm gives users the opportunity to tangibly improve the product by giving them the ability to report bugs directly on the app. Plus, it not only collects customer feedback, it acts on it, too, by fixing those bugs. Overall, Paytm provides plenty of avenues for turning an unhappy customer into a happy one.

Another example of a product that provides great customer service is Skype, a business recognized for its telecommunication technology. If you call people using Skype, you know that it asks for feedback after every call. But more than that, it believes in immediately solving customers’ problems.

In the survey above, Skype asks for feedback on the quality of the call. It’s just three questions long, and when it comes to surveys, the shorter, the better. It also gives users the ability to quickly answer the questions by offering multiple choices instead of letting them write out an answer (though they have that option, too).

Skype gets straight to the point in this simple three-question customer satisfaction survey. Even more, it keeps the focus on the product by only asking about “Audio Issues” and “Video Issues.” If you sell a product where users might run into issues, consider asking targeted product performance questions, then leave a blank text box for users to elaborate.

Amazon, one of the most popular eCommerce websites in the globe, exceeds user expectations by collecting all kinds of information. When you contact its customer service department, it sends you a customer feedback survey that asks three questions about your interaction:

• Please rate the service provided by the Amazon representative.
• Please rate how well you could understand the Amazon representative.
• Anything else to add?

But Amazon doesn’t stop there. It makes information easily accessible in a knowledge base , so users can find answers and troubleshoot on their own. This reduces the chances of incorrect purchases, which can make all the difference in a customer's buying decisions.

Amazon’s customer satisfaction survey is a great way to gauge how happy the customer is after getting help from the customer service team. It’s important because customers only reach out when they’re unhappy — so sending a survey like this one helps Amazon understand whether the customer is happy again. Like Amazon, be sure to send surveys after your customers interact with your service team.

10. Twitter

Zomato is one of the largest food delivery and review websites in the world, and its success can be largely attributed to customer satisfaction.

Another product with two types of audiences — restaurants and hungry diners — Zomato puts both of their needs and expectations into consideration. Every restaurant gets rated on the food, and every buyer gets to rate the restaurants. In the above survey, it asks for feedback with one simple statement:

“Tell us what you love about the app, or what we could be doing better.”

Then it allows users to free-write their thoughts.

This open-ended survey format is perfect for websites and apps. You would ideally always include the option to give feedback in a pop-up button, banner, or tab that users can click. That way, you don’t need to contact users first; they can voluntarily submit feedback to you.

12. Greyhound

H&R Block Advisors sent another well-timed customer satisfaction survey — just after “Tax Season” in the U.S.

For accountants and financial advisors, the months before the tax filing deadline are the busiest, so a prompt survey after filing with H&R Block helps the company gauge how many returning customers it can expect.

H&R Block Advisors smartly sends the survey at a busy time for its business. If your business also has busy periods or periods where people are more interested in your products, send surveys during those time ranges to optimize the amount of responses you receive. You’ll get more submissions simply because you have more customers during those months.

Measuring sentiment, in addition to satisfaction, is important when surveying your customers.

In this survey, GEICO asks about customer sentiment regarding a specific interaction during the purchase process — and the general feeling of the experience as well. In this way, GEICO can smooth out specific roadblocks throughout the customer journey, and get an in-the-moment snapshot of its wider customer sentiment.

GEICO’s example is simple, short, and to-the-point. It only has three questions and gives an additional avenue for contacting GEICO’s customer service team. Always give respondents a second option for submitting feedback or contacting your team to better gauge how satisfied they are with your brand.

16. Taco Bell

HubSpot for WordPress is a plugin that adds CRM functionalities, forms, and live chat to WordPress websites. In this survey, HubSpot aims to find out whether the plugin has been working as designed. It has just one simple request: “Rate your experience using HubSpot for WordPress.”

We recommend using this format for product-related surveys — specifically those that have to do with a single specific feature. For instance, if you recently rolled out a new update, this single-question survey can help you measure your customers’ opinions about the new addition to their software or product.

The five-star scale is simple to understand and makes it easy to answer, because all the user has to do is provide a star rating. The users can also answer straight in their email, instead of needing to access an external survey link. Sometimes, you don’t need to include complicated questions and options to create an effective customer satisfaction survey.

19. McDonald's

McDonalds is a fast food company that knows exactly how to cater to its customers, even deploying different strategies in countries across the world. One way it tracks success is through incentivized feedback.

One feature that stood out on this McDonald's survey was the labeled receipt on the right-hand side. The element is highlighted so participants know exactly what McDonald's is asking them about in the corresponding survey. Not only does this ensure McDonald's gets accurate information from the survey, but it also reduces any friction customers may have if they're unsure or confused about a question.

20. Home Depot

When customers go to hardware stores, they’re looking for a business that will satisfy their home renovation needs, and Home Depot delivers just that. It collects feedback from customers to improve its offerings and provide better service moving forward.

To entice participants to take the survey, Home Depot offers a $5,000 Home Depot gift card. Offering a sweepstakes entry up-front is a great way to ensure that you get feedback from customers who are more likely to purchase from you again. If you weren’t interested in Home Depot, you wouldn’t take a $5,000 gift card. Right away, you get to gauge the customer’s continuing interest in your business.

21. INBOUND

INBOUND is a yearly experience that brings together professionals and business leaders who are interested in growing their company the inbound way. To improve the experience every year, INBOUND asks for feedback — but first, it thanks attendees for coming and provides a link to the year’s recorded content.

This more easily compels the recipient to continue engaging with INBOUND. Even if they don’t answer the survey at the moment, they may come back later if they watch a recording of an INBOUND talk.

INBOUND’s example is great because it not only thanks attendees for attending, it also provides value by providing a link to the content library. Additionally, it gives respondents alternative ways to reach the INBOUND team. In your surveys, thank your customers for their business and provide additional value so they continue engaging with your brand.

Etsy’s customer satisfaction survey takes a slightly different approach. Rather than sending the survey from a customer service rep’s email, it is sent from Etsy’s research team instead. Even more, a picture of the research team member is included at the end, making it easy to forge a human connection with the person who might actually read the survey responses.

Once you click on the link, you’re taken to an extensive survey that asks a multitude of questions. While shorter surveys are typically better, Etsy establishes the right expectations by sending the survey from the research team. This gives you the impression that the survey will be long and extensive, because it’s being used for research purposes.

Etsy’s example is a winner because it opens with a personal greeting from one of Etsy’s team members. Even if the email was mass-sent, that greeting immediately makes it feel more personal, and the picture of the Etsy staff member only personalizes it further. Lastly, if you plan to send a long survey, feel free to call it “research” to establish the right expectations.

23. Autonomous NYC

Sometimes, you don’t need a fancily designed email to ask for feedback. Instead, you can send an email just like Autonomous NYC’s. And if you don’t feel comfortable including a picture of yourself like in the Etsy example, you can simply include your first name to give the survey request a more personal feel.

Once you click on the link, you’re taken to a 2-page Google Form survey that measures the user’s happiness with their experience on Autonomous NYC’s website. The survey is clear, succinct, and easy to fill out.

Autonomous NYC’s customer satisfaction survey hits all the right notes. It’s short, but not so short that Autonomous NYC’s team can’t glean any insights. It also makes most questions optional, so that users have the choice to walk away after answering two questions. Give the same option to your survey recipients by making at least a few of the questions optional.

Get More Customer Feedback to Grow Your Business

Knowing how your customers feel about you is instrumental in growing your business. Use customer feedback surveys to collect information that can create lasting and positive changes in your company. When you know how your customer feels, you can make decisions that lead to higher revenue and increased customer retention, empowering you to grow better.

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 November 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Customer Satisfaction

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys
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How do I measure customer satisfaction?

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

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

What is customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey?

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

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

Get started with our free customer satisfaction survey template

Why use customer satisfaction surveys?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satisfied customers will spread the word

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The most commonly used metrics are:

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

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

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

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

Likert scale questions

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

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

How satisfied are you with our service?

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

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

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

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

Binary questions

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

For example, you could ask:

Were you satisfied with your experience with us?

[Smiley face/Unhappy face]

Did you find what you were looking for today?

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

Multiple choice questions

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

Which of our services was most useful for you today?

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

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

Open-ended questions

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

What could we have improved on today?

[Open text box]

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

Get started with our free Customer Satisfaction Survey template

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

Usage frequency

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

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

Product and usage survey questions

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

Product and usage survey questions you could ask include:

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

Demographic Questions

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

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

Psychographic survey questions

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

Psychographic questions might cover:

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

Satisfaction category questions

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

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

Open text feedback question

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

Action/ follow-up questions

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

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

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

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

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

Best practices include:

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

Delivering customer satisfaction surveys at the right points in the journey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Customer Feedback Resources:

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

Related resources

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

Customer Journey

Customer Interactions 11 min read

Customer Service

Customer Service Experience 13 min read

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How to write customer satisfaction survey questions to master your market [with examples]

Happy, successful customers are the heart and soul of any business. They’re what transform your growth from a funnel into a flywheel. 

You can create happy customers, but to do that you have to truly understand them and what they think about your business.

So how do you know what they’re thinking? You have to ask!

Last updated

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To provide an inside perspective on surveying customer satisfaction, we collaborated with Michael Redbord, who helped build HubSpot's support and service teams and has worked with customers for over eight years. Today, he’s the General Manager of HubSpot's newest product line, Service Hub , which helps their customers grow through exceptional service.

Both Hotjar and HubSpot use customer feedback surveys to understand our customers and what the market demands. For HubSpot, this approach has driven dramatic changes over the years—taking them from a small marketing app to the more complete front-office software suite they are today.

In this article, Michael shares the most important things he’s learned about customer satisfaction surveys, so you can take some of his learnings and use them to adopt a practice of collecting customer feedback for your business to better understand your market. 

What is a customer satisfaction survey?

4 types of customer satisfaction surveys, 11 customer satisfaction survey question examples, 4 customer satisfaction survey templates, 4 more ways to understand your customers, create a customer satisfaction survey today.

With Hotjar, you can create a survey in seconds that will help you better understand your customers and find out if they’re truly satisfied.

A customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire designed to help businesses understand what their customers think about their products or services, their brand, and their customer support. Customer satisfaction surveys allow companies to improve products strategically, increase customer retention , optimize the user experience , create customer delight , and deliver exactly what the market demands.

Michael emphasizes how HubSpot uses customer satisfaction surveys to understand the micro-level experiences of individual users and address their concerns, while always returning to macro-level questions like “Where is the market going?”, “How is our product on the cutting edge?”, and “Where do we need to improve?” 

There are several ways to understand if your customers are happy, loyal, and satisfied with your product or service, and each can help you learn something about the user experience. Here are four of the most effective online surveys you can use to understand your customers.

1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT surveys measure your customers’ overall satisfaction with a specific aspect of your business. They usually contain a simple question with a binary response (e.g. yes/no, happy face/sad face) and ask things like “Did our product do what you wanted it to do?”

CSAT scores are usually high (in the 98%+ range), so a sudden spike in negative scores tells you there’s an issue that needs immediate attention.

2. Net Promoter Score® (NPS)*

A Net Promoter Score ® survey asks customers to rate how likely they are to recommend your company or product to a friend or colleague on a rating scale of 0–10. You then compare your percentage of detractors (0–6 answers) to that of promoters (9–10 answers) to see where your company stands—the more promoters you have, the more you can infer people are satisfied with you. 

Use NPS surveys to determine whether your business successfully cultivates customer loyalty.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score measures how much effort it takes for customers to either use your product or fix a problem through customer support.

HubSpot sends a CES survey after they close each support ticket. A CES question will ask “How easy was it to solve your problem?”, and customers are typically given a 5-point likert scale with response options like ‘very difficult’, ‘somewhat difficult’, ‘about as easy as I expected’, ‘somewhat easy’, and ‘very easy'.

4. Milestone surveys

Milestone surveys are questionnaires sent out at key touchpoints in the customer journey to help understand the user experience. A milestone can either be time-based (e.g. sending a survey 60 days after signup) or experience-based (e.g. a pop-up survey that’s triggered once onboarding is complete).

There are many directions you can take your customer survey questions —and w hile there are no wrong answers, there are right questions to ask . Depending on the customer insights you want to gather, it’s important to choose the types of questions that will lead to the most actionable results.

For example, if you’re looking for quantifiable feedback that’s easily monitored over time, asking rating scale questions (like NPS or CES ) is the way to go. And to dive deeper into customer expectations and satisfaction levels, you should ask open-ended questions, or pair a multiple choice question with a follow-up question that gets users to describe their experience in their own words. 

Here’s a list of example questions to consider when deciding what to ask your customers:

Customer feedback questions

Was this article useful? [yes/no]

Is our pricing clear? If not, what would you change?

What would increase the product quality, according to you?

In your own words, how can we improve the onboarding process?

Were you able to achieve the purpose of your visit today? [yes/no]

What’s the one thing that nearly stopped you from buying from us?

Did you get the help you needed during your customer service experience? [yes/no]

What persuaded you to complete the purchase of the item(s) in your cart today?

How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? [on a scale of 0–10 ]

What's the next feature or functionality we should build? [can be multiple choice]

How satisfied are you with the content on this page? [on a scale of 1 to 5, very dissatisfied to very satisfied]

💡Pro tip: there’s a customer satisfaction survey for just about every occasion, whether you’re testing a new feature, analyzing customer churn , or determining what, exactly, turns prospects into loyal customers. When the sky’s the limit, it can be difficult to effectively distill a bigger goal into specific and meaningful survey questions. 

Hotjar’s AI for Surveys is the perfect tool to turn to—just tell it your goal and watch as it generates a corresponding survey in seconds. And don’t worry about handling high response rates: the AI will automatically analyze all responses and prepare a summary report with suggested next steps to take. Talk about a time saver!

To get started right away, here are four customer satisfaction survey templates you can use. If you’re looking for more pre-built survey examples, check out or bank of survey templates .

🔥 How it works : click on each image to learn more about the survey and try out a live version for yourself. Each survey takes only a minute to set up, so dive right in. 

Find out how satisfied your customers really are with this CSAT survey template

2. Net Promoter Score® (NPS) survey template

Hotjar’s NPS® survey template makes it easy to measure customer loyalty

3. Customer Effort Score (CES) survey template

This CES survey template will help you make sure your customers are set up for success when using your product or dealing with your customer service team

4. Post-purchase (or point-of-conversion) milestone survey template

Check in with customers at a key milestone on their customer journey with this post-purchase survey template

💡Pro tip: want to make customer satisfaction a daily focus at your business? Automatically share customer feedback results with the rest of your team by integrating Hotjar directly with Slack or Microsoft Teams . Discuss insights and collaborate on initiatives without opening another app.

1. User personas

User personas are semi-fictional characters based on real data about the people who use your website. Getting to know your users will help you stay on top of the market by giving them what they want. Consider using a user persona survey to ask your current customer base specific demographic questions so you can build user personas off of real respondents.

2. Market research

Market research is a collection of techniques used to understand your target market. Good research identifies customer needs, fears, drives, and frustrations. You can use this information to home in on your target audience, design better products, and improve the customer experience .

3. H eatmaps

Hotjar Heatmaps are a visual representation of user behavior that shows where users click, tap, and scroll. They help you understand what page elements are interacted with or ignored, so you can start forming a clearer idea of what works (and what doesn’t) on your website. This is a great way to uncover any pain points that may be preventing users from successfully interacting with your website.

4. Session recordings

Hotjar Recordings show the anonymous activity of individual users, which you can tie to their survey answers. In other words, if someone tells you they’re having a hard time using your product, you can watch a recording of their activity to gain insights about the pain points they experience.

Final word of advice: by following these steps, you will be able to build a solid foundation for understanding your customers, addressing their needs and concerns on an individual or micro-level, and improving their overall experience on a larger scale. Of course, you might not see an immediate increase in your scores when you start making improvements, but if you collect solid data and trust in the process, your scores will improve over time—and your satisfied customers will ultimately drive your success.

*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.

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10+ Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples & Questions

14 min read

The best customer satisfaction survey examples are well-designed and capture valuable feedback from customers. A good survey must cover all bases, from asking relevant questions to great design, to get a holistic picture of customer expectations and satisfaction.

However, creating an effective customer satisfaction survey can pose a bit of a challenge.

To help, we’ve handpicked ten customer satisfaction survey examples from some of the most successful SaaS companies. Use this as a guide to design your own surveys and collect honest feedback from your customers.

• The customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire designed to evaluate customer’s opinions on a product or experience with a brand.
• Customer satisfaction surveys are important because they help retain customers, build a loyal customer base, and disclose areas with high customer effort score (CES) on the customer journey.
• Measuring customer satisfaction surveys can also help you track product efforts, establish a solid relationship with customers, and improve customer experience to reduce customer churn.
• Some customer satisfaction survey questions to include in your feedback form are: How satisfied were you with your overall experience? How easy was it to complete your task?
• You can also ask customer service survey questions to gather information about your customer’s experience with a customer service agent.

Examples of customer satisfaction surveys from inspiring brands:

• Hubspot sends customers a simple survey to collect feedback after important customer interactions.
• Userpilot sends quarterly NPS (net promoter score) surveys to its customers to measure user sentiment .
• Hubspot measures the satisfaction of customers mid-way into the onboarding program with an email survey.
• Wise sends a transactional survey via email after the user makes a payment to collect customer feedback in real time.
• Jira sends a quick CSAT survey to understand how satisfied customers are with a new feature .
• Slack triggers a generic CSAT survey at random intervals to encourage users to share opinions or frustrations about their product.
• Miro’s survey is always-on, designed to blend in with the UI design as a passive feedback collection method , allowing the user to decide when to fill it in.
• Jira’s real-time in-app customer satisfaction survey collects feedback in real-time, right after the interaction.
• Want to see how you can use Userpilot to design successful customer satisfaction surveys? Book the demo !

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What is a customer satisfaction survey?

A customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire designed to evaluate a customer’s opinion on a product or their experience with a brand. Its main goal is to check the extent to which companies meet customer expectations and understand the major pain points they’re still facing.

Surveys like this pose a simple question, like: “How would you rate your experience today?” to measure the customer effort score and sentiment towards the product.

What should a customer satisfaction survey template include?

The best practice for designing effective customer satisfaction survey templates is to keep them simple, straightforward, and relevant.

Usually, it contains the following, but you can switch it up each time so you don’t feel stuck:

• Start with a thank you note to the customer for using your services: A simple “thank you” goes a long way and can turn a dreadful feedback experience into a positive one.
• Follow this up with a direct question like: “How would you rate the [product/customer service] experience?”: Asking detailed questions helps you see the world from your customer’s perspective.
• Answers to this question are provided on a numeric scale with a 1–5 or 1–7 point factor, which can range from strongly disagree (0–1) to strongly agree (6-7). The numerical scale can also be replaced with an emoticon scale, which makes use of emojis to help users express their results in a more visual and intuitive manner.
• You can ask a multiple-choice question when the actual answers to your survey are visible. Take, for example, a survey to uncover your best marketing channels could have a list of possible media channels to reduce cognitive stress for the respondent.
• To get more valuable insights, follow up with a qualitative, open-ended question to collect more details on the reason for the customer’s response. Asking “why” gives users the freedom to clarify their responses and express their opinions, which is subjective to them.

What’s the importance of customer satisfaction surveys?

Every smart business understands that retaining customers is crucial to its success. In addition to measuring product quality, efficiency, and reliability, customer satisfaction surveys are a good indicator of customer loyalty.

Measuring customer satisfaction can help your business to:

• Measure the effectiveness of your customer service team.
• Monitor customer sentiment at different stages of the customer journey.
• Build a base of loyal customers.
• Disclose areas with high customer effort scores (CES) where users struggle to achieve their goals.
• Measure your product efforts during the customer lifecycle and understand if they’re meeting customer needs.
• Establish a solid relationship with customers and make them feel valued.
• Improve customer experience which reduces customer churn and the spread of negative word of mouth .

3 Types of customer satisfaction surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys are essential tools for businesses to understand how their customers perceive their products or services. There are various types of surveys designed to measure different aspects of customer satisfaction.

Here are three common types of customer satisfaction surveys:

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) survey is a straightforward and widely used method to measure customer satisfaction with a product, service, or interaction. It typically involves a single question that customers are asked to answer on a scale, often ranging from dissatisfied to very satisfied. The question usually asks, “How satisfied are you with [product/service/interaction]?”

The CSAT survey is valuable for obtaining a quick snapshot of customer satisfaction and identifying areas that may need improvement. The results are typically expressed as a percentage, with higher percentages indicating high customer satisfaction.

“On a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with your recent experience with our customer support?”

Customer satisfaction survey results can be used to benchmark your company’s performance against competitors.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey is designed to measure customer loyalty and the likelihood of customers recommending a company’s product or service to others. NPS is based on a single question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our [product/service/company] to a friend or colleague?” Respondents are categorized into three groups based on their scores:

• Promoters (score 9-10) : These are loyal and enthusiastic customers who are likely to recommend your business.
• Passives (score 7-8) : These customers are satisfied but not enthusiastic and may not actively promote your business.
• Detractors (score 0-6) : These customers are dissatisfied and may share negative feedback about your business.

The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. The resulting score can range from -100 to +100, with higher scores indicating stronger customer loyalty.

“How likely are you to recommend our products to a friend or colleague, on a scale of 0 to 10?”

Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much effort it takes for customers to either use your product or fix a problem through customer support. It focuses on the customer’s perception of the effort required to complete a task. The CES question typically asks, “How easy was it to [complete a specific task]?” Respondents rate their experience on a scale, often ranging from “Very Easy” to “Very Difficult.”

CES is valuable for identifying areas where customers encounter unnecessary obstacles or difficulties, which can lead to frustration and decreased satisfaction. Improving the ease of interactions can enhance customer loyalty and customer retention too.

“How easy was it to find the information you were looking for on our website?”

Customer satisfaction survey questions

Here’s a list of customer feedback questions that you can use or adapt to gather valuable feedback from your customers:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with our [product/service/company]?
• How would you rate your overall experience with us?
• How would you rate the quality of our [product/service]?
• Were our products/services up to your expectations?
• How satisfied are you with the assistance you received from our customer support team?
• Were our customer service representatives helpful in resolving your issues?
• How easy was it to use our [product/service]?
• Did you encounter any difficulties while using our [product/service]?
• Was our website/user interface user-friendly?
• Did you find it easy to navigate our website and find the information you needed?
• Were you satisfied with the response time for your inquiries or requests?
• How long did it take for us to address your concerns?
• How satisfied are you with our customer service representative?
• Do you feel that our [product/service] provides good value for the price you paid?
• Were you satisfied with the cost-effectiveness of our offering?
• How would you rate our communication, including emails, notifications, and updates?
• Did we keep you informed about important changes or updates?
• Were your issues or concerns resolved to your satisfaction?
• Did we meet your expectations in resolving any problems you encountered?
• On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our [product/service/company] to a friend or colleague?
• What is the primary reason for your score?
• How likely are you to continue using our [product/service] in the future?
• Are you considering switching to a competitor? If yes, why?
• Do you have any suggestions for how we can improve our [product/service]?
• Are there specific features or services you’d like to see us offer in the future?
• How would you rate your experience when making a purchase with us?
• Were you satisfied with the checkout process?
• How satisfied are you with the speed and reliability of our delivery/shipping service?
• Did your order arrive in good condition?
• In a few words, describe your overall experience with our [product/service/company].
• Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience with us?

Remember to keep your customer satisfaction questionnaire concise and focused, as overly long surveys may discourage participation. Additionally, consider using a mix of multiple-choice questions and open-ended questions when collecting customer feedback to gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback from your customers.

Customer satisfaction survey examples

To illustrate all we’ve said, let’s take a look at some great customer satisfaction survey examples from SaaS companies.

You can use these examples as a customer and satisfaction survey question template when designing or improving your own survey questions.

You can check other examples and use cases in the short video below:

Survey Examples and Inspiration

1. Userpilot’s NPS survey with a follow-up question

Userpilot sends quarterly NPS (net promoter score) surveys to its customers to measure loyalty.

NPS surveys are usually measured on a number scale from 0-10.

Userpilot takes it one step further and asks an open-ended question to understand the reasons behind low or high satisfaction scores.

Tracking NPS scores over time helps to understand how the various changes affect customer satisfaction. An increase in the score over a certain time period indicates that the changes you’ve made were positive and had a good impact on your overall UX and product strategy.

Also, we have to mention that this survey was created effortlessly with Userpilot—without coding.

Hubspot’s customer satisfaction score survey

Hubspot sends customers this simple survey after important customer interactions. They ask customers to rate their experience on a 1–7 point scale, from worst to best.

What’s impressive about Hubspot’s customer feedback survey is its simple yet impressive nature. The question asked is direct and easily understood by anyone.

Every survey is triggered contextually. It’s relevant and collected in real-time, right after a user completes an action, which makes it more accurate.

The survey is subtle and not obstructive. It comes in a smaller modal design, which works well to grab the user’s attention, without covering the entire screen. Also, Hubspot’s clear branding is reflected in the survey.

The downside to this survey is a lack of qualitative data. This makes it difficult to collect extra details on what exactly the customer liked or hated.

Hubspot’s mid-onboarding check survey

Hubspot understands that onboarding is critical to determining whether the user will become a customer or not. So, instead of playing guessing games, they measure the satisfaction of customers with the onboarding program .

Only this time, the survey is not triggered in-app but sent via email. In the email, the user is addressed by name and informed about what’s going on.

Then, Hubspot includes a simple survey and asks users to choose their answer from a series of emojis with the help of a color code from red to green for clarity.

Wise’s transactional NPS survey

After a user has made a payment with Wise, the company sends a transactional survey via email. This is a good example of how to collect customer feedback in real time as it comes right after the user performs the action, when the memory is still fresh in their minds.

The survey poses a simple question, answered on a 10-point scale, which is too demanding for most customers. To explain what each number means, Wise combines both words and emojis as a visual and text-based approach for better cognitive function.

Jira’s customer satisfaction survey regarding a new issue

Jira sends a quick survey to understand how satisfied customers are with a new feature . This survey pops up after the user has engaged with the feature for a few minutes.

Customers who need an immediate response are referred to the customer support team with a single click; customers who wish to leave a review can continue filling out the feedback form .

The survey question is presented in the hopes of capturing likely issues that might have come up when interacting with the new feature. Users can rate their satisfaction with emojis, and if they wish, they can give more detailed feedback.

Slack’s overall customer satisfaction survey example

Slack programs a generic customer satisfaction survey to trigger at random intervals. This could be after the user has spent a certain period of time on the app, when they complete an action, or when they use an advanced feature.

Slack substitutes the number scale for multiple choice answers that are more direct and sound human. The options provided by Slack make it easy for them to figure out if the user is having a UI problem, an experience problem, or a navigational issue.

This is then followed by a simple question that lets users share any ideas, opinions, or frustrations that are secondary and not included in the multiple-choice question.

Miro’s passive customer satisfaction survey example

Miro’s customer satisfaction survey is a brilliant one because its always-on. That means it is designed to blend in with the UI design as a passive feedback collection method .

So, instead of triggering the survey and interrupting the user, Miro embeds the CSAt survey into the customer experience and allows the user to decide when to fill it in.

Of course, you’d expect nothing less from Miro when it comes to visual presentation—that’s what their brand is about. So, using emojis is no surprise here.

Jira’s real-time in-app customer satisfaction survey example

Collecting feedback in real-time, i.e., while the user is still in the experience or right after the interaction, is critical. The experience is still fresh in their minds, and there is a possibility to make changes while retaining dissatisfied customers.

That’s why Jira doesn’t waste time and collects feedback right after the user engages with the feature. Surveys are triggered in-app and pop up as a modal, which is unobtrusive.

Feeling inspired? Try Userpilot for no-code surveys!

Best practices for creating customer satisfaction surveys.

How you structure and design your survey matters.

Having a good survey design increases the likelihood that you will get higher response rates and completion rates, and, ultimately, more accurate data.

So what makes a great customer satisfaction survey? In this section, we will discuss how to design a survey, write effective questions, and collect highly impactful data.

Keep the survey questions short and simple

No one enjoys taking long surveys. A person’s attention span is only eight seconds on average.

So make your survey short to respect your customer’s patience and time. Research has shown that it is better to send two microsurveys rather than one long one to get the information you need.

Segment your users before sending surveys

In order to get relevant and accurate customer insights, you need to ask the right questions to the right target audience.

Segment your customers based on their in-app behavior , different user attributes, or even previous feedback. You can then determine which surveys should be sent to which users.

This can be achieved with a tool that automates user surveys and triggers them for certain groups of users.

Create user segments with Userpilot to collect targeted feedback.

Trigger customer feedback surveys contextually

Reaching the right people with your survey is not enough. It is also important to consider when the survey will appear on their screen.

Your surveys will not only have a higher response rate if triggered contextually but also will give you more actionable insights.

Imagine a scenario where the user has started their free trial but didn’t sign up for a few days and then one day decides to give you a shot. Once they log in, an NPS survey pops up and asks them whether they would recommend you to their friends.

The user hasn’t even experienced any value with your app, how would they know if they like you enough to refer to others?

But if you triggered the survey contextually – for example when interacted with a key feature and completed their JTBD , it would make much more sense to do it.

Contextual survey triggering in Userpilot .

Show gratitude to the customers who give detailed feedback

When did you last receive a genuine thank you from someone? You must have felt like you should have done more for them.

This is how gratitude works. Whenever you thank someone for something they did, they are more likely to do you a favor in the future.

Your customers aren’t an exception—take the time to appreciate their effort and time in completing your surveys.

Upon completing the survey, you can send automated thank-you messages and give them a small reward.

Follow up and close the feedback loop

Routinely measuring customer satisfaction won’t benefit your company if you don’t act on the feedback and share the updates with your customers.

This process of collecting data, analyzing it, implementing changes, and letting customers know about it is called closing the feedback loop.

Companies that don’t do this miss out on the chance to cultivate strong customer relationships.

When you close the loop, customers feel acknowledged and valued.

How to build customer feedback surveys code-free with Userpilot

How to create and publish a survey

As you can see from the customer satisfaction survey examples above, collecting customer feedback helps you better understand how potential customers interact with your business.

Every example stated in this article should serve as inspiration when designing yours. Keep in mind that your surveys should be tested and improved for better results.

Want to see how Userpilot can help you build better customer feedback surveys? Sign up for your Userpilot demo today!

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24 powerful customer satisfaction survey questions (+ templates)

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

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

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

Why customer satisfaction surveys are important

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

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

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

What makes a good customer satisfaction survey question?

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

Make sure the questions are relevant to your business

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

Keep the questions short and simple

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

Aim to make questions specific

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

Avoid asking leading questions

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

Make sure that questions are clear

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

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

20+ customer satisfaction survey questions to get better feedback

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

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

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

Questions to understand the experience

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

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

Questions about specific touchpoints

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

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

Questions about customer demographics

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

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

Questions about personal preferences, behaviour and desires

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

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

Customer satisfaction survey templates

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

Basic CSAT survey template

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

Get template

Retail survey template

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

Restaurant survey template

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

Hotel survey template

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

Banking survey template

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

Event survey template

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

Spa/Salon survey template

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

Barbershop survey template

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

Client satisfaction survey template

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

IT help desk survey template

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

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

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

How do you write a customer feedback survey?

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

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

What are some good customer satisfaction survey questions?

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

How effective are customer satisfaction surveys?

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

Why are surveys good for customer satisfaction?

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

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

How often should you send customer satisfaction surveys?

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

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

How do you create a customer satisfaction survey?

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

What are the types of survey questions?

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

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

Read more about the different types of survey questions .

Does customer satisfaction impact your Net Promoter Score?

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

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

Does customer effort impact your Customer Satisfaction Score?

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

How do you improve customer satisfaction?

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

How do you guage customer satisfaction?

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

Co-founder, TRACX

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

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Customer satisfaction survey templates, examples, and questions

In this guide, we’ll define what a customer satisfaction survey is, break down the information product teams should aim to discover, and outline steps and best practices to write and distribute customer satisfaction surveys that generate actionable insights.

Picture this: your company sells a product that enhances singers’ vocals. It’s a real game-changer for pros and karaoke warriors alike.

You already have a decent customer base, but you don’t know anything about their usage or overall experience. Naturally, you want to expand your base, so you reach out to influencers to promote the product.

After weeks of radio silence, you see a message in your inbox from some guy named Michael Jagger. He apologizes for his delayed reply — he just got back from what could be his band’s farewell tour.

He attached a short video clip, but the content is not what you had hoped for. He sings:

This product is a real irritation, How is it supposed to fire my imagination I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey That’s what I say I can’t get no satisfaction I can’t get no satisfaction ’Cause I try, and I try, and I try, and I try I can’t get no, I can’t get no

Clearly, Michael is not eager to promote your product.

His feedback and the general lack of customer feedback make you realize you need more insights into what your users think about your product — and how satisfied they are when using it to live out their rock star dreams.

What is a customer satisfaction survey?

In today’s customer-centric and data-driven product world, hearing and capturing the voice of the customer is crucial. A customer satisfaction survey helps you understand what your customers think and how they feel about your product and its adjacent services.

The customer satisfaction survey consists of a list of questions about the product experience .

Besides the tons of insights you gather from the customer satisfaction survey, an extra advantage is that it will make customers feel they have a say in your product and that their feedback matters.

Not convinced yet? Let me summarize the additional rewards you can reap. Conducting customer satisfaction surveys enables you to:

• Learn about your customer
• Discover user pain points
• Determine improvement areas
• Drive experience differentiation
• Exceed customer expectations
• Improve customer relationships

4 customer satisfaction survey types

There are four types of customer satisfaction surveys:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
• Customer Effort Score (CES)
• Milestone survey

Let’s explore each customer satisfaction survey type further. We’ll outline some questions you should ask and provide a template for each.

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score (NPS), along with the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), is among the most heavily benchmarked customer satisfaction metrics.

NPS is a proven metric that measures customer experience and forecasts business growth.

The formula to calculate NPS is:

NPS = % of promoters – % of detractors

Promoters are customers who are active, recurrent users and advocates of your product. Detractors are those who are not happy with your product and could potentially damage your product and brand through negative word of mouth.

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According to Bain & Company, which created the NPS score, a good NPS score ranges from 0–19, a favorable score is between 20–49, an excellent score falls between 50–79. If you achieve an NPS above 80, you’re word-class.

Keep in mind that what constitutes a good NPS score varies depending on the industry and market .

Example NPS survey question(s)

• How likely are you to tell a friend about us?

NPS survey template

Access this NPS survey template from Jotform :

2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) provides insight into how happy and satisfied customers are while using your product. This is both quantitative through the CSAT score and qualitative through feedback that explains the number.

CSAT is calculated by dividing the number of satisfied customers by the total number of respondents. The formula is as follows:

CSAT score = # of satisfied customers / Total # of respondents

What is a good CSAT score? As with the NPS, it varies per industry and market, though a CSAT score of >75 percent is generally considered “good.”

Example CSAT questions

• How satisfied are you with our product?
• How often do you typically use our product?
• How well does our product help you achieve your goal?

CSAT survey template

Click here to access the CSAT survey form template displayed on the right.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

The customer effort score measures the ease of use experienced by a customer during a specific interaction.

CES data is collected in real time after the interaction has taken place and is calculated by dividing the total number of survey respondents by the total sum of responses.

With some companies using a 1–5 scale and others using a 1–7 scale, for the responses, there is no universal benchmark for what constitutes a good CES. In general, though, you could say that a score around the center of the scale is a positive one.

Example CES survey questions

• How easy is it to use our product?
• How easy is it to interact with our company?
• Is there anything else you would like to share that could improve your experience?

CES survey template

Click here for a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey template :

4. Milestone surveys

Compared to the NPS, CSAT, and CES surveys, a milestone survey does not revolve around a single metric. It’s a more comprehensive survey that aims to collect information about a specific topic — for example, the onboarding experience, product development ideas, or the usability of a feature.

The distribution of a milestone survey is either time-based or experience-based.

Example milestone survey questions

• Based on your experience today, would you use this feature again?
• What, in your view, could we improve in the feature?
• What can we do, in our customer service to get a 5-star review rating?

Milestone survey template

A milestone survey template is available here :

3 customer satisfaction question categories

The most important questions in a customer satisfaction survey revolve around the following three categories:

• Customer demographic
• Product use
• Customer satisfaction

1. Customer demographic

Customer demographic questions cover the primary factors to establish who the customer is. The insights gathered from these questions enable you to understand, validate, and evolve your customer personas.

2. Product use questions

Product use questions are questions about the product itself. They can be about the process leading up to the actual purchase as well as the actual usage of the product, features , services, or support provided.

The information gleaned from product use questions provides insight into the customer journey, the feature set, and what customers are looking for.

