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How to create better customer satisfaction surveys so you can collect insights you can act on.

A man and woman gesturing to a survey box

We’ve all taken them. We’ve all abandoned poorly written, unclear, too specific or too general customer satisfaction surveys. We opened the survey in good faith, ready to provide wisdom to the organisation that seemed to care about our opinion, only to find leading questions geared towards receiving glowing reviews.

There is an art to writing an effective customer satisfaction survey. To that end, we’ve compiled 50 customer satisfaction survey question examples and tips to avoid common mistakes when crafting them.

Customer satisfaction surveys enable you to evaluate customer sentiment at a micro or macro level. This includes customers’ general level of satisfaction with your product or service, their experiences with your customer service, their happiness with your organisation and more. The Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score survey is the most popular customer feedback survey to measure satisfaction.

The customer satisfaction score question in the SurveyMonkey product

The Customer Satisfaction Score metric is a measurement that determines how happy customers are with an organisation, its products or services and its capabilities.

CSAT asks: “How would you rate your experience with our (fill in the blank)?”, where the responses range from “Very satisfied” to “Very dissatisfied”.

CSAT equation

To calculate your CSAT score, divide the number of satisfied customers by all your respondents and multiply the result by 100. You’ll end up with a percentage; the higher it is, the more satisfied your customers are. Check out our ultimate guide to the Customer Satisfaction Score to learn CSAT best practices, industry benchmarks and more. 

  • Please rate your overall satisfaction with [company].
  • Is there anything else you'd like to share about your experience with [company/event/service/purchase]?
  • What is one thing we could do to improve your experience with [company/service]?
  • What would you suggest to help us improve our [product/service]?
  • Considering your experience with our company, how likely are you to recommend our services to a friend or colleague?
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with [product/service]?
  • Would you recommend [product/service] to friends?
  • Is there anything else you'd like to share or suggest to help us improve our [product/service]?
  • How satisfied are you with our banking application process?
  • How satisfied are you with the transparency of our financial [products/services]?
  • Did our services meet your financial needs?
  • How satisfied were you with the level of care you received from our medical staff?
  • How would you rate the cleanliness of our clinic?
  • How satisfied are you with the appointment scheduling process?
  • Please rate your level of satisfaction with the communication you received from our medical staff. 
  • How would you rate your satisfaction with your recent visit to our restaurant? 
  • Did the ambiance of our restaurant meet your expectations?
  • How would you rate the quality of the food you were served?
  • Were you satisfied with the attentiveness of the waiting staff?
  • Were there any specific dishes that, in your opinion, stood out? Please elaborate. 
  • Were you satisfied in terms of being able to find the products you wanted on our website?
  • How satisfied are you with the checkout process?
  • Was the delivery of your order up to your expectations?
  • How satisfied are you with the speed of our [delivery/shipping]?
  • Were you satisfied with the quality of instruction?
  • How would you rate the availability of resources?
  • How satisfied were you with your recent stay at our hotel? 
  • How satisfied were you with the cleanliness of your room?
  • Were the amenities up to your expectations?
  • How satisfied were you with the check-in experience?
  • How likely are you to recommend our hotel to your friends?
  • How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the trade show you recently attended?
  • How satisfied were you with the communication you received from the event organisers?
  • Were the staff helpful during the event?
  • How easy or difficult was it to access information related to [event name]?
  • Please share a memorable moment or experience from [event]. 
  • How likely are you to attend [event] in the future? 
  • How would you rate your satisfaction with the communication you received from [department]? 
  • How satisfied were you with the response time of our customer support team?
  • How would you rate the helpfulness of our customer service representatives?
  • Rate your level of satisfaction with your recent customer service experience. 
  • Was your issue resolved to your satisfaction?
  • How would you rate your satisfaction with our mobile app? 
  • How easy was it to navigate our website?
  • Were you able to find the information you were looking for? 
  • How satisfied were you with the checkout process on our [website/mobile app]?
  • Did you encounter any difficulties when using our [website/mobile app?] Please explain.
  • How satisfied are you with the pricing of our [product/service]?
  • Do you think [product/service] offers good value for the price?
  • How satisfied are you with the [product/service] you received considering the price you paid?
Smiling woman looking and gesturing at a laptop

Now that you know about the customer satisfaction survey questions you can ask, let’s talk about common mistakes when building the survey, and what you can do to correct them!

