Is your customer service top-notch? Are your product features the best in the business? You need to ask the right customer feedback questions to find out. Asking the right way and keeping a strategy in mind will help you get the most out of your customer feedback questions.

Use this list of 75 customer feedback questions to address every part of your business, from customer service to market research. Customize these questions to suit your business and collect them in a survey, email, contest, question card, or plain old conversation to get answers. We’ve updated this list of feedback questions and examples in 2023 to give you everything you need to know about collecting exceptional customer feedback in your customer surveys, as well as how to get responses and how to use it.

Index: Customer Feedback Questions and Strategies

Jump to the information you need.

 

The 10 Most Important Customer Feedback Questions

If you’re strapped for time, these are the top 10 most important customer feedback questions to include in a survey. These questions will give you essential information about the most impactful parts of your business.

1. How did you hear about us?

2. Were your expectations met, unmet, or exceeded?

3. Did our employees or customer service staff help you? How?

4. What, if any, products, services, or features are we missing?

5. What did you enjoy most about your experience?

6. How would you describe your experience in our store / on our website?

7. On a scale of zero (unlikely) to ten (very likely), how likely would you be to recommend us to friends or family?

8. From one (unhappy) to ten (very happy), how would you rate your overall satisfaction with us?

9. On a scale of one (not easy) to ten (very easy), how easy was your checkout experience?

10. What would you change about your experience?

These are the ten more important customer feedback questions because they address every aspect of the buyer’s experience. This way, you can get an overview of how your customers are finding your business, and what their experience is like once they arrive. You can also see where you can improve, what your strengths are. You’ll also get information about several important elements, such as your checkout experience, staff, store ambiance or website usability. Finally, you’ll gather important quantifiable data like your NPS (question 7), CSAT (question 8), and CES (question 9). To get more detailed information about any area of your business, keep reading.

 

Featured Resource: 5 Survey Templates + Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

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Try These 75 Customer Feedback Questions to Improve Your Business

To Improve Customer Service

Customer service can make or break your business. The right customer feedback questions can help you improve customer service and make a stellar customer experience.

1. Were you greeted in a friendly manner?
2. Did our staff answer your questions?
3. Did you find our staff helpful and courteous?
4. Were you served promptly?
5. How can we make your experience even better?

subway customer feedback survey example

To Solve Problems

Sometimes a customer leaves because they’re just looking for something different. Sometimes they get frustrated or treated badly. The right customer feedback questions will help you know the difference.

6. Is our product/service no longer useful to you?
7. Did the price of our product/service cause you to leave?
8. Have you decided to test out a competitor?
9. What would you like to see changed?
10. What would you say about your experience?

 

Featured Resource: 5 Survey Templates + Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

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To Showcase Your Strengths

It’s essential to ask the right customer feedback questions to happy customers. This is a chance to show what you’re doing that’s amazing. Use these questions to guide a review or a testimonial video.

11. How has our product/service made an impact on you/your business/your lifestyle?
12. What is your favorite thing about our product/service?
13. What would you tell your friends or colleagues about us?
14. Has any part of our business exceeded your expectations?
15. How would you rate your experience? (out of 5 or 10)

To Improve Your Product or Service

Continuous improvement makes good businesses into great ones. Even if customers love your product or service, you should always know what you could do better (before your competitors do it first!).

16. Which features do you love?
17. Which features aren’t useful to you?
18. Which features do you wish we had?
19. What would you change about our product/service?
20. Are our products/services priced appropriately?

To Understand Your Customers’ Needs

Your customers come to you because they need something, and you provide it. To continue providing it, make sure you know if their needs change.

21. What challenge or problem does our business solve for you?
22. How do you measure these challenges? (expenses, revenue, time, leads, clicks, etc.)
23. How long did you use our product or service before seeing results?
24. What prompted you to find a solution?
25. How could we make this solution more effective for you?

 

Featured Resource: 5 Survey Templates + Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

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To Understand Your Customers

When it comes to advertising and marketing, you have to know who your customers are, what they pay attention to, and what they respond to. When you know this, you can deliver relevant messages they’ll actually like.

