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

Easily measure customer satisfaction and begin to improve your customer experience.

• Net Promoter Score
• Customer Effort 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 Research: What it is + How to do it?

Customer satisfaction research is essential for businesses looking to build long-term customer relationships. It provides organizations with essential insights into their customers’ thinking and tastes.

Customers who are satisfied with the quality of service are more likely to become loyal customers. In this blog, we will explore customer satisfaction research and how to do it for customer-centric success.

What is customer satisfaction research?

Customer satisfaction research is a systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data that allows companies to measure the satisfaction level of customers when purchasing a product or service from their brand.

This research is useful to identify satisfied customers who are loyal defenders of your brand and who are dissatisfied to follow up on their demands.

There are many reasons to measure customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction research offers great insights, so your team can focus on meeting customer expectations or flagging potential issues that may affect your business growth.

Importance of conducting a satisfaction study

Customer satisfaction research allows business managers and owners to discover that keeping current customers costs less than getting new ones.

One way to collect information about customer satisfaction is by conducting online surveys, which will help you make the necessary changes to improve your business and maintain customer loyalty.

Responding to customer complaints and concerns don’t always mean knowing their needs. Satisfaction surveys allow companies to understand what is working, what needs to be improved, and why.

To provide better customer service, it’s important to understand how they feel and allow them to explain why they feel that way. Only then can you adapt your services and offer an experience that makes you stand out from the competition.

Companies carry out satisfaction studies for different objectives. Among the most important uses of this mechanism are:

• Know what are the areas that need to be improved in the business.
• Know the opinion of customers about your brand. 
• Find out what the true needs of customers are.
• Create better customer retention strategies.
• Know if the market strategies that are carried out are working. 
• Meet customer expectations.

How to carry out customer satisfaction research?

Customer satisfaction research takes several steps to get a thorough and accurate insight into your customer experiences and perspectives. Here’s a step-by-step method you can follow for carrying out customer satisfaction research:

Step 1: Define Research Objectives

Defining precise and well-structured research objectives is an essential first step in every customer satisfaction research project. These objectives will guide you through the whole research process and ensure that the research remains focused, relevant, and connected with your business goals.

To define research objectives, follow the steps outlined below:

• Identify the Objectives: Start by identifying the overall objectives of your customer satisfaction research.
• Break Down Objectives: Divide the purpose into specific objectives. Each objective should be specific and address a different component of customer satisfaction.
• SMART Criteria: Make sure your objectives are SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
• Prioritize: If you have several objectives, prioritize them according to relevance and potential impact.

Step 2: Select Research Methodology

Selecting an appropriate research technique is a vital decision that will define your overall research process. Your approach will influence the type of data you gather, the level of insights you get, and the general validity of your findings. Here are some examples of research methodology.

• Surveys: Surveys are a popular and versatile method for collecting data on customer satisfaction. You can gather qualitative and quantitative data through structured questions.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is the most straightforward of the customer satisfaction survey methodologies. Surveys are well-suited for measuring customer satisfaction scores, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and other quantitative metrics.

• Interviews: Interviews will enable you to have in-depth interactions with customers. You can get valuable qualitative insights into customer experiences through phone interviews or in-person chats.
• Focus Groups: In a focus group, a small group of customers shares their experiences, ideas, and impressions in a guided session. This strategy encourages group interactions by allowing participants to respond to each other’s comments.
• Observations: Observational research refers to directly monitoring customers as they interact with your products or services. This strategy will provide you insights into user behavior and reactions in real time.

Step 3: Develop Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Developing well-crafted customer satisfaction surveys is an important stage in customer satisfaction research. It serves as the primary tool for gathering customer data and insights.

A well-crafted customer satisfaction survey will ensure that you get relevant and meaningful data. It will also motivate you to make improvements and increase customer satisfaction. You can develop a robust customer satisfaction survey by following the steps below:

• Define Research Objectives: Before developing survey questions, ensure you understand the research objectives. Determine which aspects of customer satisfaction you want to measure and what insights you want to get.
• Choose Question Types: Remember the research objectives when creating customer satisfaction survey questions. Select appropriate question types that align with your research objectives. It will help you to capture different dimensions of customer satisfaction. To quantify responses, include closed-ended questions with Likert scales, multiple-choice options, and ranking scales. Include open-ended questions. It will encourage your customers to provide thorough comments and insights.
• Order and Flow: Organize the survey questions logically, begin with general questions, and then proceed to more specialized and complicated topics. Keep a balance between qualitative and quantitative questions.
• Avoid Leading Questions: Leading questions will unintentionally influence your respondents and compromise the accuracy of their responses. So, avoid including leading questions and design questions that are neutral and unbiased.
• Incorporate Demographic Questions: Demographic questions (e.g., age, gender, location) will help you to segment responses and analyze satisfaction across different customer segments. So include it.
• Mobile-Friendly Design: Make sure your survey is mobile-friendly and displays properly on different screen sizes.

Step 4: Sampling Strategy

Sampling ensures that the findings are representative of your whole customer base. It will enable you to make correct decisions and judgments. A well-planned sampling method will help you reduce biases and increase your findings’ generalization.

Depending on your research objectives and available resources, you can use a variety of sampling methods . Here are a few common approaches:

• Simple Random Sampling : It ensures that every person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen.
• Stratified Random Sampling : This sampling method divides your population into subgroups based on specified criteria.
• Convenience Sampling : This method selects participants who are easily accessible, such as customers who frequently visit your physical store or online store.

Step 5: Data Collection and Analysis

In this step, you will collect data from your target audience, arrange and evaluate the data systematically, and generate useful insights to make informed decisions.