When your answers don’t include the response your participant wants, you’ve created a frustrated experience for your respondents. They're now faced with the decision of answering inaccurately, skipping the question or abandoning the questionnaire altogether. Not very productive. To let your question be inclusive of all opinions, offer an “I don’t know” answer choice or an “other” textbox or comment field

This question-writing mistake is as simple as it sounds. Take the following as an example:

  • “Did you enjoy our service and new menu? Yes or no?”

What if your service was impeccable but the food was lacking? If there’s no way for the customer to answer this question accurately, you’ll get skipped questions or, perhaps even worse, inaccurate responses. Make sure you’re asking for one distinct answer per question.

Returning to our example, you can break up the prompt:

  • Survey question 1: “Did you enjoy our service?”
  • Survey question 2: “Did you enjoy our new menu?”

Yes, it would be great if every single question in your customer satisfaction feedback survey was answered thoughtfully and completely. That just doesn’t happen in the real world; people are busy and get distracted. Sometimes, a question is missed as an oversight; sometimes, the respondent doesn’t want to provide the information; and sometimes, they’re just confused by the question. If you require an answer to every single question – even the most rudimentary ones – you’ll find that many respondents will leave your survey. So keep the required questions to a minimum and let them skip what they want.

Don’t interrogate your kind participants with page after page of highly detailed questions about every aspect of your business. If you keep your client feedback survey as succinct as possible, you’ll have a better chance of obtaining meaningful data. Remember, you can always do follow-up surveys, and you’ll learn more with each poll you do.

It’s easy to ask a lot of questions in order to obtain as much information as you can. But each survey should have a specific goal in mind, one that every question should help achieve. Stay focused on your goal and you’ll obtain valuable information.

It’s hard to be objective when you think your customer service is outstanding. Take a step back from what you think you know and let your shoppers do the talking. Avoid embellishing your questions with superlatives. Take the following prompt:

  • “How would you describe our friendly customer service representatives?”

This is a leading question as it describes the reps as “friendly”. As a result, it isn’t likely to provide accurate results. Instead, ask a focused question about an aspect of your customer service, such as:

  • “How responsive or unresponsive were our customer service representatives?”

It’s hard for most people to accurately determine what they may or may not do in a hypothetical situation. Don’t fabricate customer service “what if” situations that may not have happened to the respondent. Instead, focus on uncovering real customer service issues.

For instance, avoid question prompts like:

  • “If our customer service representatives were extremely responsive to your needs, would you give our business a higher rating?”

And instead, ask:

  • “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the performance of our customer service representatives?”

Pro tip: Use a Likert Scale rating question to ask customers to rate their experiences.

If your participants have to read questions several times in order to understand them, or if they’re repeatedly asked to write essay-like responses, you’ll end up with a lot of abandoned questionnaires. Write questions that can be easily scanned and that don’t require a lot of time to answer.

To make this point more concrete, let’s compare two question prompts that are ultimately asking the same thing. Here’s one that’s direct and simple:

  • “How responsive (or unresponsive) is our company in answering your questions?”

Now see what happens when you make it ultra-specific and long:

  • “If you have used our website, phone system or email help system in the past, did our customer service representative get back to you in a timely manner?”

You’re probably eager to collect as much information as you can from each survey, but avoid the temptation. Customer service surveys that veer off course and ask seemingly unrelated questions can distract or confuse the respondent and, in some cases, may even evoke suspicion.

The examples are seemingly endless and can be anything from…

  • “What do you like to do during your free time?”

to…

  • “Are you happy?”

You could ask the following question with “yes” or “no” answer options:

  • “Is our company professional?”

But there’s a subtle spectrum of positive and negative responses. To obtain even richer data, try asking a “how” question with available responses such as “extremely professional”, “somewhat professional” and “not at all professional”. In short, modify the question prompt to “How professional is our company?”

At SurveyMonkey, we’ve developed a collection of methodologist-certified customer satisfaction survey templates to get you started quickly and easily. Of course, you’re always welcome to customise the questions to make your survey as specific as you’d like.

Use this customer satisfaction survey template to measure consumer satisfaction with your company, product and services. Use skip logic to allow your customers to answer questions about products or services they’ve used and to gain insights for improvement.

See how your frontline customer service and support agents are doing. Measure customer service hold times, problem resolution, product/service knowledge and representative attitude.

This customer satisfaction survey template is designed for when your clients aren’t just clients; they’re businesses too. Identify how satisfied your customers are with your timeliness, professionalism and service.

Customer satisfaction survey templates

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