3. Customer satisfaction questions

Customer satisfaction questions aim to provide insight into the product experience . The questions revolve more around the psychology of the customer when using the product.

Typically, customer satisfaction questions aim to determine how your product makes users feel. Why do they feel that way while using your product? What could change that feeling?

These insights give you a good understanding of the perception of your customer base.

Open- and closed-ended questions

Now that you know the types of customer satisfaction surveys and the topic categories of questions to ask, let’s have a look at the two main types of questions commonly found in customer satisfaction surveys:

Open-ended questions

Closed-ended questions.

Open-ended questions aim to find out what the customer is thinking and to understand the context behind actions taken. This type of question allows the customer to provide a longer, more comprehensive answer.

An open-ended question typically begins with:

• “Describe…”
• “Tell me about…”

Open-ended questions are best to use when you want to get a better picture of how to achieve customer satisfaction by truly understanding customers’ feelings and attitudes about a topic.

Closed-ended questions can only be answered by choosing pre-populated answers. They are incredibly useful when you either need quantitative data, need to categorize respondents and responses, or your audience is not really interested in the topic.

Closed-ended questions can either be static or dynamic — dynamic means that an answer to a closed question has an impact on what question is presented next.

Closed-ended questions come in four generic forms:

• Nominal questions
• Ordinal questions
• Interval questions
• Ratio questions

1. Nominal questions

Nominal questions are used to measure categories consisting of mutually exclusive attributes — for example, industry types (agriculture, education, financial services, etc.).

2. Ordinal questions

Ordinal questions are used to rank order, meaning the next value is bigger than the previous one. What matters is the order; the difference between the values is irrelevant.

A semantic differential question is an example of an ordinal question. The answer to a semantic differential question sits on a multiple-point rating scale between two opposite traits, such as love and hate.

Another example is the Likert scale question , though it is sometimes treated as an interval question .

A Likert scale question might look similar to the semantic differential question, the difference being the purpose it serves. Where a semantic differential question talks about a trait, the Likert scale question aims to understand the level of agreement or disagreement with the statement.

3. Interval questions

Interval questions are presented on a multiple-point scale, asking respondents to pinpoint where they fall on it. As such, ordinal and interval questions might look similar, but there is a difference. Whereas ordinal questions do not present an equal split or difference between two consecutive steps, in interval questions, the equal split or difference is obvious.

4. Ratio questions

Ratio questions are the next level. Whereas nominal questions can be categorized, ordinal questions can be ranked, and interval questions on top have an equal interval, ratio questions have a true zero.

Closed-ended questions can be presented in the form of checkboxes, multiple choice, drop-down, or rating scales.

5 tips for writing customer satisfaction surveys

Creating a survey that customers are willing to fill out and submit is an art. To position yourself to get a good response rate, follow these best practices:

• Begin with an objective in mind
• Ask useful and actionable questions
• Don’t ask leading questions
• Focus your questions
• Limit the number of questions

1. Begin with an objective in mind

Start the survey creation process by defining the objective of the survey. What do you want to get out of the survey?

Having a clear understanding of the objective will help determine the flow of the survey and identify the questions to include.

2. Ask useful and actionable questions

You are asking your customers to spend some of their valuable time providing information. Spend time identifying what you are actually asking your customers.

What is the objective of the survey, and what questions would generate the most useful, actionable, and measurable information?

3. Don’t ask leading questions

You know what they say about assumptions, and influenced insights are useless. When you believe a feature of your product is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it’s hard to ask objective, non-leading questions about it.

Take a step back, formulate objective questions, and avoid including superlatives.

4. Focus your questions

Questions that cover more than one topic are confusing and skew data. When questions are unclear, it’s hard to tell what the customer is actually answering.

5. Limit the number of questions

Keep in mind that you are asking customers to help you out, and you want them to complete the survey. If they give up along the way, you will never know what they wanted to say.

Limit the number of questions and challenge yourself to ask only questions that truly matter.

3 ways to distribute your customer satisfaction survey

The biggest challenge to collecting customer satisfaction insights is to actually get your customers to participate. This risk can be partially mitigated by reaching as many customers as possible.

To further mitigate the risk, it is worth spending some time thinking about the sample size and means of distribution to get the highest response rate.

There are many options for how to distribute the survey, such as via blog post, phone, SMS, or a prompt in the app itself.

In the digital age, there are three common methods for distributing customer satisfaction surveys:

1. QR codes

A QR code is a graphic visualization of a link that can be read with a QR reader.

The beauty of using QR codes is that you can easily use them online on websites or on paper, stickers, and other printed objects. The key benefit of this is that there are no additional costs to distribute, and it is easy to reach a large audience.

Whether it is through pop-ups, callouts, or using plain old text or surveys supported by images or video, websites are a proven way to gather customer satisfaction feedback.

The benefit of posting customer survey questions on your website is that the survey can be shown when customers have already confirmed their interest. This makes the survey less intrusive and increases the chance of completion.

What used to be done by post is now done by email. This method is probably still one of the most popular ones.

The benefit of distributing customer satisfaction surveys via email is that it is easy to set up, personalize, and automate and costs very little.

In product management, we are in it to win it. You can only win when you receive feedback from your customers and understand how satisfied they are with your product.

Customer satisfaction surveys such as NPS, CSAT, CES, and milestone surveys are a great tool to acquire the insights you need to succeed. These four types cover customer demographic, product usage, and satisfaction questions. The questions are either closed, open, or a mix of closed and open questions.

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Hey there logrocket peeps, you have a small typing mistake, here: Example CES survey questions How easy is it to easy our product?

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Customer Satisfaction: The Ultimate Guide

How to Measure, Improve, and Manage Customer Satisfaction to Grow Your Business

If you don’t satisfy your customers, your business will fail.

The data backs this up.

Growing businesses are more likely to prioritize customer success than those with stagnant or decreasing revenue. Successful customers can become your best salespeople, as well; our research shows that 77% of people have shared positive experiences with companies in the past year.

Furthermore, keeping your current customers happy is good business in the long term. Common business wisdom tells you that acquiring customers is 5 to 25 times more expensive than keeping current customers.

A bad customer experience or bad customer service is also a leading indicator of customer churn (which is massively detrimental to growth ).

In our 2018 State of Inbound report , 61% of respondents noted "generating traffic and leads" as their number one marketing challenge, which can probably be tied back to another problem: They’re also struggling to keep their existing customers .

A business simply can’t grow sustainably if it has a churn problem, and we can find early red flags of churn by gauging customer satisfaction (and working to improve it over time).

of growing businesses rate customer success as "very important"

Acquiring customers is

more expensive than keeping current customers.

of companies believe retention is cheaper than acquisition

In an attempt to demystify customer satisfaction and make the measurement actionable for businesses of any size and type, we wrote a comprehensive guide that ranges from customer satisfaction definitions all the way to tools and tricks to make sure you’re gathering data correctly and actually using it to grow your business.

Without further ado, let’s dive in. Feel free to read it from start to finish, or skip around to sections that are most applicable to you.

What is customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction a measurement we use to quantify the degree to which a customer is satisfied with a product, service, or experience. It measures how a customer feels about a brand interaction.

Many terms in business are nebulous and vague. Customer satisfaction is one of those terms.

In practice, this could be executed using many different survey design tactics, such as differing questions, survey response scales, and collection methods. Sometimes, we collect these measures right after a transaction or other times at a fixed date in the customer relationship. Sometimes we use a five-point Likert scale, and sometimes we use a Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) survey. In fact, there’s some ruckus around the term “customer satisfaction.” After all, as the argument goes , customer satisfaction is simply the absence of customer frustration. If you have a great meal at a restaurant, you don’t sit back, smile, and say, “that meal was ... satisfactory.” The argument is that we should aim for delight. We’ll ignore arguments of semantics in this guide, but it’s important to note that the focus generally shouldn’t be on providing an average experience, but rather, on creating raving promoters for your business. Still, measuring customer satisfaction can help us do this (no matter what we call the metric).

Why measure customer satisfaction?

If you don’t measure customer satisfaction, you can’t identify unhappy customers. If you don’t know who is unhappy, you don’t know who will churn, and you can't figure out why they're unhappy. If people churn faster than you can acquire new customers, your business will fail.

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and, eventually, to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”  ― H. James Harrington

Without contact or feedback from the customer, we isolate ourselves in a sort of bubble.

The truth is, however, that even the best, most innovative, top-performing businesses all have faults and opportunity areas. These companies are elite because they measure things like customer satisfaction and act upon the data.

If you’re open to the idea that you could improve, it’s worth spending the little bit of time it takes to set up measurement solutions and to collect the data. What’s the harm? You might find problem areas that are worth massive amounts in terms of ROI.

That’s the general truth about measuring and data. Specifically, though, what’s the importance of customer satisfaction to business health?

Customer retention is arguably the most important factor in long-term business growth. You can acquire customers as rapidly as you’d like, but if they aren’t sticking around, you don’t have a sustainable business.

Retention affects every part of a business, from the customer acquisition cost to the customer lifetime value to word of mouth and customer loyalty. In fact, the ratio of these metrics (CAC/LTV) is important, too: You can spend more money to acquire customers if they retain for longer and are worth more. It’s one business lever that truly impacts every other.

If you’re still not convinced, check out these two data points:

• 82% of companies agree that retention is cheaper than acquisition.
• A repeat customer spends 67% more than a new customer.

Retention is good for business. Here’s how Brian Balfour , former VP Growth at HubSpot, puts it :

“The point is, every improvement that you make to retention also improves all of these other things — virality, LTV, payback period. It is literally the foundation of all of growth, and that’s really why retention is the king.”

Okay, we’ve established that customer satisfaction matters and that you should measure it. Now the question is: How?

How to Measure Customer Satisfaction

Every method of collecting data on customer satisfaction comes down to a customer survey .

With digital analytics, we can determine if users are researching a goal, how they are interacting with a feature, or even their relative struggle completing a given task. But we can’t gauge their emotional response to any of that.

That’s the secret. Measuring customer satisfaction gives you a peek at your customers’ emotional responses.

If we simply judge customer experience on conversion rates and goals completed, the DMV would score very high — much higher than something with higher funnel drop-off, like, say, buying a Tesla.

Luckily, most businesses know not to measure things so myopically. We look at data in the right context and with a blend of attitudinal and behavioral data. When it comes to optimizing for customer experience and improving customer satisfaction, that’s the way to go.

Surveys: When do you send them? To whom do you send them?

These are great questions — and it depends on what you want to answer.

Most often, with a customer satisfaction survey, you’re looking to answer a very specific question such as, “How did the customer feel about this specific situation?” This situation is usually transactional, such as buying a pair of socks or getting an oil change.

In this case, you’re best off sending the survey as soon as you can. The longer the delay, the more likely it is that your data will be skewed. The memory does strange things, especially when it comes to emotions and experiences. If you want a true reflection of the customer’s experience, send the survey ASAP.

Sometimes, however, we want to learn if there has been a longitudinal change in customer satisfaction, either on an individual or aggregate level ... basically, have we improved or not over time? In this case, you just need to control for time and make sure that all surveys are being sent to users in a similar time interval (immediately, six months after purchase, two years after purchase, etc.). This allows you to analyze users in cohorts to determine differences in customer satisfaction scores over time. 

Who should fill out customer satisfaction surveys? Ideally, every customer that has an experience with your business. Wherever you can bake in an effortless customer satisfaction survey, I would do so (barring an annoying user experience, of course).

In some cases, you’ll want to isolate certain groups of customers to do more in-depth surveys. In this case, again, it depends on the answers you’re looking for. If, for instance, you want to find out what it is your best customers love about your business, you would isolate customers with that cluster of characteristics and survey them. Same goes for any group of customers from which you’d like to get insights.

What does a customer satisfaction survey look like? What kind of questions do you ask? How do you determine a customer satisfaction score?

These questions are tough to answer in a broad sense because there are many different schools of thought and they are constantly evolving. 

To a certain extent, you also need to customize the survey itself to your business goals. What do you want to know? Which questions (and their scores) can be used as leading indicators of growth or churn? 

Just look at the difference between a customer satisfaction survey like this  ... 

... a great example of an NPS survey using a tool like Nicereply  ...

... and a nice looking and simple NPS survey using a tool like Typeform .

I’m personally a fan of simpler solutions, as they tend to be more understandable and actionable for the business, so NPS wins for me. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect for your situation.

You can customize things to your own use case. Here's a nice simple customer satisfaction survey example using Google Forms .

