A guide to customer satisfaction surveys: Top questions, examples, and templates

Businesses must deliver the best possible experiences for customers. If they don’t, they may pay the price: 73 percent of customers will switch to a competitor after multiple bad experiences—and more than half will switch after a single unsatisfactory experience, according to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023.

To minimize poor customer experiences and boost customer retention, you must request feedback and listen to your buyers. But where do you start?

An effective way to get feedback is through customer satisfaction surveys. But sending a random set of customer satisfaction survey questions every now and then won’t help you improve your customer experience. To obtain meaningful feedback, create surveys with a goal and carefully craft questions that help you collect relevant data.

In this guide, learn about the basics of customer satisfaction surveys, survey question examples, types of surveys, benefits of customer satisfaction surveys, and best practices to follow.

• What are customer satisfaction surveys?
• Benefits of customer satisfaction surveys
• 50+ customer satisfaction survey questions
• Types of customer satisfaction surveys
• What to do with your customer satisfaction survey results
• Customer satisfaction survey templates
• Best practices for designing a customer satisfaction survey
• Customer satisfaction survey examples
• Turn survey responses into action

What are customer satisfaction surveys?

A customer satisfaction survey is a list of questions used to measure what consumers think about a business and its products or services. The primary purpose of customer satisfaction surveys is to gather customer feedback about anything from the ease of using a product to the quality of service provided by customer support agents.

Customer satisfaction survey responses reveal opportunities for growth and areas where the company is lagging behind. By acting on this input and addressing the weak spots, support leaders can offer better customer experiences—leading to greater customer acquisition and retention.

Benefits of customer satisfaction surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys enable you to understand customer expectations and see where your business is falling short and where it’s excelling. Based on these insights, you can form a plan on how to improve your support experience and strengthen customer relationships. Read on for the benefits of customer satisfaction surveys.

Helps you build better products

Satisfaction surveys are the product team’s secret weapon. Customer feedback tells you if your buyers love (or hate) what you’ve created—so you don’t have to guess.

Say your company offers a project management tool for startups. On calls, customers complain that they keep missing deadlines because they can’t distinguish between messages and assignments in your software. You act on that feedback by rolling out a new feature that lets users distinguish between messages their colleagues sent and tasks assigned to them.

A customer satisfaction questionnaire can help you determine if customers find this new feature helpful. Customers’ feedback will reveal any pain points and possible solutions, so you can improve the product to better suit customer needs.

Reveals strengths and weaknesses

Brands can use surveys to learn where they’re getting it right or wrong. There’s a strong chance your business is doing better than the competition in some areas. But what about the missed opportunities?

These gaps may be blind spots for you but not for your customer base. With feedback from customer satisfaction surveys, businesses can identify holes in the buyer’s journey and find possible solutions.

Improves customer relationships

Customer satisfaction surveys make customers feel heard. When you ask consumers for their opinion, they’ll see that you care about their ideas and want to improve.

In turn, your customers are more likely to trust your brand—especially when you act on their feedback—and maybe even recommend it to their friends and family.

50+ customer satisfaction survey questions

There isn’t a single customer satisfaction survey template that will give you all the insights you need to improve your CX. Instead, tailor survey questions to different department needs and customer touchpoints. Use the following list of customer satisfaction survey questions that apply to various use cases.

• Demographic questions
• Product usage questions
• Quantitative customer feedback questions
• Follow-up questions
• Open-ended and long-form questions
• Nominal scale questions
• Ordinal scale questions
• Likert scale questions
• Semantic differential questions
• B2B questions
• B2C questions

Demographic questions

Questions that assess your customer demographics can help marketing and sales segment customers into buyer personas. Responses could lead to extremely valuable insights that influence revenue and support strategies. Demographic questions can validate existing data while revealing new patterns.

Product usage questions

Survey questions about how customers use your product or service allow your company to better understand the customer experience. Ask buyers what they like and don’t like about your offering, so you know what areas need improvement to keep your audience loyal.

Quantitative customer feedback questions

Qualitative responses are important, but numbers are easier to measure. These survey questions can help you validate, confirm, or disprove problems and make decisions based on the data you receive.

Follow-up questions

Follow-up questions ensure you’ve covered all your bases. Ask customers how they feel about recent interactions with your business. You can send follow-up questions after a buyer has finalized a purchase or contacted customer support.

Open-ended and long-form questions

Open-ended customer satisfaction questionnaires allow customers to voice their experiences and opinions in more detail. Descriptive responses can help you build better products, provide ideas for your knowledge base, and pinpoint areas of improvement.

Nominal scale questions

Nominal questions categorize answers into two or more variables. The options do not overlap, are usually qualitative, and have multiple-choice options, so you can’t use numbers to define your answers.

Let’s say you want to include other languages on your website so your readers across the globe can access information easily. You could ask:

What languages do you speak?