Use statistical tools to analyze trends, correlations, and distributions for quantitative data. Calculate measures such as averages, percentages, and standard deviations. You can visually represent the findings using graphs, charts, and tables.

Use qualitative analysis tools for qualitative data. Content analysis, thematic analysis, and sentiment analysis are all common methodologies you can use. These strategies will help you identify repeating themes, attitudes, and patterns in open-ended responses.

Step 6: Implement Changes

The implementation phase of customer satisfaction research is where insights and recommendations are implemented. Here, you will turn data-driven findings into real improvements that directly influence the customer experience.

Create a detailed implementation plan for each identified improvement. Implementing changes based on research findings involves careful planning, cooperation, and a dedication to providing greater customer value.

Define specific tasks, time frames, responsible parties, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of each effort. Prioritize the actionable recommendations that are most likely to improve customer satisfaction and retention significantly.

Step 7: Communication and Regular Feedback Loop

Transparency is essential for maintaining trust and credibility with your customers. Share the research’s findings and the responses that were made. Let your customers know that their opinions are taken seriously and have resulted in concrete improvements.

Customer satisfaction will remain a dynamic and changing emphasis of your business strategy if you establish a continual feedback loop. Here are some tips for creating and keeping a consistent feedback loop:

• Scheduled Surveys: Conduct customer satisfaction surveys quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly. 
• Incorporate Feedback Mechanisms: Integrate feedback mechanisms into various touchpoints, such as post-purchase follow-up emails, customer service interactions, or feedback forms on your website.
• Feedback Analysis: Analyze the customer feedback you received from each cycle in detail. Identify recurring themes, popular trends, and problem areas.
• Action Planning: Create action plans for additional improvements based on the newly acquired insight.
• Implementation: Implement the suggested modification and changes in every relevant part of your business.

Advantages of carrying out a satisfaction study

Carrying out a satisfaction study has great benefits for your organization:

• Obtain valuable information from customers

Doing customer satisfaction research allows you to obtain information about your customers, determine how happy they are with your company, and correct what is wrong.

• Establish priorities

The satisfaction study results allow you to discover which areas of your business need more attention, such as customer service, the sales closing process, etc.

• Customer retention

If your customers are satisfied with your products, it is possible that they will stay in your business. Maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction is extremely important to the overall success of your organization. 

• Maintain your reputation

A satisfaction study allows you to interact with consumers and show them that you care about their needs and opinions. In particular, they offer to improve the customer experience if you make the changes.

• Maintain customer loyalty

If you want to maintain customer loyalty, a satisfaction survey will give you the opportunity to listen to their feedback and improve your brand.

• Get new customers

People feel more confident buying from transparent companies, so post the feedback you get from current customers to show that you allow any kind of feedback and value it. 

• An advantage over the competition

There is a lot of competition in the market today, so any advantage you may have needs to be made known. Show current and potential customers the areas in which you excel.

Conducting customer satisfaction research with QuestionPro

One of the best ways to find out the opinion of customers and their needs is through online surveys, which allow you to collect information and perform data analysis to make better business decisions.

With QuestionPro, you can find out how satisfied your customers are by asking a Net Promoter Score question, which will let you know if consumers are promoters or detractors of your brand. 

Other types of questions that will help you gather information for your study are: 

• Multiple Choice Questions
• Closed questions
• Open text questions
• Order and Ranking Questions

You can track customer satisfaction and measure how happy your existing customers are with your business, brand, and customer initiatives by using QuestionPro’s customer satisfaction survey templates and survey questions. These customer satisfaction survey examples help ensure a higher survey completion and response rate for your market research.

Find out what customers think! Carry out customer satisfaction research and collect the necessary information to improve the consumer experience. Contact us and learn how to measure customer satisfaction using QuestionPro.

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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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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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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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2 Replies to "Customer satisfaction survey templates, examples, and questions"

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

Great catch! Thanks for pointing out that typo. Fixed now.

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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

Growth Marketing Manager @ HubSpot

Learn / Blog / Article

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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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Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Questions & Examples

There’s a lot of pressure on businesses to deliver first-class, meaningful customer experiences (CX) and one way that has proven to be successful in meeting customer needs is listening to the voice of the customer (VoC) .

One of the best ways to listen to your customers is to send customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys at different stages of the customer journey.

By regularly asking for customer feedback at different touchpoints, you can better understand customer’s challenges and pain points and make the necessary changes to improve their experience.

Read on to discover why customer satisfaction surveys are an invaluable source of customer feedback. Then dive into some real-life examples of CSAT survey questions, and learn how to analyze and visualize survey responses:

What Is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Survey?

Types of customer satisfaction surveys, how to create customer satisfaction surveys, sending customer satisfaction surveys.

• Examples of Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Survey Questions
• How to Analyze CSAT Surveys?

A customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey is a questionnaire that businesses use to collect feedback from customers. The purpose of CSAT surveys is to measure how satisfied customers are with your brand, products or services, and level of customer service.

Once you’ve received your CSAT scores and responses, you’ll need to measure customer satisfaction to find out whether your brand, products, or services are meeting your customers’ expectations. Analyzing data from CSAT surveys can yield valuable insights that help you:

• Improve products or services , and ensure they are correctly aligned with customer needs.
• Provide seamless customer experiences that lead to loyal customers and improve brand reputation.
• Gain a deeper understanding of the user experience and identify customer pain points . The more you know about your customer’s challenges and motivations , the more proactive and effective you can be when solving their problems.
• Keep track of customer satisfaction over time , and compare how brand perception evolves over time.

There are different types of surveys that businesses send to customers to understand how they feel at different stages of the customer journey.

The most common types of metrics used to measure customer satisfaction are:

1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT surveys usually start by asking customers to rate how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with a product or service, for example with the question “How satisfied were you with us?” .

CSAT scores are often used to measure how satisfied customers are with your products and services once they’ve made a purchase.

Customer Satisfaction Scores are an extremely useful metric to assess the level of satisfaction related to a single event. While benchmarks vary by industry, you should aim for a satisfaction score of over 80% .

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

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.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score (CES) aims to measure how much effort it takes for a customer to use your product or solve an issue with your customer support.

The goal of this score is to evaluate customer loyalty, which is determined by the customer experience. You might send a CES survey after closing a support ticket or to ask about a customer’s experience with a new feature.

4. Milestone Surveys

Milestone surveys are sent at specific stages of the buyer’s journey, to give insight into the customer experience. For example, you might send a survey to a new user after completing the onboarding process, to evaluate how it went and if it could be improved.

A popular use of this type of survey is to find out why a customer churned. By sending surveys just after a customer cancels their subscription, for example, it’s likely you’ll get their honest opinion.

When crafted properly, customer satisfaction surveys can provide you with valuable insights about how satisfied customers are with your products and service.

To create a customer satisfaction survey you'll need to understand the different types of questions you can ask, which are divided into two main categories:

• Close-ended questions
• Open-ended questions

Let's look at each type in detail:

Close-ended Questions

Close-ended (also known as multiple choice questions) can only be answered with a preset number of options. They usually get a high number of responses as they are easy and fast to answer.

Because the answers are limited, they gather quantitative information, so it's simple to analyze these results and get insights right away.

Here is an example of a multiple-choice question from Youtube:

Inside multiple-choice questions, there are a number of different types of questions, including:

• Binary questions: Binary scale questions offer the respondents two possible answers, for example Yes/No, True/False or Thumbs up/Thumbs down.
• Ordinal questions: Ordinal questions give a numerical rating as the answer. The most popular example is the NPS score which rates the likelihood of recommending the company on a scale of 0 to 10.
• Multi point scale: A multi point table allows respondents to rate different topics with one question. They usually group questions that have the same possible answers.

Open-ended Questions

Open-ended questions are freeform questions that allow respondents to explain in their own words their feelings and ideas. They gather qualitative information, and even though they are not as simple to analyze , they offer much deeper insights into what the customer is actually thinking.

Here is an example of an open-ended question from Apple:

Tips for Creating a Customer Satisfaction Survey

Now that you know the different types of questions you can ask, let's look at some best practices to consider when creating the survey:

Always start with a close-ended question.

Starting with a close-ended question will allow you to detect the issue in the first place. By quickly analyzing the quantitative results you'll know how satisfied or dissatisfied your customers are.

Follow up with open-ended questions.

Once you detect the problem you will need to figure out the why behind the responses. That's when open-ended questions come in. They provide more detailed insights in your customers' own words, and can be revalational about specific aspects of your products or services.

Encourage customers to respond.

Whether sending by email, in-app, or asking customers to fill out a survey in-store, keep the invitation to fill it out short and let your customers know how long it will take to complete. Never ask more than 10 questions in your CSAT surveys, otherwise you’ll receive a low response rate or a bunch of unfinished responses.

Survey questions should be easy to understand.

The easier questions are to understand, the higher your response rate will be. Avoid industry jargon or confusing questions. Keep them as succinct and straightforward as possible.

Timing plays a huge part in sending customer satisfaction surveys: while you need to ask the right questions, you also need to choose which stages of the customer journey to send surveys.

There are many ways in which you can ask for feedback: in-app, email, over the phone, in-store, but if you don’t time your survey right, you could be missing out on valuable feedback.

The fresher the customer experience, the more likely you’ll receive an honest response – and any response at all.

Let’s take a look at some of best moments for sending surveys along the customer’s journey:

After every support interaction: requesting feedback just after a purchase will help you understand if a customer was satisfied with their buying experience. Did they find the process easy? Did they get stuck at any point? You can even add an open-ended question asking if there’s anything you can do to make the process easier.

After launching new product features: if a customer doesn’t buy your product after a trial ends, you can send a survey to find out why. Did they favor a competitor's product over yours? Did they find your product useful? Did it help them achieve their goals? Include an open-ended question like, “Is there anything you would change about this product?” . Sending surveys after a trial period ends might also serve as a reminder to customers who have simply forgotten to sign up for a paid version of your product.

After every support interaction: sending CSAT surveys after a customer support ticket is closed will help you assess the performance of your customer service team . Did the agent solve the customer’s problem? Ask them to rate the agent’s performance and if there’s anything that could improve their experience.

After launching new product features: sending a survey after launching a new product feature will help you determine its success. You’ll be able to gauge customer reactions and learn if the new features are useful: “What do you think about [feature] ?” .

Examples of Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys & Questions

Now let’s take a look at some real-life examples of CSAT survey questions from successful companies:

After an experience with Airbnb, the company invites customers (either hosts or guests) to provide product feedback by sharing “what went well and what could have gone better?” . This open-ended question allows users to give their opinion about the service in their own words.

Open-ended feedback is a great way of discovering potential issues and spotting dissatisfied customers. Airbnb also started using video to collect voice of customer feedback, and gain more insightful qualitative feedback. Whether video feedback catches on or not... only time will tell.

YouTube uses customer satisfaction surveys to make sure they’re happy with their video recommendations . They ask viewers if they are happy with the videos that are shown to them on the homepage or in their ‘watch next’ feed. Viewers are also able to send feedback to the platform by taking a screenshot and describing the problem:

Project management software Asana regularly asks customers for feedback through in-app surveys. Sending a survey when customers are engaged with an app or platform provides valuable qualitative insights to understand user experience.

