Customer satisfaction surveys: Examples and tips for getting started

A good customer satisfaction survey does more than collect customer feedback: it builds trust and a solid relationship between you and your customers. 

Keep reading to learn how to create a customer satisfaction survey that will help you improve retention and loyalty.

Customer satisfaction measures how happy your customers are with your services, products and experiences. It assesses your ability to meet your customers’ expectations and provide them with a positive customer experience (CX). A great CX can lead to lower churn, improved revenue and a higher customer lifetime value. 

One of the leading metrics for measuring customer loyalty is the Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score. Alongside the Net Promoter® Score (NPS®) and the Customer Effort Score (CES), the CSAT score contributes to building a valuable Voice of the Customer (VoC) programme.

To calculate your CSAT score, customers are asked to rate their overall experience with your brand. There isn’t any one specific question that you have to use as long as customers have the opportunity to rate your business on a five- or seven-point scale. 

Record the number of customers who consider themselves satisfied (4 or 5 rating) out of the total number of customers and multiply by 100. This method will give you the percentage of customers who are satisfied with your company. 

You can then compare this to the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) to benchmark your overall success.

By getting feedback on your CSAT score, you can prepare an action plan to improve your score. Over time, this can help you reduce customer churn and improve your company’s revenue. 

Customer satisfaction surveys give your company the insight it needs to create a positive, refined and beneficial customer experience. It highlights areas that you can refine to create a better customer experience. 

A positive customer experience is one of the most determining factors when it comes to winning return customers and building loyalty. Around 91% of customers are likely to recommend your company after a positive experience. 

Equally, when done wrong, 89% of CX pros believe that a poor customer experience is the single biggest contributor to customer churn. 

By understanding the factors contributing to great customer satisfaction, you can build better customer experiences. Given that every company will have different strengths and weaknesses regarding these improvements, it’s always a good idea to launch surveys that are personalised to your customers.

When creating a customer satisfaction survey, consider the information you want to obtain. Several customer satisfaction survey questions can help you understand distinct aspects of your customer journey.

For example, you could ask questions to understand pricing satisfaction to obtain purchase feedback:

Alternatively, you could look for information about overall customer satisfaction:

You could even ask some customer service satisfaction questions:

The key to creating a great customer satisfaction survey is to start with your goal in mind. The objective of your feedback survey will determine which questions you choose to ask. Start with your goal and then customise a customer satisfaction survey template to your liking. 

In order to obtain useful and actionable answers, you must ask the right types of questions for your customer satisfaction surveys. 

Let’s explore how to use different question types to effectively measure customer satisfaction.

The Likert scale is a standard survey question that measures opinions with a higher degree of flexibility than a simple yes or no. This scale offers customers the option to detail their level of agreement, usually across between five and seven responses ranging from ‘Strongly Agree’ to ‘Strongly Disagree’. 

Businesses can use the Likert scale to measure various sentiments, including agreement, satisfaction, desirability and frequency. For example, you might want to know how often customers use your online help portal, in which case a frequency response (i.e. Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, Frequently) would be useful. 

Here are three examples of a customer service Likert scale survey question: 

Learn more about the Likert scale and how you can use it in your next survey.

Open-ended questions allow customers to share their thoughts and opinions for more in-depth insights and new ideas.

For example, this Market Research Survey Template starts with several open-ended questions that ask customers to list specific things they like and changes they would like to see:

Open-ended questions give respondents the freedom to answer as they please. The added flexibility of this question type can elicit useful and detailed information for your company. This question style can also provide supplementary qualitative data alongside your quantitative questions.

Nominal questions are naming scales that pinpoint different categories of questions. These answers don’t have a numerical value.

In addition, the answers are not connected unless you add an option for “all of the above”.

The answers to nominal questions have no specific order; they carry significance for variable labels only.

Here are some examples of nominal questions:

Each question has a specific answer for the user that will give your company more context to their preferences and experiences.

Explore more customer satisfaction survey questions.

Binary scale questions rely on a limit of two answers per question, hence the name ‘binary’. You can present these questions as a simple yes or no or allow customers to answer with graphics such as a thumbs up/thumbs down or happy/sad face.

Here are some examples of binary scale questions:

Binary questions are useful thanks to their simplicity. Customers will respond to them in a matter of seconds, thus giving them a high response rate and being a great method for obtaining quantifiable data.

Get tips on writing good survey questions. 

Usage frequency questions aim to determine how often your customers are doing a certain activity, whether that relates to using a product, visiting a physical shop or taking any other relevant action. 

Here are some examples of usage frequency questions:

Usage frequency questions help to generate data about user behaviour. Understanding usage patterns can help your business customise its marketing efforts and personalise the user experience.

Explore best practices for creating effective surveys.

To create a flawless customer experience, we need to listen to our customers. Taking action to remedy pain points and improve customer touchpoints will contribute to a better overall experience. Over time, this will lead to happier customers who are more loyal and likely to return to your business.

Yet around 35% of CX pros struggle to obtain the data they need from their customers. To get more information out of customers, we need to increase the average customer survey completion rate. Here are some of our top tips to increase response rates for customer satisfaction surveys:

Another powerful way to get more from your customer data is to integrate your surveys with your chosen CRM. A holistic customer view will give your business a more precise overview of your customers. You can connect SurveyMonkey to Salesforce, HubSpot and other CRMs to integrate survey data automatically on the go. 

Related reading: Ultimate guide to customer feedback programmes

If you’re not sure how to get started, we suggest that you take a look at our available customer satisfaction survey templates. These templates, alongside our Question Bank, will point you towards effective questions that will engage your customers. What’s more, you can benchmark many of these questions, gaining insight into how your company stacks up against others in your sector. 

Looking for more info on survey-writing best practices? Check out all of our feedback survey best practices.

Measuring customer satisfaction is an important part of your business. Different types of customer satisfaction surveys help you better understand key touchpoints in the customer journey. It’s a good idea to start with a survey template or pre-written questions and then customise them for your business. 

SurveyMonkey has templates, questions and resources that make it quick and easy to get reliable results. Survey your customers with confidence. Access our expert-created survey templates and tools for reliable, actionable results. Browse our catalogue of survey templates or build a survey for free. 

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.