Form questions
Customer onboarding survey questions
Ask eight to twelve, thirty days in. Three never come out: what the customer signed up to do in their own words, how hard each setup step was, and the single thing still blocking them. The first one matters most, because a product team that guesses the job will fix the wrong step.
An onboarding survey is worth sending at the point where a customer either has the thing working or has quietly stopped trying. These questions separate what somebody signed up to do from what they have actually managed, because the gap between the two is the whole finding.
The questions
What they came to do
What did you sign up to do?Multiple choiceRequired
Multiple choice against the real jobs your product does. Let the customer state the job rather than inferring it from the plan they bought.
Which of those did you need working first?Single choiceRequired
What were you doing before you signed up?Single choice
A spreadsheet, a competitor, nothing at all. Each of the three implies a different first week.
Who else needs to use this with you?Single choice
What convinced you to try it?Long text
Setup
How hard was each setup step?Rating gridRequired
A grid of your real steps against a five point ease scale. Leave a row blank if the customer has not reached it.
How many days before it was doing something useful?Number
Time to first value, asked of the person rather than measured from logs, which tells you when they felt it rather than when it happened.
Did you finish setup in one sitting?Single choice
Did you import anything from your old system?Single choice
If you imported, how did that go?Single choice
Did anything have to be redone because it was set up wrong first time?Single choice
What they have reached
Which of these have you used at least once?Multiple choice
Name real actions, not features. Sent an invoice beats invoicing.
Which part do you use most weeks?Dropdown
Is there anything you expected to find and could not?Single choice
Has anybody else on your team started using it?Single choice
How does the first month compare with what you were told before signing up?Single choice
The question sales needs and marketing never asks.
Help and blockers
What is the single thing still stopping you using this properly?Long textRequired
Ask for one blocker, not a list. A list of six gets triaged into nothing.
Where did you go the first time you got stuck?Single choice
How would you prefer help to reach you?Single choice
Articles, video, live chat, a booked call, an email course. Cheap to ask and it decides what onboarding you build next.
What would have made the first week easier?Long text
How likely are you to still be using this in six months?Single choice
Can the onboarding team reply to what you wrote?Single choiceRequired
Which questions to make required
Four are required and every one of them feeds a decision. The job they signed up for and the job they needed first decide which setup step gets rebuilt. The setup grid is the measure. The blocker is the queue. The permission question is required because it decides whether anybody writes back, and an unanswered permission question is treated as a no by a careful team and as a yes by a careless one.
- What did you sign up to do?
- Which of those did you need working first?
- How hard was each setup step?
- What is the single thing still stopping you using this properly?
- Can the onboarding team reply to what you wrote?
The form built from these questions
A static copy of a form built from part of the bank, exactly as it renders.
Three ways to change this bank
For a physical product with an install, replace the setup grid with the install: whether the parts arrived together, whether the instructions matched the product, and whether a second visit or a second order was needed. Keep the blocker question word for word, because it works in both. For a shorter version, send three questions at day fourteen: what did you sign up to do, has it happened yet, and what is stopping you. Three questions sent early beat twelve sent at ninety days, by which point the people who failed have gone. For a follow up wave, write only to the customers who named a blocker, once the blocker has been addressed, and ask whether it is now resolved. That closes a loop customers rarely expect to be closed, and it is the cheapest retention work in the list.
Questions people ask
When should an onboarding survey be sent?
Thirty days is the common choice because it is long enough for setup to be finished and short enough that the first week is still recallable. If your product is used weekly rather than daily, push it to sixty. Sending at day one measures the signup form, not the onboarding.
Should it go to everybody who signed up?
Send to everybody, including the accounts that have gone quiet, because those are the responses worth having. Surveying only active users produces a cheerful result and no information. Expect the quiet accounts to answer at a much lower rate, and read their answers separately rather than averaging them in.
How long should the survey be?
Eight to twelve questions, and shorter if you are sending it in app. The long version on this page is a bank. One useful trick is to keep the length fixed across waves so the completion rate stays comparable, rather than adding a question each quarter until nobody finishes it.
Is a rating or an open question better for blockers?
An open question, and only one. Blockers do not fit a list you wrote in advance, which is the whole reason they are still blockers. Give the field a placeholder asking for the thing they were doing when they hit it, so you get a situation rather than a category.
What response rate should I expect?
In product prompts shown after a completed action run well ahead of emailed surveys. Emailed onboarding surveys to new customers usually beat general satisfaction sends, because the relationship is fresh. Compare your own waves rather than published figures, and watch the quiet account rate separately.
Should the answers be tied to the account?
Yes for this one. The value of an onboarding survey comes from reading the answers next to what the account actually did, and from being able to write back about a named blocker. Say so on the first screen, and ask permission before replying rather than assuming it.
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Churn survey questions
A cancellation survey gets one honest answer or none at all, and which one you get is usually decided before the first question. Run it after the cancellation has already gone through, keep every retention offer out of it, and the answers change completely.
In store survey questions
A store survey is answered standing up, on a phone, by somebody who is already on their way out. It has to be short, and it has to record which store and which day, because a chain average describes no branch that anybody manages.
Support ticket feedback questions
A ticket survey competes with the moment a customer finally gets their day back, so it earns about ninety seconds. These questions put the rating and the resolved check in the first two screens and treat everything after that as a bonus.
On writing the questions themselves, read How to write survey questions. For everything the builder can do, see the form maker. Step by step: Create a conversational form with AI, then Design your welcome and thank you screens.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .