Customer survey question bank

One bank per moment, not one survey for everything

The fourteen banks split by when you ask rather than by what you sell. Right after a purchase, the question is whether the thing arrived as promised, which is the post purchase and delivery experience territory. A few weeks in, the question is whether the customer got going at all, which is onboarding. Once the relationship is running, satisfaction, effort score and net promoter score each measure a different thing and should not be treated as interchangeable. At the end, a churn survey has one job, which is finding out what would have kept them. Brand perception, loyalty, website and in store sit alongside those as channel specific reads.

Pick the metric before you pick the questions

Net promoter score asks how likely somebody is to recommend you, on a radio scale of 0 to 10, and it measures sentiment rather than any specific interaction. Customer effort score asks how hard something was to get done, and it predicts repeat behaviour better when the survey follows one concrete task. Satisfaction sits between the two and is the most forgiving of a broad question. Sending all three in one form is the most common mistake, because the three scales confuse the respondent and none of the numbers stays comparable. Choose the one that answers the decision in front of you, then borrow supporting questions from the other banks.

How to use a bank

None of these banks is meant to be sent whole. Each page opens with how many questions to ask and the three never to skip, which is the short version most people need. The rest is a menu to cut from, grouped into sections so a shorter survey is a matter of dropping a section rather than rewriting. Every question names the component kind that carries it, so a rating scale is a radio with its scale written out, a grid of statements is a matrix, and an open question is a long text field. Keep the required flags to the questions whose answer makes the response unusable when it is missing.

Every page in this collection

• Brand perception survey questions

  Brand perception is measured in a fixed order, because the moment a survey names a brand it has destroyed its own unaided recall question. Open questions first, then aided awareness, then attribute by attribute, and the sequence matters more than the wording.

• 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.

• Customer effort score questions

  Effort is what a customer remembers about a support experience long after they have forgotten who helped them. These questions measure the whole journey from first message to fix, rather than rating the last person in the chain.

• Customer onboarding survey questions

  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.

• Customer satisfaction survey questions

  A satisfaction survey has to find out two things at once: how the customer feels now, and which part of the experience put them there. These thirty questions separate the score from the diagnosis, so the number is comparable month to month and the reasons behind it are still usable.

• Delivery experience survey questions

  A delivery survey has to separate three things customers blame on one another: the promise the shop made, the condition the parcel arrived in, and what the driver did. Asked as one satisfaction score they are impossible to untangle.

• 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.

• Loyalty program survey questions

  A rewards program is usually reported on sign ups, which is the number that never falls. These questions measure redemption and friction instead, and they make members pick three rewards rather than approve all of them.

• NPS survey questions

  An NPS survey is one question plus whatever you ask next, and the second part is where nearly all the value sits. These questions give you three different follow ups so a promoter, a passive and a detractor are each asked something they can actually answer.

• Post purchase survey questions

  A post purchase survey covers four jobs owned by four different teams, which is why it is written in sections rather than as one list. Split that way, the merchandiser, the checkout team, the logistics lead and the buyer each get a block they can read on their own.

• Product review questions

  A review form gets a useful review by breaking the job into parts somebody can answer one at a time, instead of handing them an empty box under the word review. Split praise from warning and the same customer writes twice as much.

• Subscription pause survey questions

  A pause is the last moment a subscription business gets a straight answer, and most of them waste it by building a retention screen instead of a survey. Apply the pause first, ask afterwards, and the answers are worth reading.

• 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.

• Website feedback questions

  A feedback popup gets one screen and about ninety seconds, so the first two questions have to carry the whole survey. Ask the task and whether it was completed, and everything after that is optional detail you can afford to lose.