26. What is your name/age/gender/job title?
27. Do you read paper books, magazines and newspapers, or read online?
28. Which do you use more; tv, smartphone, or laptop?
29. Which do you prefer; quick and convenient or detailed and customized?
30. Do you use free trials/coupons/offers?

hubspot customer feedback survey example

To Improve Marketing Message

Once you know your customers, you need to know what to say to them. Customer feedback questions about how your customers utilize your business will help you focus on your biggest selling points.

31. How did you find us?
32. How long have you been a customer?
33. What made you want to try us?
34. Did you use a competitor before us?
35. How often do you use our product/service?

To Learn About Competitors

Most of us don’t find the right solution the first time. That means your customers probably have some experience with your competitors, and they can give you information you won’t find elsewhere.

36. What were you using before you found us?
37. What did you like about the previous product/service(s)?
38. What caused you to leave?
39. What does our business do better?
40. Is there anything you miss about the previous product/service(s)?

To Improve Your Website

If your business doesn’t have a working website, you’re missing millions of customers searching for you online every day. If you have a website, but you’re not sure why it’s not working, customer feedback questions can help you find out.

41. Have you used or visited our website?
42. Was it easy to find?
43. What were you looking for on the website? Did you find it?
44. Was the website easy to use?
45. What would you change about it?

 

Featured Resource: 5 Survey Templates + Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

Download the Customer Feedback Strategy Toolkit

 

To Test a Product, Service or Strategy

Adding a new product or service to your business can be risky, but the right customer feedback can help you make informed decisions. Ask your customers what they think about the new expansion you’re planning. By revealing this information to your loyal customers, you can also create some excitement and recruit first adopters.

46. Would you find [new feature] useful?
47. Would you buy [new product] if we had it?
48. If we introduced [new feature/product] would you be willing to test it?
49. If we provided [rewards program/discounts/another special] would you use it?
50. How much would you pay for [new feature/product]?

To Understand the Purchasing Experience

If someone has already decided to buy, making this as easy as possible is the best way to complete the sale. Flaws in this process can turn customers away, ruining all of your efforts to gain their interest in the first place. Customer feedback questions that illuminate problems at this stage are extremely helpful.

51. How easy or difficult was it to complete your purchase?
52. Were you able to check out in a timely manner?
53. What would you improve about the check-out process?
54. Did you have to wait in line?
55. Were you able to find what you were looking for?

customer effort score feedback survey example

To Assess Employees or Training Strategies

If your business is very focused on one-on-one sales and service, asking about a specific employee can make a big difference. If you use this to assess employees’ performance, use it as a tool to reward high performance, not punish low performance. Using customer feedback to punish employees can create contention between the employees, and emphasizes adequate performance instead of encouraging outstanding performance. You might also use this as a way to assess training strategies or new policies.

56. Did an employee help you today? Who were they?
57. How would you rate your experience with this person?
58. Were they able to answer your questions or concerns?
59. Would you like to work with this person again?
60. Overall, did this person do an outstanding job?

To Gather Quantifiable Data

Several types of customer feedback responses are shown to correlate with other important business metrics, like customer loyalty, the chance of a repeat purchase, or lifetime customer value. Business analysts have developed these questions specifically to acquire measurable data about customer sentiment. These metrics include the Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES). Here are some customer feedback questions you might ask to gather this data.

61. How likely would you be to recommend this business to a friend? (Net Promoter Score)
62. How would you rate your overall satisfaction with our business? (Customer Satisfaction Score)
63. How would you rate your overall satisfaction with [specific product or service]? (Customer Satisfaction Score)
64. To what extent would you agree with the following: Completing my order was easy? (Customer Effort Score)
65. How easy or difficult was it for your question or problem to be resolved? (Customer Effort Score)

Ting customer feedback survey example

 

Featured Resource: 5 Survey Templates + Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

Customer Feedback Strategy Guide

Download the Customer Feedback Strategy Toolkit

 

To Improve NPS Scores

NPS data and other quantifiable metrics are important for assessing your overall performance year-to-year, but you also have to be prepared to act upon this information. Follow up your NPS, CSAT or CES survey with these questions to pinpoint where your improvement efforts are best spent.