Here’s an example of a survey Asana sent asking customers to evaluate their homepage:

This survey tries to identify how customers are actually using the platform and which problems they are trying to solve. In this case, customer feedback can help them improve their product roadmap, by prioritizing those features that will be more helpful and valuable for their users. Also, qualitative user feedback might shed light on other customer needs that the company might not be aware of.

When a customer hasn’t been using the app for a while, Zapier sends customers a survey asking them about their activity. Besides including a multiple-choice question, they invite customers to share more details about their experience with the app:

The purpose of this survey is to identify any bottlenecks or issues that make it difficult for customers to continue using the product. This feedback can provide insights to improve the product and make it more valuable to users. Also, it allows Zapier to identify the main reasons for customer churn, and take action to retain existing customers.

Zoom encourages users to send ideas, comments, or feature requests. A questionnaire asks them to select a topic and the device they’re using, then explain more about their idea, product issues, etc.

This allows Zoom to handle customer feedback more effectively, by assigning messages to the right teams based on their topic and detecting issues that may occur on certain devices.

How to Make The Most of Your Survey Results

Customer satisfaction surveys can help you make accurate and important decisions about your products, services, and strategies. Once you’ve received a good amount of responses, you’ll need to:

• Analyze survey responses

Close the loop

Share results across the company, analyze quantitative and qualitative survey responses.

Most survey tools offer in-built capabilities to analyze quantitative survey data, like NPS or CSAT scores. For example, here’s how SurveyMonkey displays the results of NPS surveys:

If you want to analyze open-ended responses in your survey, you’ll need to use machine learning software to transform feedback into action.

Learn how to auto-tag open-ended responses from SurveyMonkey using machine learning tools.

Once you’ve analyzed your results, you’ll need to implement the necessary changes and respond to your customers – or close the loop .

It’s important that your customers know that you’re listening to them, and a simple response can go a long way.

It’s best to visualize your survey results to make them easy for everyone in your company to understand. Organize your survey data and create interactive dashboards to uncover insights, trends, and patterns that you simply couldn’t find in a spreadsheet.

MonkeyLearn Studio provides a detailed dashboard that quantifies your unstructured data, so you can quickly spot patterns and trends at a glance.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys are the cornerstone of your feedback strategy . Analyzing your survey responses provides unique insight into the customer experience and helps you improve every step of the buyer’s journey.

While quantitative survey data is valuable to measure your overall performance, qualitative data offers a much richer perspective of your customer’s motivations and feelings.

Machine learning software like MonkeyLearn can take your survey analysis to the next level, and help you draw insights from open-ended survey responses through intuitive, no-code tools.

Request a demo from one of our experts to learn more about how to customer satisfaction surveys with MonkeyLearn.

Inés Roldós

January 11th, 2021

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24 Clever customer satisfaction surveys from big brands

Last updated

4 March 2023

Reviewed by

• What are customer satisfaction surveys?
• Why use customer satisfaction surveys?

Some of the key reasons to use customer satisfaction surveys are:

Preventing customer drop-off: If your customers are dissatisfied with your product or service, they will abandon your brand. Learning more about their experience can help you make the necessary changes to better serve your loyal customers.

Helping you target your desired audience: Gaining insights into the demographics and preferences of your customers helps your business to home in on your specific niche and target audience.

Increasing customer retention and repurchasing: Happy customers are more likely to return to your business. Improving your company based on their direct feedback can boost sales and engagement.

Improving your customers’ user journey: Customer satisfaction begins when they first become aware of your brand, not after making a purchase. Collecting data about their experience can help you best serve your customers at every step of brand engagement.

Types of customer satisfaction surveys

For your customer satisfaction survey to provide the most benefit for your business, you need to ask the right questions. Here are a few examples of types of surveys (with questions) that you may want to include in your CSAT survey :

Product usage

Product usage surveys are the core components of CSATs. These surveys ask your customers directly about their experience purchasing and using your product or service. This is valuable information that can help you improve your offerings and increase customer retention .

Example product usage questions:

How often do you use the product/service?

What product features are the most beneficial for you?

If you could change anything about the current product/service, what would it be?

Satisfaction scale

Simple feedback can be incredibly impactful. For example, asking customers to rate their experience on a number scale can provide valuable insight into how your product or service is doing.

Example satisfaction scale questions:

On a scale of 1–10, how satisfied are you with your online purchasing experience?

How likely are you to recommend our products?

Rate your satisfaction with our in-store staff today.

Demographic

Learning about your customer’s basic demographics (not in a creepy way, we promise) is essential for tailoring your product or service to your target audience. Having a better understanding of who is using your brand is necessary for any successful business.

Example demographics questions :

What country do you live in?

What is your age range?

What industry do you work in?

Psychographic

Psychographic surveys dig deeper than surface-level questions to learn more about the motivations behind your customers’ purchases. The goal of this type of research is to get a better understanding of your customers’ behavior , values, and preferences.

Example psychographic questions:

How many hours a day do you spend using the product/service?

What is the biggest challenge when using the product/service?

How do you feel about [insert product type]?

Often added at the end of a CSAT, questions about longevity are essential for building a long-term relationship with your customers. When done correctly, this style of question can help you gauge the success of product or service changes you make over time.

Example longevity questions:

Are you willing to take other surveys from our company in the future?

May we contact you to follow up on your responses to this survey?

Are you interested in talking to a customer service representative for more support?

Instead of using scales or pre-determined answers, open-text surveys allow the participant to write out their thoughts freely. Whenever possible, including at least one open-text question in your survey can help collect more specific information about your customer’s experience.