• Portuguese
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Russian
• Mandarin
• Other (Please specify)

Nominal scale responses are easy to collect and measure, but the questions sometimes restrict how customers express themselves.

Ordinal scale questions

Ordinal questions measure customer feelings or opinions using a set of ordered responses. They are arranged in a specific manner so that each response is greater or less than the other. For example, your doctor could ask you to rate your pain from a 1 (not so painful) to a 10 (extremely painful).

Likert scale questions

A Likert scale is an ordinal scale question that uses a five- or seven-point rating scale to gauge customer sentiment. Usually, Likert scale questions ask respondents to agree or disagree with statements. They provide more information than binary “yes/no” questions and are regarded as a more reliable way to measure customer satisfaction.

Say you want to find out how well a customer self-service option, such as your knowledge base, performs with your customers. You might frame your prompt as:

The knowledge base articles are helpful and informative.

• Strongly disagree
• Disagree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Agree
• Strongly agree

You can also frame your prompts as questions:

How likely are you to purchase from us in the future?

• Very unlikely
• Unlikely
• Neutral
• Likely
• Very likely

Other options for answers might include phrases like “possibly,” “definitely,” or “somewhat unlikely,” depending on how you phrase the question.

Semantic differential questions

Semantic differential questions ask customers to rate an interaction, product, or brand by selecting where their feelings lie on a seven-point scale between polar adjectives.

Say you want to ask respondents about the quality of their interaction with a support agent. Your question and answer options might be:

How would you rate the support you received?

• Very satisfactory or unsatisfactory
• Strong or weak
• Pleasant or unpleasant

The customer will then choose how they feel on the scale between those two adjectives. With semantic differential questions, customers can choose responses that closely align with their feelings instead of simply agreeing or disagreeing with a statement.

B2B questions

B2B survey questions aim to target other business professionals. Many times, B2B surveys are meant to gauge interest in a service or product to increase purchase rates. These types of questions also gather information on how to solve problems or improve offerings. You will usually tailor these questions to company size, job title, and industry.

B2C questions

B2C survey questions differ from B2B questions because you target the general public or people who use your offerings rather than other business professionals. These questions are usually related to an experience that the end user had with the product or service.

Types of customer satisfaction surveys

There isn’t only one way to find out how your customers feel. Different types of customer satisfaction surveys drill down into specific metrics such as overall satisfaction, effort, and loyalty. Learn more about the types of customer satisfaction surveys below.

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

Customer satisfaction score surveys indicate how happy customers are with a particular interaction or experience with your brand.

Say a customer just spoke to a support agent, and you want to find out if they got the help they needed. Your CSAT survey can ask, “How satisfied were you with the support you received?” Your customer can rank their experience on a scale from 1 to 5 or choose from options ranging from “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied.”

To measure your CSAT score, divide the sum of all positive responses (responses from 4–5 or 7–10, depending on the scale) by the total number of responses collected. Then, multiply the result by 100. The percentage represents your satisfied customers.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score® (NPS) surveys measure how likely a customer is to recommend your product or service to someone else. You will usually measure NPS surveys on a scale from 1 to 10. These surveys differ from CSAT surveys because they assess long-term customer loyalty and overall customer sentiment toward your brand.

To determine your NPS, compare the percentage of detractors (respondents who answer 0–6) to that of promoters (respondents who answer 9–10) to see where your company stands.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Customer Effort Score (CES) gauges how much customer effort is required to complete a task, use your product, or get an issue resolved. Although similar to CSAT surveys, CES surveys isolate areas of customer friction.

This type of survey shows how easy (or difficult) buyers find interactions with your brand, so the metric is helpful for recognizing potential churn in customers. CES surveys typically feature a rating scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means “strongly disagree” and 10 means “strongly agree.”

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Collect CES scores by sending out surveys that ask customers to rate their most recent support experience. To calculate your CES, divide the sum of all scores by the total number of respondents.

What to do with your customer satisfaction survey results

Now that you’ve successfully collected customer satisfaction survey responses, what do you do with them? Below, we cover how to turn your customer satisfaction survey results into action.

• Respond to feedback

  After receiving your customer satisfaction survey responses, close the loop by responding to those who participated. For positive feedback, thank them for their time—consider giving them a discount on their next purchase as a gift for completing the survey.

  Address negative customer feedback by responding to it as soon as possible. Doing so can help establish brand trust and potentially retain the customer.

• Look for trends and patterns

  With customer satisfaction questionnaire results, you can identify areas to improve by looking at trends. Review the responses and see if you can spot any patterns. For example, if 40 percent of your customers stated that the wait time to speak with an agent was too long, you’ll know where there’s room for improvement.

  Analyzing trends can also help you better understand the customer journey and where your customers experience pain points. For instance, perhaps you receive a lot of feedback about the checkout process being too complicated. From there, your team can strive to improve that stage of the customer journey to boost overall CX.

• Share the results with the right people

  After you collect the results from your customer satisfaction survey, distribute the findings and data to the right teams within your organization.

  When multiple departments have this information, it ensures everyone is on the same page and can work towards the same goal, depending on the feedback you gathered. This can also prevent data silos and give agents the insights they need to deliver better support.

Customer satisfaction survey templates

Our customer satisfaction survey templates can help you gather insights so you can work towards enhancing your CX. Download our templates and customize them with questions specific to your goals.

Best practices for designing a customer satisfaction survey

Creating a customer satisfaction questionnaire requires more than just asking the right questions. Be mindful of inherent biases, survey timing, and other key factors that can impact responses. Use the following tips as a guide for your customer satisfaction survey.

1. Begin every survey with a goal in mind

For feedback to be actionable, surveys should have an obvious and clear objective. So before sending out a survey, ask yourself: “What do we need to know that we don’t know?” This will help you identify your goals.

Say you recently rolled out a new prospecting feature for your sales CRM that speeds up the process of collecting information. You’re not sure what prevents customers from using the new feature, and you want to find out how you might increase engagement. With this goal in mind, you can ask customers specific questions about the feature.

2. Evaluate past examples of customer satisfaction surveys

As you create your customer satisfaction survey, you can evaluate past examples to spark inspiration and make improvements. If a previous survey didn’t collect enough responses, for instance, you should tweak your new one. Maybe customers didn’t fill it out because it was too long or had challenging questions, so as you create your next survey, you’ll need to ensure that you keep the survey brief and straightforward.

You could also draw inspiration from customer satisfaction surveys that you’ve received from other businesses. If you’ve come across a survey that enticed you to fill it out, take some of those elements and incorporate them into your own survey.

3. Keep survey questions simple and short

If your customers have to read your survey questions several times before they can understand the queries, you risk not receiving any responses. Along with question complexity, your survey length also affects response rates.

A SurveyMonkey study shows that the longer a survey is, the less likely customers are to complete it—abandonment rates increased for surveys that took longer than seven minutes. Consider keeping your surveys around three to five minutes long, with no more than 10 questions.

4. Use open-ended questions to get more details

Include one to two open-ended questions at the end of your survey to let your customers express themselves and ensure there aren’t any problems you’re missing. For example, after asking the customer to rate your product, you could prompt them to provide more details by stating, “In your own words, tell us about your experience with our product.”

While open-ended questions are your friend, you should limit your usage of them so customers don’t have to spend too much time writing responses.

5. Select the right delivery method

When building out your customer satisfaction survey, it’s important to choose the right delivery and collection method. First, pick which platform you want to use to gather responses. Some delivery methods include:

• Email: This is perhaps the most popular option, as you can follow up after a customer interaction with an email containing your survey.
• App pop-ups: Choose to have your survey pop up in an in-app widget. This option can narrow down usability issues. For example, this allows you to get feedback on a specific page of an app, like the checkout page.
• Live chat: You can send the survey when a live chat conversation with a customer ends.
• A landing page: On your website, create a landing page containing your surveys, and then share the links with your customers via email or social media.

If you’re not sure which delivery method is the best fit, you can test out a variety of platforms to see which one helps you collect the most responses.

6. Choose the right time to send surveys

The best time to send a satisfaction survey is when an experience is still fresh in the customer’s mind. A survey sent closely after the customer has interacted with a support agent is more likely to earn you accurate responses because that customer will still remember what happened and how they felt about the experience.

But you must also be careful not to send surveys too early. Customers need to have formed an opinion about their experience before you reach out to them.

Send surveys at significant milestones and touchpoints during the customer journey, too. For example, when a new client finishes onboarding, send an in-app survey to ask about their experience.

Customer satisfaction survey examples

Ready to start creating your survey? Here are a few customer satisfaction survey examples to get the juices flowing.

General satisfaction CSAT survey example

A general satisfaction CSAT survey can help you determine how a customer feels about your brand overall. In the example below, Amazon asks customers about their general satisfaction with the Amazon Associates Program:

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Here, the company uses a Likert scale to gather responses from customers.

Quality of service CSAT survey example

This type of customer satisfaction survey gauges how customers feel about the overall quality of the service they received. The following example from Namecheap uses survey questions to gather feedback around customer satisfaction with the support experience:

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Namecheap uses the semantic differential approach that lets customers rate their experience on a sliding scale between two polar adjectives.

Turn survey responses into action

You’ve sent your first survey, and the results are in. Start by responding to your customers quickly and reassuring them that you’ll address their concerns.

Analyze the results for trends to see what customers want, and forward common issues to appropriate departments so they can come up with solutions. Acting on feedback shows your customers that you care about their experience and want to make improvements for the future—and that’ll keep them coming back.

To help find gaps in your customer service, download our customer satisfaction survey templates today.