66. How could we make the check-out process faster or easier for you?
67. What could we change to make our product/service more user-friendly?
68. Is there anything you were expecting that you didn’t get?
69. What feature could we add that you would really enjoy?
70. How could we make it easier to resolve your questions or concerns?

Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

To Follow Up

Customer feedback questions are most effective when you compare responses and data year over year. Some surveys also work best when you follow-up with more details a few weeks later. Whether you are considering following up next year with the same survey or following up a short time later with more detailed, open-ended questions, including one of these questions can help you select the right customers to follow up with. Use the responses to segment your list. This way, you can send follow-up surveys to the customers most likely to respond.

71. After we implement key features, could we contact you to learn more about your experience?
72. Would you be willing to participate in this survey again next year?
73. Could we contact you for a more detailed follow-up survey?
74. May we contact you to follow-up and make sure your customer service inquiry was properly resolved?
75. Would you be willing to participate in a follow-up survey after your free trial expires?

To Assess Performance Improvements

You might use a regular customer survey to assess how your customer happiness, business efficiency, customer service, and other metrics are improving. You might use these types of customer feedback questions in tandem with the previously mentioned quantifiable data questions to easily assess performance annually, or between other intervals. These questions might ask about a particular feature, product, or policy you hoped would improve your customers’ experience.

76. How has (new feature or product) improved your experience? (Scale of 5 or 10)
77. In your opinion, has our customer service experience improved or declined over the last six months?
78. Do you think our product offerings have become more or less diverse in the last six months?
79. Over the last year, do you think our prices have become more expensive than you expected, less expensive than you expected, or about what you expected?
80. Since we’ve reorganized our (website, staffing system, service platform etc.), have your overall experience with us improved or declined?

Customer Feedback Responses

The different types of customer feedback responses you allow can determine how useful your responses are, and whether they are easily quantifiable. It can be a challenge to find a balance between efficiently gathering and organizing responses, and receiving in-depth data. Here are a few different types of responses you might use, and some tips for using each one.

  • Open-ended: These are questions that can’t be answered with a yes or a no, and ask for more description or opinion. While these can help you understand an interaction or a customer’s sentiment, they’re difficult to organize, especially when working with a large number of responses. Customers also tend to skip these responses, since they take more effort to fill in. Use these carefully, and ask whether another type of response would be equally useful.
  • Options: These questions are more specific than a yes or no, but the responses are limited to a predetermined list. Customers might select one from the list, or several, and you should make it clear which they can do. This can provide more detail while still giving you well-organized data.
  • Yes or No: While this won’t provide details, it can help to reveal a problem. You might ask a more detailed follow-up question to get more information. Customers are most likely to respond to this quick and easy question, so you can use this more often in more places.
  • Sliding Scale: This type of response turns a customer’s feelings about an interaction into a numbered scale, so the data is more easily averaged and calculated. This scale might be from 1 to 3, 1 to 5, 1 to 7, or 1 to 10. Often, the customer-facing responses are not numbered, but use variations of “satisfied (3), neutral (2), unsatisfied (1)” or “agree (5), somewhat agree (4), neither agree nor disagree (3), somewhat disagree (2), disagree (1).” Pictures, color coding, or emojis can make this type of response more clear and more fun.

How to Get Customer Feedback

Now that you have your questions and you know what information you’re looking for, how do you ask these questions? What is the most efficient way to get customer feedback that is reliable and relevant? This partly depends on what you’re asking. You want to make sure the experience you’re asking about is fresh in the customer’s mind, and that they are comfortable responding honestly. Here are a few ways to request customer feedback. Decide which is best for you based on what you want to know and how your business works.