Example open-text questions:

Describe your most recent online shopping experience.

How can our employees serve your needs better?

Do you have any feedback that you would like to share with our team?

• What should a customer satisfaction survey include?

When it’s time to put together your customer satisfaction survey, there are a few essential components:

Clear company branding: You want your participants to know exactly which company they are sharing their feedback with. Using your company logo, colors, and design helps make the survey more identifiable to your brand.

Easy-to-follow questions: The questions you ask as part of the CSAT are essential. Make sure the questions are easy to read, simple to fill out, and do not leave your customers confused or irritated.

Appreciation for participation: At the end of the survey, adding an extra thank-you is a must for building brand trust . Your customer took time out of their day to provide you with information, so be sure to show how much you appreciate this!

Looking for some extra inspiration when creating your customer satisfaction survey? Check out our list of 24 high-quality CSATs from successful, well-known companies.

• 24 customer satisfaction surveys from big brands

Slack is an instant messaging software used by businesses worldwide. Their target audience is young working professionals.

What we like

Slack shares how long the survey will take to complete, which shows respect for their participants’ time.

The button to fill out the survey is clear and hard to miss, which will help drive engagement.

#2 – Amazon

Amazon is a multibillion-dollar eCommerce giant that provides fast delivery of products directly to your door. Their target audience broadly encompasses all online shoppers.

Instead of a number system, Amazon uses expressive words like “terrible” and “great” as their satisfaction scale qualifiers.

Amazon finishes its survey with an open-text invite for additional comments to gain extra info about their customers’ experience.

Apple is one of the largest tech companies in the world. They serve working professionals and casual technology users.

Apple’s survey is located in the Apple Store app, which is only accessible on Apple devices. This ensures that they only hear from their target audience.

This survey can be filled out at any time (not just after purchase), which helps to get a broader range of customer experience testimonials.

#4 – LuluLemon

LuluLemon is a well-known sports and activewear brand. Their target audience includes male and female fitness enthusiasts.

The star rating system is clear, easy to see, and effective for collecting information.

Adding the customer service staff member’s name and favorite LuluLemon products to the email adds a “human” and relatable feel, which aligns with their branding.

#5 – Kroger

Kroger is the parent business of many American grocery chains across the country. Their target audiences are families and consumers who shop at their grocery stores.

The invitation to fill out the survey is on a purchase receipt, which ensures only active users fill out the survey.

Kroger also includes an accessibility-friendly option for their survey, which is great for improving reach.

#6 – Walmart

Walmart is a multibillion-dollar international company that sells consumer goods. Their target audience is shoppers looking for low-cost products.

The survey includes easy-to-follow examples to guide customers who are providing feedback.

Walmart can also use the demographic info about where the customer shopped to learn more about their target audience.

#7 – Airbnb

Airbnb is an online accommodation rental company. Their target audience is travelers looking for a good deal on places to stay.

Using email invites for the survey, they can ensure that only people who use their service are contacted.

Using the company colors for the survey button creates a strong and clear CTA which helps with click-through rates.

#8 – McDonald’s

McDonald’s is the most well-known global fast-food company. Their target users are people looking for convenient American-style fast food.

McDonald’s uses a feedback campaign (McDVoice) to raise awareness of their survey.

By completing the survey, participants get access to exclusive deals and coupons, which improves completion rates and rewards those who invest in their brand.

IKEA is a build-it-yourself Swedish furniture and home-goods brand. They primarily target young people looking to furnish their homes or college dorms.

By using open-text format questions, IKEA can gain a wide range of valuable customer insights.

As part of the instructions, they encourage the participant to share as much as possible. This will help IKEA get more detailed information about their products.

#10 – HelloFresh

HelloFresh is a popular food-kit delivery company. Their target audiences are young families and couples who value convenience and healthy meal options.

The invite to share feedback is sent after a customer cancels their subscription (a key time to learn why they decided to leave).

By asking for feedback and offering to reactivate their account, HelloFresh can use their CSAT to encourage customer retention.

#11 – Staples

Staples is the go-to store for office, school, and crafting needs. Their target audiences are office workers, teachers, and parents of school-aged kids.

Staples uses an incentive (chance to win a $500 gift card) to increase survey completion rates.

Using company-specific gifts helps to show appreciation while also building further trust between consumers and the brand.

Uber is a ride-sharing competitor to traditional taxis. They have two primary audiences: those who take Uber rides and those who work as Uber drivers.

The “rate your Uber” option pops up right after a ride is completed, which increases the chances of it being filled out.

Uber has integrated feedback into their service (each driver and rider gets a score based on feedback), which propels better experiences for both sides.

Nike is an international sporting goods and clothing company. They target high-profile athletes and fitness enthusiasts.

Nike offers the survey in multiple languages, allowing for a wider reach.

They limit the number of survey entries, which prevents duplicate responses and makes their data more accurate.

#14 – A&W

A&W is a well-known fast-food chain. Their target audiences are families and people looking for convenient, familiar meal options.

A&W uses in-person survey stations to collect information from recent customers.

Using images of happy and sad faces instead of numbers makes completing the survey fast, easy, and less confusing.

#15 – Squarespace

Squarespace is a website and email campaign-building platform. It targets novice and professional web developers.

Sending emails with personalized name callouts helps to drive engagement and survey completion.

Following the rating, customers are offered open-text questions to provide additional feedback.

#16 – Upwork

Upwork is a freelancing platform that helps to connect freelance professionals with clients looking to hire contract workers.

The wording of Upwork’s survey email is friendly, approachable, and appreciative, which helps build customer trust.