About general experience ... 

• Overall, I am very satisfied with my experience with [Company].
• How would you rate [Company] overall?
• How well do our products meet your needs?
• How responsive have we been to your questions about our products?
• How likely are you to purchase our products again?
• How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague? (NPS)

About the product itself ...

• How would you rate the quality of the product?
• How would you rate the value for money of the product?

You can also ask more open-ended questions (and with the right software or data science, you can even run a sentiment analysis to quantify the responses in a way) ... 

• How would you describe your experience/our company in three words?
• Why did you purchase from us today?
• Was there anything you would improve about your experience?

I briefly mentioned that these are usually measured using “ordinal scales.” Without getting too into the weeds, this essentially means you’re measuring your customers’ responses on a scale , usually on a scale of 1 to 5 (such as the commonly used Likert Scale ) or 1 to 7.

I’m going to save you the trouble here (because there is a lot of boring academic debate over which method is best) and say that it’s more important that you simply choose a method and stick with it. Change over time is more important than what the number is. I’ll finish this section off by mentioning a very popular type of customer satisfaction (and loyalty) survey called Net Promoter Score ®, or NPS®. Calculate your Net Promoter Score by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

NPS is quite popular right now, especially in quickly growing companies. We use it regularly at HubSpot to track our customers'  and  employees' happiness. It’s a simple metric that you can use to rally your team around to improve customer satisfaction and retention. But there are critics. Mainly, the argument is that the metric is too simplified and not quite predictive of retention or loyalty. However, no customer satisfaction metric is perfect, so it’s all about how you’re able to use the data. Here’s how Craig Morrison at Usability Hour addresses that:

“When talking about the Net Promoter Score, you’ll often hear people say it isn’t accurate, or it doesn’t work, or that it depends on how you phrase the question, etc. But the thing is, what are you actually doing right now to keep track of how your users experience with your product? Anything? Surveys? Interviews? Many startups I work with are doing absolutely nothing. So while this system might have its flaws, it’s way better than doing nothing at all. It’s the best way to keep track of how the changes you’re making to your product are effective your user experience.”

In truth, I like the simplicity and actionability of the NPS. I also like that you usually add a follow up open-ended question, such as “What’s the reason for your rating?” to couple your quantitative measurement with some qualitative insight. Another benefit of NPS is that it can be benchmarked against others in your industry to truly understand where you stand with regards to customer satisfaction. Rallying your company to focus on NPS, a customer satisfaction metric, will help you create a culture of customer-centricity and improve this score with time. In summary, there are many different ways of measuring customer satisfaction, but what’s important is that you can measure changes over time and that you can actually use the data to improve the customer experience. If your method is too complicated for your organization to rally behind, it won’t be useful. That’s the power of a single question like NPS.

How to Improve Customer Satisfaction

• Ask for customer feedback.
• Educate customers and provide answers.
• Leverage social media.
• Make things easy to accomplish.
• Wow your customers.
• Use focus groups.
• Check out your competitors.

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of customer satisfaction, as well as some methods for measuring satisfaction, the obvious question is, “How do we improve customer satisfaction?”

The obvious answer is that there is no tried-and-true silver bullet strategy here. (Sorry.)

However, there are some guiding principles and evidence-based tactics that can get you some quick wins. Hopefully, they’ll get you started on the path to an improved customer experience.

1. Ask for customer feedback.

This one is table stakes: Make it easier for your customers to complain.

If your customers can’t give you feedback or complain to you directly, they’ll do so on social media or to their friends. They’ll be doubly frustrated — first with their poor experience, and second with their lack of an outlet to fix their poor experience.

This means investing in customer feedback tools and customer support.

Often, if you have a well-placed mechanism to catch customer feedback and respond in real time, you can prevent a user from becoming a detractor in the first place. If you can react quickly, you can turn the situation into a positive one.

Customer success expert Lincoln Murphy put it well :

“Don’t let customers get to the point where they’ll be a detractor in the first place; you do this by understanding their Desired Outcome and operationalizing around ensuring they achieve that — also known as Customer Success. Make sure you give the customer other places to provide feedback ad hoc: feature requests, bug reports, open support tickets, chat with your team, etc. Don’t let the NPS survey be the only way — or the only time — they can give feedback to you. Continually remind them that those other feedback modalities are there for them to use. This way, when you do get a detractor you know it’s probably legit and not venting all of the pent up — and not even entirely negative, but it becomes so with no outlet — sentiment.”

There are many ways you can do this. One way is with live chat . This technology is rapidly improving in its scalability and targeting capability, as well as reporting. Another way is with feedback forms, such as those that companies like Usabilla offer.

The vast majority of dissatisfied customers will simply walk away unhappy, and you’ll never know. They’ll then tell their friends and your reputation will worsen. Negative word-of-mouth is no treat for a company. According to AllBusiness.com :

“Most unhappy customers don’t take the time to complain, they just quit doing business with you. But guess what: They didn’t say anything to do, but they definitely tell all their friends. The experts say, the average upset customer tells nine people. So what can you do? To avoid losing customers because of a bad experience, you need to make it easy for them to complain. That’s right. Let them know their complaints are welcome. Keep in mind, a complaining customer cares enough about the relationship with your business to at least bring the issue to your attention.”

Collecting customer feedback is important in itself, and not enough businesses do it. But it can be complicated, and companies tend to make common mistakes. I reached out to survey design and customer feedback expert, Dr. Matthew Champagne , and he gave a super comprehensive summary of mistakes to avoid:

"So many customers WANT to help their favorite businesses improve, but they are obstructed at every turn by companies who give them transparently bad survey questions, insulting incentives, ask the wrong questions, ask when it’s too late or when memories have faded or make it a painful process to answer. Companies always use the 'autopsy approach' to customer satisfaction: wait until the event is over to figure out what went wrong. Customers should be asked questions while it still matters to them and while their feedback could still make a difference. The only incentives that matter to customers are answering their questions: (1) was my voice heard? (2) did what I say make a difference? and (3) how do I compare to others? Instead, companies annoy and insult customers by offering them some unknown (but probably minuscule) chance of winning some generic gift. Companies still think it’s 1999. Telling customers to 'please take your time to help us improve our products and services' didn’t work 20 years ago and certainly doesn’t work today with savvy customers. With attention at a premium, companies have to stop focusing on self-centered rationales to fill out surveys and instead give customers internal incentives. 'Representativeness' is critical and few companies consider this. Getting responses from 3% or even 10% of customers is meaningless if you don’t know what the “silent middle” is saying. Companies take action on the misleading results from a non-representative portion of their audience because it’s all the data they have. That’s one reason there are so many mediocre companies."

2. Educate customers and provide answers.

All customer questions should be readily answerable, either manually, within your interface, or with documentation.

It’s incredibly frustrating when you can’t find an answer to a question or concern while using a product or browsing a website. How many times have you experienced that and tried, to no avail, to find a live chat or some way to get an answer? It’s far too common.

You have a few options here.

First, and no matter what, conduct user experience (UX) research. If you simply run a few user tests and watch some session replays (using a tool like HotJar), you’ll find tons of UX problems that you never would have noticed otherwise. It’s both alarming and insightful, but it’s inarguably useful.

From there, you should have a solid list of low-hanging fruit that you can prioritize and fix.

Second, look into smarter content and documentation. When you’re fielding support inquiries — or really, any customer touchpoint — make sure you’re writing down, categorizing, and quantifying common questions and complaints (and where they occur). This data will be your building ground for a solid help documentation plan.

Where are users struggling and with what? How can you answer that with content in real time so users don’t even need to reach out to you? We do this here at HubSpot with user guides in our HubSpot Academy knowledge base.

Finally, look into smarter customer support options. In addition to displaying your contact information prominently, live chat is increasingly a necessary site element to have.

It’s expected of most businesses nowadays to have live chat software . The stats are undeniable.

• 63% of customers said they were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat as opposed to one that doesn’t.
• 44% of people said that having live chat available while shopping online was one of the most important features a company can offer.
• 79% of customers say that they prefer live chat because of the immediacy it provides.

The research pretty much all confirms that live chat is the most preferred form of customer service , and that expectation is only growing.

Then there’s a whole new emerging field of chatbots and artificial intelligence solutions. Read about what we’re doing with chatbots at HubSpot here .

3. Leverage social media.

Customer satisfaction isn't always expressly, well, expressed. Customers will often take to third-party avenues like review sites and social media to share their experiences.

When you track and monitor your customers' activities on social media, you can better understand any positive and negative feedback about your brand. You can also feel better equipped to address this feedback and improve your overall customer satisfaction.

Whether or not you use social media as an active customer service tool, your business should be poised and ready to respond to feedback within 24 hours. This could be on Facebook Messenger, Twitter, or in Instagram or LinkedIn comments. A social media listening tool (like HubSpot ) can help with this.

You can also use social media to proactively collect customer feedback and measure customer satisfaction. Consider offering live chats or Q&A sessions where customers can ask pressing questions, express concerns, or merely connect with your service or sales team.

The great thing about social media is it meets your customers wherever they are, allowing you to improve their satisfaction in the process.

4. Make things easy to accomplish.

Usability is important to the customer experience. Despite this, it’s not often thought about in terms of customer satisfaction.

We think about the power of our features and what you can accomplish with the product, but we forget that users have to learn how to use the platform — that it’s often not an intuitive experience.

The easiest-to-use products are the most addicting.

Facebook knows this, and so does every other app on which you spend too much time. They make things so frictionless that, when you receive a trigger (either internal or external) to use the app, there’s no difficulty in doing so.

Companies with positive, healthy missions think a lot about this as well, because their whole goal is to create habits. Think about products like HeadSpace and Duolingo: It’s not easy to meditate or to learn a foreign language, but the ease of the app makes it easy to do so.

One reason I love Amazon so much (but my wallet doesn’t) is how easy they make it to purchase. One-click purchase? I’m all in.

5. "Wow" your customers.

Satisfy your customers? That’s a good start, but you should really be aiming to delight your customers . To wow  your customers.

At least that’s the advice that Warren Buffett gives ... so it’s probably pertinent wisdom.

According to Buffett ,

“Any business with delighted customers has a sales force they won’t have to pay; You don’t see them, but they are talking to people all the time.”

Here’s where things get tricky when it comes to tactical advice, though; there’s no silver bullet strategy to delighting your customers. To be remarkable, you have to, by definition, do something a little outside of the ordinary (and not simply avoiding annoying your customers ). 

Some companies, like Zappos or Amazon, make that a core part of their operating ethos. When you truly rally your company around customer delight, you don’t need to worry about the individual tactics; those ideas will come. 

Whether it’s something quirky like sending hoverboards to your best customers, something remarkable like staying on a call for a Guinness Record amount of time (like Zappos ), or something thoughtful like writing handwritten thank-you notes to your marketing partners, delighting your customers can bring about amazing business results.

6. Use focus groups.

It's one thing to offer customers various channels for sharing feedback; it's quite another to proactively seek (and pay for) feedback. Focus groups gather a number of your target audience members or active customers with the intention of collecting constructive criticism. 

Focus groups allow for honest responses. Not only does it create a space for you to ask a variety of pointed questions without the risk of losing interest, but it encourages your audience to answer candidly. When writing reviews or feedback, people often edit or "clean up" their answers. Focus groups happen in person, allowing you to gather unfiltered feedback and criticism — including from body language and nonverbal responses.

These responses can be some of your best tools when understanding how to improve your customer satisfaction. 

7. Check out your competitors.

When customers are unhappy, they take their business elsewhere. So, where would your unsatisfied customers go? Take a look at your competition to understand how they may be making their (and your) customers happier.

What your competitors are doing right and wrong can teach you a lot about your customers, industry, and products. Go to their website to understand their online customer journey. If they have physical store locations, visit those to understand how they engage customers in person. Contact their sales and service teams to see how they interact with potential and current customers.

Find yourself delighted? Odds are, your customers are, too. Incorporate some new ways to boost your own customer satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction Tools & Software

Now that we’ve covered why you should care about customer satisfaction and how to measure it (and some ways to improve it), let’s cover some actual tools and software you can use to measure and improve customer satisfaction.

Tools for Measuring Customer Satisfaction

The first thing you need to figure out is how you’ll collect customer satisfaction data. Depending on your goals, you could collect it via customer surveys (and you could send your customer surveys multiple different ways), in-app surveys, post-service surveys, or even with customer interviews or longer form surveys.