  • Email survey: You might use a quick check-in survey after a customer completes a purchase, or a longer survey to ask more in-depth questions about a customer’s overall experience.
  • In-Store Kiosk: This is especially helpful if you are asking about your store’s ambiance, experience, or customer service. You might mount a tablet in a prominent location and use kiosk mode to take responses.
  • On a Receipt: Add a link to a survey the bottom of a receipt, or include a short question or two at the bottom which your customer can fill out and return. This is ideal for questions related to the check-out experience.
  • Comment Cards: This classic pen-and-paper approach gives customers everything they need to report good or bad experiences in your store. You’ll have to enter and score these paper responses yourself to accurately measure data, but this method is easy to set up.
  • Pop-Up Survey: Instead of (or in addition to) sending an email, use a politely-worded pop-up or an additional page to ask your customers about their online experience. You might use this after a customer completes a purchase, as they are browsing your site, or when they use a deal or discount.
  • Exit Survey: When a customer unsubscribes, cancels or downgrades their service, or doesn’t purchase for a while, use an email or additional page to ask them why.

Best Practices for Collecting Customer Feedback

Whatever type of feedback you are collecting, keeping a few best practices in mind will help you collect customer feedback faster and more accurately.

  • Consider your audience: some people will be more likely to fill out longer surveys than others. If you are surveying customers who have been with you for several years, they will be more likely to fill out longer surveys, while new customers are more likely to fill out shorter surveys, and might be turned off by long surveys.
  • Ask more than once: There are more demands on your customers’ and employees’ time than ever before. Your first request for feedback is likely to get deleted, put in a folder, or otherwise ignored. You’ll probably need to ask for feedback more than once to get a response. This works best with an automated email system, so you can schedule your requests to send a week or two apart.
  • Consider your method: Email is an easy way to ask to deliver your customer feedback questions, especially when you automate this process. However, this isn’t always the best way, especially if you are looking for a particular type of feedback. For example, if you are looking for feedback about your website, a quick pop-up might be more effective.
  • Ask happy and unhappy customers: If you are only asking happy customers for feedback, your data will have an artificially positive skew and you’ll be less likely to hear about real issues that are driving customers away. If you are only emailing customers who have been with you for many years, consider the type of data you are likely to collect.

Ways to Use Customer Feedback

There are many ways to use customer feedback once you collect it. Of course, the way that you use it will depend on the customer feedback questions that you ask, how you ask, and who you ask. And, you might not always be collecting customer feedback; you may be surveying your employees, partners, or other people you work with as well.

Once you’ve honed in on the questions you want to ask, consider the different ways to use customer feedback, such as:

  • Removing barriers: In some cases, removing obstacles and problems can be a more effective way of increasing revenue than aiming for extraordinary customer satisfaction. Use your customer feedback questions to uncover obstacles in your checkout process, shopping process, or other processes.
  • Adding new features, products or services: Expanding your business sometimes means making difficult decisions, like what new services to offer, new products to sell, features to add to your program and more. Asking your customers about what they’re looking forward to can help you make the right decisions.
  • Optimizing your website: Your website should be easy to navigate and use. Customer feedback questions can help to show what your customers need and expect from your website, how well it works, and what you need to fix.
  • Improving customer service: When customers are trying to solve problems—perhaps they’ve encountered an issue with shipping, finding a product they need, a product defect, or something else—you want to be able to solve it easily. If your customers have trouble getting the help they need, the customer service isn’t helpful, or they aren’t sure where to get help, the right feedback survey can show where these problems exist.
  • Reducing employee turnover: Asking your employees about your training process, hours, managerial policies, and other parts of the job can show what your staff enjoys and what problems they have. By reducing problems, you can reduce employee turnover and reduce recruiting, hiring and training costs.

These customer feedback questions can help you guide a testimonial video, make up a question card, or write a survey. When you’re asking for customer feedback, make sure you know what you’re looking for, and customize your questions accordingly. Avoid asking too soon, and make sure you ask the right people. Be prepared for good or bad feedback, and have a strategy ready to use the information you receive.

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