The button to complete the survey is clear, bright, and in company colors, which makes it hard to miss!

#17 – Dropbox

Dropbox offers professional file storage, collaboration, and sharing services. They target companies that value digital convenience and communication.

The email subject line contains an [ACTION REQUIRED] request, which gets customers’ attention.

Adding brand-specific art to the email helps to make the message stand out and the survey more visually appealing.

#18 – Airtable

Airtable is a collaborative software program designed to help businesses build automation. They target start-ups and small businesses looking to improve their workflow.

Airtable states how long the survey will take to complete, which can boost the completion rate because respondents will be prepared for the level of commitment required.

A simple 0–10 scale option makes the questionnaire easy to follow and helps to boost engagement.

#19 – Old Navy

Old Navy is an international casual clothing brand. They create products for men, women, and children.

The invite to fill out the survey is located at the bottom of a receipt, ensuring that only recent customers are invited to share their experience.

By asking for information about the date, time, and location of the store, Old Navy is collecting valuable demographic info with every survey.

#20 – Air Miles

Air Miles is a group of loyalty programs that help consumers earn travel points with their purchases. They target frequent shoppers and people who value travel discounts.

As part of the email body, Air Miles takes the time to explain and thank participants for their feedback.

By completing the survey, the participant receives a reward of 30 extra Air Miles, which can help to drive engagement.

#21 – Sephora

Sephora is a makeup and skincare company that sells popular cosmetic brands. They target younger people who use beauty products regularly.

Sephora states that this feedback will be used to improve their services. This is a great reminder for those filling out the survey that their voice matters.

By filling out the survey, participants get entered into weekly draws for Sephora gift cards, increasing the likelihood of completion.

#22 – Telus

Telus is an international communications company that provides internet, mobile, and cable services. They offer business and residential services.

The email contains clear Telus branding, which helps to create a friendly vibe to their request.

Telus sends multiple email reminders (two to three in total) over a period of time to get feedback. While some may find this overwhelming, it can help boost survey completion rates.

#23 – Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a data-collection company that helps businesses learn more about their target audience (so no surprise here, they have excellent CSAT design).

Using a drop-down menu, each question has a variety of options to choose from, which makes providing feedback quick and easy.

Because this survey only contains a few questions, participants can provide feedback without feeling like they’re wasting their time.

#24 – Home Depot

Home Depot is a trusted brand for everything connected with home renovation. They target professional and amateur handypersons and DIY enthusiasts.

The clearly labeled sweepstakes program helps to drive engagement with the survey.

Offering company-specific gift cards also helps to build brand awareness and loyalty with returning customers.

• Turn customer feedback into action

Listening to your customers is an absolute must for a successful business—especially when adjusting your products or services to better meet their needs.

Using well-designed customer satisfaction surveys is one of the best ways to gain valuable insights into your target audience’s experience with your brand. Once collected, the data and opinions gained from these surveys should act as guiding principles for any changes to improve your offerings.

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• Customer Loyalty , Marketing , Roundups

41 Experts Share the Best Ways To Research Customer Satisfaction

• 10 min read
• Last updated December 19, 2022
• By Jessica Huhn

ON THIS PAGE

Marketers overwhelmingly agree: It’s vital to research customer satisfaction.

After all, if you don’t know how satisfied customers are with your products or services, what you’re doing well, and what you could improve, your brand will struggle to acquire and retain customers. And only the most satisfied customers will refer their friends  to your business!

When we asked 41 marketers to rate the importance of researching customer satisfaction, they gave it a 4.88 out of 5 (with 5 being “of greatest importance.”)

But how do these marketers research customer satisfaction ? What methods and research questions do they find most effective? Let’s dive into their expert insights.

Most companies research customer satisfaction at least once a month

First, how often do marketers research customer satisfaction?

While it varies, most marketers conduct research often. There was no majority answer, but 49% conduct customer satisfaction research monthly, 20% conduct it weekly, and another 20% conduct it daily.

Even with this variation, it’s still clear conducting frequent customer satisfaction research is best to gain an accurate picture of your customer’s changing opinions.

Most popular customer satisfaction research method: Email surveys

How exactly do marketers research customer satisfaction?

Email surveys are the most popular method (85% of marketers use them), followed by customer feedback forms (73%) and customer reviews (68%).

Email surveys can be easily personalized and sent right after a purchase, and customer feedback forms are also easy to deploy, making them simple and popular methods.

As for reviews, they’re often given by customers unprompted, so they provide a genuine picture of how customers feel. They’re also very easy to request and unearth.

7 most effective methods to research customer satisfaction

We then asked marketers to single out the method they find most effective for researching customer satisfaction, based on the above list.

Email surveys were the most effective method for 32% of marketers (making them the most popular and  effective).

Customer reviews were selected by 20%, putting it in the second position.

These methods were followed closely by website/in-app surveys (15%) and in-person conversations (12%).

But why do marketers find these methods of researching customer satisfaction most effective? Hopefully, their explanations below will help you choose the methods that will work for you.