My favorite way? Right in your app or website, and right after a critical moment in the user experience. For instance, if you have a photo-sharing app, triggering a feedback survey after a user uploads their first photo could be a great inflection point. Similarly, after a user makes a purchase on an e-commerce site, you’d ideally be able to trigger a survey to get their immediate thoughts.

There are many tools to do this, and more joining the market every day. A few popular options today include:

If you’re trying to target a specific class of users or at a specific time interval, sending out email surveys might be a good option. You can also usually collect more data from your customers this way. (Be careful not to get greedy . Even if you give a reward for completion, long surveys are a pain to fill out , which can trigger the central tendency bias ). My favorite tools for this are:

• SurveyMonkey
• Google Forms  (and G Suite )

There’s no shortage of customer survey software out there, though. Just do a quick Google search and see what I mean. It’s hard to compare all the options, which is why I recommend using something simple like Google Forms or Survey Monkey, but if you want to do some more research, here’s a good resource to learn more about customer survey software .

Customer Satisfaction Measurements and Methods

Outside of the specific tool you use and the time you trigger the survey, you also need to consider which customer satisfaction methodology you use. There’s no shortage here, either.

First, as we mentioned previously in this guide, NPS is a popular method because of its simplicity and actionability. Data is useless if you can’t use it to make better decisions, and NPS seems to have both high predictive validity and actionability. People understand what it means, so it can be put to use in an organization quite easily.

Then there are other “one question” satisfaction methodologies like SUS and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score). CSAT is the most commonly used satisfaction method, and it’s likely the most straightforward as well.

You simply ask your customer to rate their satisfaction with your business, product, or service. Your survey scale can be 1 – 3, 1 – 5, or 1 – 10. Most academics disagree on which scale is the best to use.

It’s not as important to spend too long weighing which scale to use, but rather to implement something your team can agree on and sticking with it. It’s more about establishing a baseline and improving than it is to be perfectly accurate in measurement.

Customer Effort Score is another popular “single question survey.” Instead of simply asking your customers how satisfied they were, you ask how easy it was to purchase or to complete an action in your product.

Apparently, this score is more predictive of consumer behavior than CSAT or NPS, but again, there’s a lot of disagreement among academics on the specifics, and it’s mostly important that you choose one you can take action upon.

Eventually, things get more complex and you can add on more questions  ...

It's usually best to keep things simple, though. People don't want to fill out long surveys, and you want to make sure you get accurate data. When you add enough complexity, you may have to consider hiring a survey design specialist.

Boost Your Customer Satisfaction Today

Customer satisfaction (or delight or loyalty or whatever word you use) is incredibly important to the health of your business. If your customers are unhappy, they’ll leave, and no business can survive and compete long term with a serious churn problem. This guide has defined customer satisfaction as well as given you ways to measure it. It has also given you ideas to increase customer satisfaction. But that's just a start. Now it’s on you to implement these measurement strategies and customer satisfaction programs. It’s up to you to iterate and even innovate in the area of customer satisfaction. Your business growth depends on it .

Alex Birkett

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25 customer satisfaction survey questions and examples

The Team at CallMiner

July 14, 2022

Figuring out what your customers really think about your company can be challenging, particularly if you aren’t leveraging the right tools to measure and improve customer satisfaction (CSAT) and other metrics . It’s all too easy for customers to completely ignore customer satisfaction surveys or exit out of them if they feel their time is being wasted. However, the choice of question can make a major difference in your customer response rate.

Some suggest that so-called "zero-party data" (information customers willingly give about their own preferences and interests), such as what can be picked up in customer satisfaction surveys, will be collected by twice as many companies moving forward. Clearly, this data has value if obtained and used appropriately – and the questions you ask directly determine the usefulness of your customers' answers. 

Beyond Surveys: Building a Modern VoC Program

Customer satisfaction remains a top priority in 2022.

Satisfied customers are often repeat customers, and repeat customers keep businesses afloat, making customer satisfaction a top priority for companies in every industry. Even better, repeat customers can become brand advocates at any time, effectively ushering new leads in your direction without you having to spend additional marketing money. 

Ensuring customer loyalty requires tracking and improving customer satisfaction figures. CSAT scores can help you determine if your customers are actually satisfied with your business and if not, what parts of it need improvement. And when you combine customer survey data, with other types of customer data, such as social media interactions, call recordings, text or email interactions and more, you can gain a more holistic view of customer experience.  

To get to this powerful CSAT insight, you need to ask the right questions at the right time. Check out the questions and examples we've pulled together to flesh out your own strategy. 

Customer satisfaction survey questions

1. Ask about issue resolution. "Was the support representative able to resolve the issue?"  30 Best Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions , Qualaroo; Twitter: @Qualaroo  

2. Ask macro-level questions. "At HubSpot, we use customer satisfaction surveys to understand the micro-level experiences of individual users and address their concerns, but we always return to macro-level questions like Where is the market going, How is our product on the cutting edge, and Where do we need to improve?" - Michael Redbord, 11 Top Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions [Survey Template] , Hotjar; Twitter: @hotjar  

3. Ask about the post-purchase. "Here are sample customer satisfaction survey questions to help you evaluate customer experience after purchases: How would you rate your shopping experience with us?" - NikolettaBika, 57 Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions You Need to Ask , Acquire; Twitter: @acquire_io , @Nikoletta_Bika  

4. Ask customers "why" questions. "Asking customers why they liked or disliked something can provide more valuable information than just asking if they liked it. This may depend on the purpose of the survey itself, but asking why can produce better actionable insights.  Example: ‘Why do you like our Vitamine C serum? ’” - 25 Best Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions and Examples-Simplify , Simplify360; Twitter: @Simplify360    

5. Ask about your website's functionality. "These types of questions can help a business gauge how user-friendly their website, app or processes are. They can also determine which features are used, which are not and whether new features are needed. ‘How would you rate your experience using [company]’s web portal?’” - Gaetano Dinardi, 60 Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions You Can Borrow , Nextiva; Twitter: @Nextiva , @gaetano_nyc  

6. Give demographic questions a try. "Demographic questions may seem annoying or boring, but they are important to know and understand your customers. It helps with customer segmentation, which is necessary to identify and uncover patterns, trends, etc. The number of demographic questions would depend on the type of study or research you are conducting. Consider making some of these questions optional or provide options such as ‘rather not say.’  

• What is your age?  
• Where do you live? 
• What is your marital status?

- Top 20 customer satisfaction survey questions QuestionPro , QuestionPro; Twitter: @QuestionPro  

7. Ask about usage frequency of your products or services. "Product and usage survey questions can give you greater insight into how your customer base uses your products and services. Not only that, but you can learn more about how they feel about them as well. This can help inform not only how you approach customers, but also with your product development efforts. Incorporating customer feedback about your products, you know how to better meet their needs and improve their experience." - Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys: Examples, definition & template , Qualtrics; Twitter: @Qualtrics  

8. Ask how customers discovered your company. “How did you hear about us? Knowing how customers learned about a business can help you improve your marketing by identifying the most popular advertising channels and possible under-utilized ways to reach customers." - 20 Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions (Plus Question Types) , Indeed; Twitter: @indeed  

9. Ask why customers are leaving. "Questions to ask customers who churned [...] What is the main reason you’re canceling your account?" - Gosia Szaniawska-Schiavo, Customer Satisfaction Survey: 100 Sample Questions Guide , Tidio; Twitter: @tidiochat  

10. Ask questions that scale. "On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend our products or services to a friend, family member, or colleague?" - Baylor Cherry , 20 Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions You Need to Ask (Examples) , Bluleadz; Twitter: @Bluleadz  

11. Try questions with multiple choices. "Which best describes your job role? E.g., Director, Manager, Marketing Executive, etc." - 18 Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions for 2021 - Customer Thermometer , CustomerThermometer; Twitter: @custthermometer  

  12. Ask how customers describe your product. "Which of the following words would you use to describe our product? Why should you care how people would describe your product? Because it’s an important issue when your product gets described as ‘buggy’ instead of ‘life-saving.’" - Kasia Perzynska, 20 Powerful Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions , Survicate; Twitter: @Survicate   

13. Use psychographic questions for motivation insights. "Psychographics are questions that explain why customers do what they do. These questions help pinpoint specific traits and behaviours of your customer segmentation groups. Psychographic questions present valuable insights into a group’s buying habits. A few general examples of psychographic questions include: 

• Do you more often use your phone, tablet/laptop, or desktop when online shopping? 
• How many hours per day do you spend (activity relating to specific industry/product/service) 
• How important is sustainability when it comes to deciding between (product or service you sell)"

- Yash Chawlani , Top Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions to Ask in 2022 (UPDATED!) , Usersnap; Twitter: @usersnap  

  14. Be specific for more actionable answers. "The general question shown above is a nice measure of overall satisfaction to track over time, but you will also want to measure specific aspects of satisfaction in order to obtain more actionable data. [...] Example Q: What is your satisfaction with our cleanliness?" - 5 Essential Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions , My Market Research Methods.

Customer satisfaction survey examples

15. Enhance customer satisfaction survey data with conversation analytics. “Surveys are a good start to gaining insight into CX, but according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the average survey response rate is only between 5 and 15% . Plus, using surveys alone to assess CX is often a flawed practice as it tends to only attract the extreme ends of the spectrum. The typical respondent is either extremely satisfied or extremely dissatisfied.” - MeasuringVoice of the Customer , CallMiner; Twitter: @CallMiner  

16. Opt for simplicity in your survey design. "Simplicity is key: Apple’s survey design and template are quite simple, avoiding any distractions whatsoever. This helps in keeping the respondents focussed on the survey and achieving good survey completion results. Templates that use a lot of colors and themes tend to be distracting and off-putting." - 7 Groundbreaking customer satisfaction survey examples , QuestionPro; Twitter: @questionpro  

17. Description choices help isolate emotional responses. "Which of the following would you describe the support you received today? Select all that apply. 

• Empathetic 
• Convenient 
• Effortless 
• Incomplete 
• Other_____"

- CanOzdoruk , Customer Satisfaction Surveys [Top 17 Templates Use Cases] , Netomi; Twitter: @netomi_official , @canozdoruk  

18. Encourage responses by reminding customers of their importance. "Referring back to our first point on engaging introductions, Nest, a leading home technology platform uses an enticing header to grab the attention of their customers. By stating their evident desire in listening to the voice of the customer, their patrons feel more tended to and inclined to fill it out." - 16 Exceptional Examples of a Customer Satisfaction Survey , Benbria; Twitter: @benbria  

19. Try open-ended questions for unexpected insights. "What can we do to improve our customer service? Response format: Since this is an open-ended question, the response format would be an open field for customers to type their responses." - 25 Best Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions and Examples , Simplify360; Twitter: @Simplify 360  

20. Use incentives when possible to improve response rate. "Klook, a travel activities booking platform, clearly reminds its customers of the experience they booked before asking for their feedback. Consider how the company portrays the survey as a way to benefit future travelers, rather than the company itself. Klook tries to appeal to the travel culture of sharing reviews with others when it says, ‘They would love to hear your stories.’ Klook also offers a small incentive — $1 in Klook credits per review — to further persuade people to respond. While incentives typically help boost response rates, they should be used with caution." - Carla Vianna , 8 best customer satisfaction survey email examples , Xola; Twitter: @xola  

21. Ask about your competitors. "Even though this section isn’t a mandatory part of a customer satisfaction questionnaire, you can throw in one or two questions to know whether your competitors influenced the customer’s decision-making process. [...] What were the other brands in consideration before buying our product?" - FasnaSavad , 21 Effective Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire Examples , SurveySparrow; Twitter: @surveysparrow  

22. Ask about product features. "If there was one new feature you could suggest, what would it be and why?" - Ruchika Sharma, 23 Excellent Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples [Templates] , Hubspot; Twitter: @HubSpot , @Sh_ruchika  

23. Use a Likert scale question to cover all possible responses. "A Likert Scale question provides customers with options for their response from one extreme to another (i.e. satisfied to unsatisfied), with or without a neutral response. For example, a five-point Likert scale question might look like this:

 “How satisfied are you with our service? 

• Very satisfied. 
• Moderately satisfied. 
• Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. 
• Moderately dissatisfied. 
• Very dissatisfied."

- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys in 2022 - Qualtrics , Qualtrics; Twitter: @Qualtrics  

24. Try NPS for clarity of customer groupings. "NPS surveys ask customers how likely they are to recommend a brand or product to their friends or colleagues, on a scale from 0 to 10. As a result, you’re able to group customers as: 

• Promoters (scores 9 - 10) 
• Passives (scores 7 - 8) 
• Detractors (scores 0 - 6) 

 “The objective of NPS scores is to assess customer loyalty and overall satisfaction. A large number of Promoters suggests a high level of customer satisfaction." - Inés Roldós , Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Questions Examples , MonkeyLearn; Twitter: @monkeylearn  

25. Try open-ended questions to learn about customers' language and word choices.  "These types of questions don’t offer any predefined answer to choose from. They allow the respondents to freely write about their experience. 

Advantages 

• Allows users to define what matters to them 
• Gives you insights into the exact language they use 

Disadvantages 

• Can be more time consuming for your respondents 
• Can feel like it requires a big effort and have fewer respondents 
• Can be difficult to compile and analyze" - Customer Satisfaction Surveys , Omniconvert; Twitter: @Omniconvert

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Customer Satisfaction Examples: 7 Groundbreaking surveys

Customer satisfaction examples highlight the importance of customer-centricity in today’s corporate world. If you are running a business, it is essential to prioritize customer satisfaction . An organization’s success increasingly depends on customer-centricity and providing outstanding experiences that exceed customer expectations .

In this blog, we will present seven groundbreaking customer satisfaction examples of surveys and the key characteristics that help them improve and measure customer satisfaction.

What is customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is the degree of how well customers’ expectations are met from a product or service.

While it cannot be touched and seen, it can be measured by collecting data. Companies can ask a series of questions to their customers, and based on their responses, it can be decided whether customers are satisfied or not.

An online survey is one of the most common methods of collecting customer satisfaction data. While there are several basic and advanced question types, the data collected by them can be primarily divided into two categories.

Quantitative data

Qualitative data.

Both quantitative and qualitative data are important and are used to get a holistic view of satisfied customers.

Why is customer satisfaction so important?

When you are in a situation where you have to pick and choose from numerous options, you need to create a niche for yourself.

Customer satisfaction KPIs can be a differentiator when you have to compete with other similar products. If someone has used your products or services and had a positive experience, they will choose your products or services over your competitors.

Customers are the lifeblood of your business. So, it is important to make them happy. Also, it is equally important that they remain satisfied. They must be requested for their feedback regularly to learn more about their customer journey.

The customer satisfaction survey helps you find out what areas they like about your products and services, but more importantly, what they would like to see improved. But you can derive the right insights from your survey only if the questions are phrased correctly.

Below are some surveys of excellent customer satisfaction examples that are great for getting ideas.

Free customer satisfaction survey templates

7 Groundbreaking customer satisfaction examples of surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys are now an important way to measure and understand customers’ happiness. On the other hand, traditional survey methods may not always catch the complex details of what customers want today. To get around these problems, companies are now using innovative survey examples that go beyond what has been done before.

Let’s look at seven innovative customer satisfaction examples of surveys that can change the process of measuring customer satisfaction.

Nike is considered one of the companies that give great importance to its customer’s feedback. Their customer satisfaction surveys aim to know more about the experience of their store visitors, and they are excellent customer satisfaction examples. However, many things about the store can affect a visitor’s decision to buy a product.

Some of the factors that can affect the satisfaction level of Nike customers who shop at the store are:

• Product placement
• Arrangement of products
• Range of products
• Staff behavior
• Staff service
• Staff greeting
• Store location
• Store facilities
• Store ambiance

Nike understands that because so many factors influence customer behavior and their decisions, there should be specific questions for each of them.

In the below example of a customer satisfaction survey, Nike asks targeted questions on how staff greetings affect their purchase decision. The respondents can rate their experience on a scale ranging from not influencing at all to very strong influence. They can explain the reason behind their selection in the comment box and leave other comments. Such textual responses can be used for text analytics like sentiment analysis , word cloud, and other text analysis reports.

Key characteristics

• Helps segregate the feedback: As there are questions for different influencing factors, it’s easy to find out what feedback is for which factor. It makes generating reports easy and clear. You can easily find the data that matters to you and thus save time in understanding the reports.
• Highlights specific improvement areas: In this customer satisfaction survey example, say, if the customer selected 8 or 9, which is close to a very strong influence, Nike would have asked its staff to continue greeting customers in the same way. It implies that the staff greeting is a significant factor in generating sales and can also be applied in stores at other locations.
• Easy to find out which factor needs to be improved by how much: As the survey uses a numerical scale, the company can easily quantify how much a particular area needs improvement. Also, it helps in comparing results with historical feedback. So, if there is an improvement of 4 points from 4 to 8, the company can be sure that customer experience has improved.
• Custom look and feel: This is another striking feature of the above questionnaire to match their brand style. Businesses like Nike should create branded surveys as they are touchpoints with customers. And just like their retail stores and website, they should also convey their brand voice through customer satisfaction surveys.
• Progress bar: The progress bar visually represents the survey completion percentage. It helps respondents to estimate how long it will take to complete the survey. This is an excellent example of customer-centricity, where the survey creator has designed the survey keeping its target users in mind. Such survey design enhances the respondents’ overall experience and helps achieve a higher completion rate.

SubWay uses an advanced grid to collect customer feedback. You can choose an option from the dropdown list for a specific service and select a rating based on your experience. You can also choose a reason for your rating from another dropdown list.

This is one of the most concise questionnaires of customer satisfaction examples. It makes the most out of the screen space and simultaneously gathers many meaningful responses from the respondents.

Such surveys have higher response and completion rates. Market researchers and organizations should use such designs to offer a great experience to their respondents.

• Short and crisp: Customer satisfaction surveys can get really long because an organization generally needs customer feedback about so many points. So, creating a helpful questionnaire for businesses is an art, and customers, too, would feel compelled to answer. Here, SubWay has nailed the art and come up with a precise, compact, and aesthetically pleasing survey.
• Does not repeat scale labels: SubWay has used the header space to specify how they interpret respondents’ answers. Here, they have mentioned that 10 stands for very satisfied and 0 for a not satisfying experience. As you can see, there are many questions that use a multi-point matrix scale with a scale of 0-10. Instead of repeating scale labels for all of them, they have specified it only at the top.
• Customized questions: To make the question relevant to each customer, SubWay has text piping in the question text. Many survey tools offer this feature, which substitutes text in place of a variable in the run time. So, when the respondents answer the question, they feel as if the questionnaire has been customized for them.
• Relevant answer options: The dropdown list has answer options that can be quite possible scenarios or reasons behind their feedback. Both the questions and answers are well-phrased and are specific to their industry. This helps them make better decisions and gather actionable intelligence from the results.

03. Delta Airlines

Delta Airlines is another business for whom customer experience and satisfaction matter greatly. They ask a series of questions that help them measure these parameters so that they can offer better services. Like Nike, there are many factors that affect the satisfaction of Delta Airlines customers too. Some of the most influencing factors are:

• The behavior of flight attendants
• Baggage allowed and its care
• Comfort of seats
• In-flight entertainment
• Flight experience

Out of these, the behavior of flight attendants can be a differentiator when it comes to the passengers’ in-flight experience. So, Delta Airlines created a short yet detailed onboard service survey for its passengers.

• Examples in the question text: Delta has given examples in the question text to make it easier for passengers to answer questions. It helps passengers decide the option and clearly understand the question.
• Aiming for the best: In the last question, instead of asking a generic question saying, “Do you have any other comments or suggestions for us?” Delta has asked a very specific question on whether they have met or exceeded the expectations of their passengers. It sends a message that customer happiness is important to them. They aim to make themselves the best airline and so ask for specific feedback and suggestions that would make them the best.
• N/A option: The survey creator understands that the question might not be applicable to the passenger, so to consider this scenario, they have added a N/A option as one of the answer choices.

04. McDonald’s

McDonald’s is a brand that spans across continents and serves a huge number of customers every day. Service is a key component of their business and massive success.

McDVoice, their online portal, lets customers enter the survey code from their receipts. It is convenient for customers to take surveys and show them that their feedback matters. It is important to note that customers can still provide feedback, even if a survey code is missing.

What’s even more noteworthy is that they show the respondents where they will locate the details they need to fill in the survey. These details can further help them filter responses and have a more detailed view of the data.

• Brand themes: The survey template bears their logo and also follows their brand colors and themes. This lends authenticity and credibility to the survey template and improves the survey response rate .
• Simple select options: The survey has checkboxes as answer options that customers can easily select from. This is not cumbersome to the respondents, and does not take long to fill out the survey. Having this saves time, and then you can add an open-ended question in the end for more information.
• Shows progress: Almost all brands conduct customer satisfaction surveys. It is crucial to know what your customers are thinking and feel about your brand. The frequency of these surveys depends on organizations and their study focus. The customers, however, receive many surveys every day. Ensuring your surveys are concise, numbered, and with a progress bar is crucial to reducing your survey dropouts. Having a progress bar lets the respondents know how many questions are left and improves your survey completion rates.

To continually improve its services, FedEx conducts customer satisfaction surveys with all its customers, and they are great customer satisfaction examples. Their survey gets all the basic details from the initial questions, such as the type of service availed, the date and time of the visit, the transaction number, etc.

The respondents get to rate on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being extremely satisfied and 0 being extremely dissatisfied. They include a Net Promoter Score (NPS) question to see how likely their customers are to refer FedEx to their colleagues, friends, and family.

This helps them calculate their NPS score and buckets customers as promoters, detractors, or passives.

• Get all information: Conducting customer surveys is not enough; you must also add customer feedback and concerns. By taking all vital information in the beginning, FedEx ensures that they can easily reach out to customers, get details, and address any concerns. It also comes in handy to know what worked well for certain customers and replicate that for other customers.
• Rating scales: The rating scales used by FedEx help customers select appropriate feedback. Using that information, FedEx can clearly see how satisfied or dissatisfied their customers are with their service.
• Journey bar: The customer survey indicates the survey’s progress, letting the respondents know the percentage of questions left. This helps ensure you do not lose respondents midway through and improves survey completion rates.

06. Walmart

Walmart has operations in many regions, which means they have customers who speak various languages.

With Walmart’s customer surveys, the customers get to select the language they wish to answer the survey in. This certainly helps in improving survey completion rates and getting honest responses.

Using multi-lingual surveys makes people comfortable and is definitely a great way to gather customer feedback.

• Multi-lingual surveys: Walmart supports various languages for its customer satisfaction surveys. This is important to make your customers feel comfortable and to let them know that their opinions and feedback are immensely valued.
• Inspires honest feedback: Their surveys have language options, bear their logo, are easy to answer, and have a very good structural flow. All these factors inspire confidence among the respondents encouraging them to leave honest feedback. This helps gather important and valuable information to refine its customer operations further.

Apple is famous for customer-centricity, and it reflects in its products and services. Their surveys are great as customer satisfaction examples. They have some of the most loyal customers globally.

Apple views customer experience with a different lens, and it shows in its marketing and customer service initiatives, echoing what Steve Jobs famously said, “ You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around. ”

• Get to the bottom: As you can see in the survey template, they have provided a multitude of options to the respondents. This helps Apple pinpoint reasons and get to the bottom of reasons for customers’ actions. This data can come in handy in product development, marketing campaigns, customer churn initiatives, etc.
• Rating scales: They use rating scales to measure customer satisfaction and various other aspects, which are easy for the respondents to fill in. They also provide open-ended questions to get to the root of issues. Respondents can choose to provide that extra information if they wish. These comments are crucial to zeroing in on specific customer issues and addressing them.
• Simplicity is key: Apple’s survey design and template are simple, avoiding distractions. This helps keep the respondents focused on the survey and achieve good survey completion results. Templates that use a lot of colors and themes tend to be distracting and off-putting.

How to create good customer satisfaction surveys?

Creating good customer satisfaction surveys is essential to understand and improve the customer experience. A well-designed survey can provide important insights into customer preferences, suggest areas for improvement, and measure overall satisfaction levels.

We looked at 7 Groundbreaking customer satisfaction examples. By following best practices and applying smart strategies, you can ensure that your customer satisfaction surveys produce valuable data that may drive actionable improvements inside your organization. Creating good customer satisfaction surveys that yield desired results depends on the below steps.

Step 01: Designing a survey

Designing a customer satisfaction survey offering significant insights and actionable data requires careful thought and planning. Here are some important factors to consider when creating a customer satisfaction survey that collects the information necessary and gives valuable insights for your organization.