Email surveys

“We get the most responses via email surveys. They have provided us with more constructive feedback that’s easy to track and save information compared to other methods.” –Suzanne Pope, Whiterock Locators

“We often don’t give email the kudos it deserves. When a customer signs up for a service or purchases a product, an email a few days later can help a company understand just how well they hit the mark.” –Andrea Loubier, Mailbird

“In my opinion, a quick email survey is always the best way to get customer feedback without making them commit too much of their time. Email surveys are non-intrusive, not time-sensitive, and allow the customer to take their time to respond and produce a quality review.” –Mikkel Andreassen, Dixa

“People are more likely to reply when they are sent a personalized email with some questions about the services they have received.” –Maria Saigatova, Blast Sourcing

In-app surveys

“In-app functionality allows you to deliver targeted surveys to your customers and engage them at the ideal time to receive valuable customer feedback, all while providing a seamless customer experience.” –Cori Pearce, ChurnZero

Customer reviews

“Prompting customers to leave reviews can be beneficial to both parties. Customers can express their likes and dislikes, often in an anonymous way should they like. And this information can help a customer service department go from good to great.” –Sergei Belous, UpFlip

“Customer reviews are the way to receive the most genuine feedback possible. With no incentives for providing feedback, customers only do so if they’re very impressed with your services, or if they can offer criticism you can use to create growth and positive change.” –Alice Ray, Know Your Chickens

In-person conversations

“If it’s feasible, in-person conversations are always great to receive detailed customer satisfaction feedback. In-person conversations are effective because they allow the customer to provide specifics regarding their satisfaction/issues without bias from others.” Doreen Amatelli-Clark, Way to Goal Business Insights

“In-person conversations have always worked well for me because I can see the person’s facial expressions and body language much better.  Being there in the same room as your client also gives you credibility because you spent your time and went to their office.” –Ben Walker, Transcription Outsourcing

Phone/video chat conversations

“Phone and video chat conversations allow you to dig into a customer’s preferences and really get to know their pain points. You’ll open up new pathways in conversation and learn a lot more than you expected about your most valuable customers.” –David Cusick, House Method

Social media

“Gaining customer satisfaction reactions from social media can be a bold choice, as it’s out there for the entire world to see. However, this can keep you genuine and authentic, and you can take the comments that are posted and devise innovative strategies from them.” –Carrie McKeegan, Greenback Expat Tax Services

Data analysis

“Analyzing data can provide a clear picture of how satisfied our customers are at any point. Are current customers continuing their service? Are they recommending others or even opting for more solutions that are offered? These things can provide a lot of valuable insight.” –Thomas Bolt, Big Eval

“We have used Net Promoter to gain a snapshot of our performance through the eyes of our current and past customers. Our goal is not only to determine the NPS, but to understand the cause of the score. This is achieved by asking follow-up questions through phone interviews.” –Alex Membrillo, Cardinal Digital Marketing Agency

“When customers are willing to promote your brand among their networks, this is the best marketing money cannot buy. Statistically, people trust the opinions and recommendations of others in their network above any other source. This is why NPS surveys are key.” –Jen Lawrence, Vye

Customer satisfaction metrics: Qualitative metrics are most popular

Now that we know the methods marketers use to research customer satisfaction, what specific metrics do they track?

Interestingly, the most popular metric, and the only one the majority use, is qualitative rather than quantitative.

Fifty-four percent of experts use customer comments to measure customer satisfaction. Comments give a clear picture of why customers are or are not satisfied with your brand. With this insight, you’ll be able to take direct action to increase customer satisfaction.

As for the most popular quantitative metrics:

• 49% use customer satisfaction score (CSAT)  (“On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied were you with [product/service/experience]?)
• 44% use customer review  scores
• 37% measure customer retention  vs. churn
• 34% track customer lifetime value

Specific tools marketers use for customer satisfaction research include:

• Hotjar (behavioral data analytics)
• Buzzsumo (social media monitoring)
• Survey Monkey (simple form building platform)
• ChurnZero ( customer success software  with customer health scores)
• ReviewInc ( customer review management software )
• Survey Sparrow (omnichannel customer experience/survey building software)
• Informizely (website, email, and in-app survey integration)
• Zonka Feedback (CSAT, CES, and NPS survey software )
• Typeform (form building)
• Qualtrics (survey/customer feedback analytics)
• HubSpot (CRM software)
• Mention (social media monitoring/ brand mention tools )

8 best types of customer satisfaction research questions

The top customer satisfaction questions shared by marketers were as diverse as the businesses they work for. But there were several common themes in the questions they found most helpful.

Here are the favorite customer satisfaction survey questions, divided by category, for you to draw inspiration from.

Include a scale for people to rate the product

“I would say the best question to ask is, ‘How would you rate our product/service overall?’ based on a scale, since it provides a baseline to measure customer satisfaction.” –Suzanne Pope, Whiterock Locators

“Ask the consumer to score their happiness with the business, product or service, to generate an average CSAT ranking (customer satisfaction score). Usually, a customer satisfaction scale varies from 1–3, 1–5 or 1–10.” –Eliza Nimmick, Tutor The People

Ask why they chose your product/service

“Ask ‘What makes you choose us?’ Give participants a list of possible answers and ask them to rank nos. 1, 2, and 3. Then also give them the opportunity to comment if they wish. The list will spur their thinking, and you will learn both your strengths and weaknesses as compared to your competitors.” –Karen Condor, USInsuranceAgents.com

“Why did you choose our product or service over our competitors? What stood out, and made you choose our particular company?” –Alice Ray, Know Your Chickens

Learn whether they’d use your product or service again

“My key question would be ‘Would you use us again?’ That answers the all important question of how you are doing at building a loyal and engaged customer base for your business.” Adam Korbl, Ifax App

Carefully ask about negatives and places for improvement

“The one question I think you should ask is: “If you could change anything, what would it be?” There may be a lot of different answers, but that’s a good thing, to get different perspectives. If you see a common thread through the answers, you’ll have an idea of what to improve.” – Daniel Foley

“Is there anything about our services or solutions that would cause you to discontinue using them?” –Thomas Bolt, Big Eval

“I recommend the question ‘If a friend asked you about any negatives or downsides, what would you say?’ It’s tough to get negative feedback, especially in in-person or live interviews. Re-framing the “’What’s the worst thing?” question allows the customer to think differently and give honest feedback without feeling awkward about it.” –David Cusick, House Method