Write short and clear questions.

Customize the look and feel, add survey logic and programming, use ready-made templates.

350+ Free survey templates

Step 02: Distribute a survey

Once you’ve designed your customer satisfaction survey, the next crucial step is to distribute it properly. Distributing your survey to the appropriate audience ensures you collect diverse responses that appropriately represent your consumer base.

Choose the right platform

Choose the right target audience, step 03: analyze the results.

Once you’ve collected a significant amount of survey responses, the next important step is to analyze the data to get valuable insights. Data analysis enables you to identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement that can lead to significant changes in your business.

Generate reports

Integrate with third-party tools, export results, step 04: take action.

Once you’ve reviewed the reports and identified areas for improvement, it’s time to create an action plan and put it into action. Taking action indicates your dedication to addressing customer concerns and consistently improving their experience.

Develop an action plan

LEARN ABOUT: Effective Customer Success Plan

Close the feedback loop

Customer satisfaction is essential in today’s business environment, and companies must prioritize providing exceptional experiences that exceed customer expectations.

We explored seven innovative customer satisfaction examples of surveys, highlighting important characteristics that lead to their success. These examples show the significance of customized surveys that collect useful insights.

Businesses can gain a full insight into customer preferences, identify areas for development, and make practical changes to improve the customer experience by conducting carefully designed surveys and taking advantage of the data collected.

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10 Ways to Boost Customer Satisfaction

• G. Tomas M. Hult
• Forrest V. Morgeson

Takeaways from an analysis of millions of consumer data points.

Customer satisfaction is at its lowest point in the past two decades. Companies must focus on 10 areas of the customer experience to improve satisfaction without sacrificing revenue. The authors base their findings on research at the ACSI — analyzing millions of customer data points — and research that we conducted for The Reign of the Customer : Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction. For three decades, the ACSI has been a leading satisfaction index (cause-and-effect metric) connected to the quality of brands sold by companies with significant market share in the United States.

Despite all the effort and money poured into CX tools by companies, customer satisfaction continues to decline . In the United States, it is now at its lowest level in nearly two decades, per data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Consumer sentiment is also at its lowest in more than two decades. This negative dynamic in the customer-centric ecosystem in which we now live creates the challenge of figuring out what is going wrong and what companies can do to fix it.

• GH G. Tomas M. Hult is part of the leadership team at the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI); coauthor of The Reign of the Customer: Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction ; and professor in the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. He is also a member of the Expert Networks of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations’ World Investment Forum.
• FM Forrest V. Morgeson is an assistant professor in the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University; (Former) Director of Research at the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI); and coauthor of The Reign of the Customer: Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction .

Partner Center

Understanding digital experience

Last updated

24 May 2024

Reviewed by

Miroslav Damyanov

Keep reading to learn what digital experience management can do for your business, including enhancing customer satisfaction, growth, and success. 

• What is digital experience?

Digital experience (DX) refers to interactions between users and organizations enabled by digital technologies. Every time someone interacts with your organization digitally, they have a digital experience. —from opening an app or scrolling through a website to completing tasks like sending a message, planning a route, or buying something online.

As customers increasingly begin and end their journeys online, crafting seamless, relevant digital experiences that meet their needs is more crucial than ever.

Brands curate digital experiences for their audiences through interactive programs, games, advertisements, articles, promotions, social media interactions, mobile apps, virtual events, and personalized emails. 

Various digital interaction platforms can distribute valuable content and resources:

Mobile apps

Social media platforms

E-commerce sites

Point-of-sale (POS) systems

Digital signage

Internet-of-things (IoT) devices

Is there a difference between user experience and digital experience?

User experience (UX) and digital experience (DX) are similar but distinct concepts, emphasizing different aspects of technology interaction. 

UX focuses on the user's overall interaction with a product or service, encompassing usability, design, and accessibility. It delves into how seamless, intuitive, and satisfying the interaction is for the user.

On the other hand, DX specifically relates to the interactions users have with a brand through digital channels like websites, apps, and social media. The digital experience harnesses technology to create immersive, innovative, and transformative experiences.

The defining difference is that UX covers the entire user journey across all touchpoints, while DX zeroes in on digital touchpoints and their effectiveness in engaging users.

The difference between digital experience and digital customer experience

DX encompasses all interactions users have with digital channels, including websites, apps, social media, and more, focusing on these touchpoints' overall effectiveness and engagement. 

However, digital customer experience (DCX) is specifically about how customers perceive and interact with a brand through these digital channels, emphasizing satisfaction, loyalty, and meeting customer needs. 

The central difference is that DX is a broader concept involving all user interactions , while digital customer experience hones in on the customer journey and their satisfaction with the brand's digital presence.

• 5 examples of digital experiences

Here are five common ways organizations provide an engaging DX:

1. Social media

Businesses can enhance their DX by targeting users with personalized ads and promotions based on their social media activity. Users may also social media to engage with your company by asking questions or seeking customer service assistance. Additionally, you can captivate social media users through polls, quizzes, and videos.

2. Chatbots

Deploying AI-powered chatbots across websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms can significantly enhance customer support by promptly addressing common questions. Yet, ensuring their effectiveness is crucial for a positive DX. Implementing robust training, continuous optimization, and seamless integration with human support can ensure chatbots deliver solutions (instead of causing frustration) and bolster the overall digital experience.

3. Online portals

Community webpages or portals that give users access to information, tools, and links are another way of increasing user engagement. Members can communicate with one another, sharing their thoughts and providing valuable feedback regarding your products or services on forums such as Slack, Discord, Reddit, or Quora. 

4. Resource centers

 Engaging resources that can be added to your digital library to enhance brand perception may include:

Blog articles : informative and educational content relevant to the brand’s industry.

E-books and whitepapers : in-depth resources offering insights and research findings.

Videos and webinars : visual content for tutorials, product demos, and expert discussions.

Interactive or animated infographics : visually engaging data representations and summaries.

Case studies and testimonials : real-world examples and customer success stories.

Interactive tools, including augmented reality (AR) : virtual try-on apps, immersive product demos, calculators, and quizzes

Newsletters and emails : subscriber updates and promotional content.

Product guides and FAQs : detailed product information and answers to common questions.

Downloadable resources : templates, checklists, and other useful materials.

5. Smart home automation

Smart home devices and systems, such as smart thermostats, lighting, security cameras, and voice assistants (e.g. Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant), provide users with a digital experience within their homes.

• When is digital experience important?

DX is crucial across various contexts: from facilitating smooth online shopping to ensuring user-friendly software interfaces and engaging digital content. 

Prioritizing it guarantees effective, efficient, and meaningful interactions with digital products and services. 

Moreover, in an evolving digital landscape, maintaining a positive experience is vital for fostering brand loyalty, enhancing customer satisfaction, and driving business success in a competitive market.

• What makes a digital experience great?

Usability : a user-friendly interface that is intuitive and easy to navigate is essential. Users should be able to accomplish tasks and access information quickly and efficiently without encountering confusion or frustration.

Accessibility : ensuring that the digital experience is accessible to users of all abilities is crucial. This includes considerations for users with disabilities, such as providing alternative text for images, keyboard navigation options, and compatibility with assistive technologies.

Performance : fast loading times and responsiveness are essential for keeping users engaged. Slow-loading pages or lagging interactions can lead to user frustration and abandonment.

Visual design : a visually appealing design that aligns with the brand identity and enhances the overall user experience is important. Consistency in design elements, color schemes, typography, and imagery helps create a cohesive and professional look.

Content quality : providing valuable and relevant content that meets users' needs and interests is key. Content should be clear, concise, and easily understood, whether text, images, videos, or interactive.

• How to improve the digital experience

Here are some essential methods for continuously updating and enhancing your organization's digital experience:

Conduct user research

Before making any changes to your digital platforms, it's essential to understand your users' needs, preferences, and pain points. Conducting thorough user research through surveys, interviews, and usability testing allows you to gain valuable insights into how users interact with your digital assets. By understanding their behaviors and motivations, you can tailor your digital experience to meet their expectations better.

Gather digital feedback

Feedback from users is invaluable for identifying areas of improvement in your digital experience. Implementing tools such as feedback forms, live chat support, and customer service channels enables users to voice their opinions and concerns directly. Paying attention to this feedback and taking actionable steps to address issues can significantly enhance user satisfaction and overall digital experience.

Leverage online reviews

Online reviews provide a wealth of information about how users perceive your digital products or services. Monitoring review platforms, social media channels, and industry forums allows you to gain insights into what users appreciate and needs improvement. Positive reviews can highlight areas of strength to maintain, while negative reviews offer opportunities for refinement and enhancement.

Use behavioral intelligence

Analyzing user data can provide valuable insights into how users interact with your digital platforms. Using analytics tools and tracking user journeys, you can identify patterns, preferences, and pain points in the digital experience. This data-driven approach allows you to make informed decisions about optimizing content, navigation, and functionality to better align with user expectations.

Incorporating these methods into your digital strategy empowers you to continuously improve the digital experience for your users, ultimately driving greater satisfaction, loyalty, and success for your brand.

• 12 best practices for delivering excellent digital experiences

Paying attention to these twelve digital experience management best practices will help ensure success for your organization:

User-centric design

High-quality content

Intuitive navigation

Responsive design

Fast performance

Accessibility

Consistent branding

Feedback mechanisms

Personalization

Continuous improvement

Security and privacy

Seamless transactions

• Bringing it all together

Creating easily accessible digital experiences that genuinely add value for users is key. 

Personalization is instrumental in delivering exceptional digital experiences.

By gathering the right data to understand individual preferences deeply, you can craft unique digital experiences for each customer rather than just targeting different groups. 

Continuously improving the digital experience for everyone involves attentively listening to customer feedback, conducting thorough pain point research, and leveraging analytics. Ready to learn more? Read What is digital employee experience?

What is an example of a digital experience platform?

A customer data platform (CDP) is one example of a digital experience platform. CDPs are software for collecting and unifying customer data to provide a single, in-depth view of each customer. CDPs help businesses understand their users, create complementary marketing strategies, automate processes, and develop personalized customer journeys.

What ruins a digital experience?

A digital experience can be ruined by various factors, including:

Low-quality content : irrelevant, outdated, or inaccurate content fails to meet users' needs and expectations, leading to disengagement and dissatisfaction.   

Poor usability : complex navigation, confusing layouts, and unclear instructions make it difficult for users to accomplish tasks or find information, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction.  

Slow performance : waiting a long time for a site to load, lagging interactions, and unresponsive elements get in the way of the user's ability to navigate and interact with the digital platform efficiently, resulting in frustration and potential abandonment.  

Lack of accessibility : inaccessible features or content that do not cater to users with disabilities can alienate a significant portion of the audience and lead to exclusion and frustration.

Inconsistent design : inconsistencies in design elements, branding, and user interface components across different pages or platforms can disrupt the user experience and create confusion.

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Pillars of Customer Retention in the Services Sector: Understanding the Role of Relationship Marketing, Customer Satisfaction, and Customer Loyalty

• Published: 20 May 2024

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• Mazhar Hussain 1 ,
• Asad Javed   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4630-3595 1 ,
• Samar Hayat Khan 2 &
• Muhammad Yasir 1  

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This research aims to examine the impact of relationship marketing on customer retention, as well as the moderating role of customer loyalty and the mediating role of customer satisfaction by means of relationship marketing theory. In today’s business climate, companies of all sizes and types prioritize customer retention and acquisition. Customer retention, satisfaction, and loyalty are essential for a company’s profitability and growth, whereas building strong, long-term relationships with customers is at the core of relationship marketing. Developing trust, commitment, communication, and conflict management skills are all essential components of fostering these relationships, which ultimately result in increased customer satisfaction and retention. The study population consisted of 5276 employees working at different courier services offices across the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. A sample size of 385 was calculated using the Krejcie and Morgan sampling formula, and data were collected through self-administered questionnaires adapted from previous studies. The data-driven results indicate a positive relationship between relationship marketing, customer satisfaction, and customer retention in the services sector of Pakistan. Additionally, customer satisfaction mediates this relationship, while customer loyalty moderates it. These results have significant implications for companies seeking to retain and satisfy their customers.

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Hussain, M., Javed, A., Khan, S.H. et al. Pillars of Customer Retention in the Services Sector: Understanding the Role of Relationship Marketing, Customer Satisfaction, and Customer Loyalty. J Knowl Econ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-02060-2

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-02060-2

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