“I think you can never go wrong with an open-ended ‘What could have we done better?’ or ‘How can we improve?’ to allow the customer some room to expand and share their thoughts. Some of the best ideas come from your very own customers and with a bit of luck, they can offer excellent insight into your product that can be implemented in the future.” –Mikkel Andreassen, Dixa

“The best question to ask customers when conducting research on customer satisfaction is ‘What would have made the biggest improvement for your experience?’ Then you can nail down what improvements “”will make the biggest overall impact on our customers for the future.” –Jacob Rosenberg, Tajima Direct

Ask how they would rate your customer service

“Ask customers how they would rate your customer service department. This team is often the voice of your company, and you’ll want to clearly portray your company values and ethics.” –Sergei Belous, UpFlip

“Ask ‘Do you feel your experience, from the first email to the last and everything in between, was worth your money and time?’

Those two things are the most important to people and it should be for any business and by bringing those two things up in conversation allows them to answer you from a business point of view and may trigger them to bring up valuable info.” –Shaun Taylor, Moriti Safaris

“How happy are you with our current service compared to what you were expecting when you signed up?” –Jane Kovalkova, Chanty

“Ask customers to rate the customer service they have received on a scale. For example:

• On a scale of 1-10, please rate the service quality provided by the customer service rep.
• On a scale of 1-10, how effectively the customer support rep handled your problem today?
• On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the friendliness of your customer representative?” –Rorie Devine, Gro.Team

Learn whether customers would refer your business to others

“I think asking the customer if they would refer your business, product or service to others is an important question to ask. If they truly received a great experience and think others would benefit as well, a referral is an inexpensive and easy way to grow business.” –David Peterson,  HealthMarkets

“Would you recommend this business to a friend or family member?  If yes, why ?” –Golda Criddle, ReviewInc

“When conducting these surveys, the best question to ask is, ‘How likely are you to recommend our product to your friends and family members?’ This question gives a great insight in how the customer feels about your product. If they are willing to recommend it to people they care about, that means they are satisfied with your product and will help spread the word about it.” –James Major, Insurance Panda

“Existing customers provide great insights about your business’s products and services. Asking “l’How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend?’ can show how happy and satisfied they are.

“Telling their experiences to others can help you grow your brand. It can help you build and improve your brand’s services, which can attract more customers. Your existing customers will be your most valuable asset that can help in promoting your brand’s name.” –Dennis Bell, Byblos Coffee

“On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company? This is the net promoter score question.” –Jen Lawrence, Vye

Learn what problem they seek to solve with your product

“Ask, ‘What problem would you like to solve with our product?’ This question seeks information that usually cannot be gauged by analytics.

It’s great to ask this question even before finalizing the sale. It may be the case that your potential customers are looking for something different than their chosen product is. If you have other products that would much better suit their needs, it’s great to navigate them towards them before it’s too late and they get disappointed with a product that was not designed for what they actually need.” –Eliza Nimmick, Tutor The People

Focus on three key components in your questioning

“We would actually argue that effective customer satisfaction research cannot be narrowed down to one key question.

When measuring customer satisfaction for a product or service, researchers should focus on and measure the key components: xs the product/service’s relative importance to the customer, the customer’s expectations and then their satisfaction of that product/service.” –Doreen Amatelli-Clark, Way to Goal Business Insights

Wrapping up

No matter what methods and questions you choose, be sure to research customer satisfaction relatively often, and use both qualitative and quantitative measures. It’s always helpful if you ask customers how willing they are to refer your business to their friends ( the NPS question ).

When someone is ready to advocate for your business, this shows that they’re highly satisfied – customers won’t recommend you if they aren’t enthusiastic about what you have to offer.

Plus, referrals are an effective engine  that will bring new customers to your business – customers who are more likely to stay loyal and satisfied.

Looking for more tips on researching customer satisfaction? Marketers share their top tips and strategies for customer satisfaction research in this roundup.

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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 .

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Customer Satisfaction

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How to measure customer satisfaction: 4 key metrics.

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

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

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

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

Get started with our free CSAT survey template

Why should you measure customer satisfaction?

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

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

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

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

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

So how do we start effectively measuring customer satisfaction?

4 key customer satisfaction metrics to track

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

1. Overall Satisfaction Measure (Attitudinal)

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

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

Perceived quality is often measured in one of three contexts:

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

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

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

2. Customer Loyalty Measurement (Affective, Behavioural)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Intentions to Repurchase Measurements (Behavioural Measures)

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

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

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

How to use these metrics to develop customers satisfaction KPIs

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

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

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

Improve on your past customer satisfaction score

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

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

Take a look at the competition

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

Judge by industry benchmarks

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

How to measure customer satisfaction for increased performance

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

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

Use agile customer satisfaction surveys to gauge success and take action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking action to improve customer satisfaction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Customer satisfaction data gathering

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

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

2. Understanding customer journey touchpoints and their effect

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

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

 3. Narrowing down the drivers of customers satisfaction

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

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

4. Empowering your employees to take action

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

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

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

5. Automating your actions

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

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

Why you should use customer satisfaction measurement tools

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

The wider measurement picture

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

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

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

Measure customer satisfaction with Qualtrics

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

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

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

Start measuring customer satisfaction today with our free CSAT survey template

Related resources

What is csat 8 min read, customer delight 18 min read, improving customer satisfaction 11 min read, customer satisfaction 16 min read, customer satisfaction (csat) surveys 21 min read.

Customer Journey

Customer Interactions 11 min read

Customer Service

Customer Service Experience 13 min read

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