How to Build a Customer Feedback Form [+ Examples and Best Practices]

Any product manager should know how to quickly put together a comprehensive customer feedback form: they’re a secret weapon for unlocking deep user insights and gathering quality feedback.

In this article, we’re going to unpack the techniques, examples, and tools you need to create effective feedback forms within your own SaaS.

Let’s dive in!

What is a customer feedback form?

A customer feedback form is a way to gather customer feedback in a structured way.

Why bother creating customer feedback forms in the first place? Because they give you the best possible chance of understanding the overall customer experience. It’s only then that you can identify areas for improvement.

Gather feedback, gain insight, and make effective product decisions. Simple.

Types of customer feedback forms to consider

There are many ways to gather feedback: there’s not just one example of a good customer feedback form. You can gain valuable insights with different varieties depending on the context.

Customer satisfaction surveys

What are they? A customer satisfaction survey is designed to understand how happy your customers are with your product or service. There are various types:

• Net promoter score survey: Would your customers recommend your product?
• Customer satisfaction score survey: How satisfied are your customers?
• Customer effort score survey: How easy/hard was it to complete a task?
• Product market fit survey: How customers would feel if they could no longer use your product?

When should you use them? Customer satisfaction is a broad and complex topic – use a customer satisfaction survey when you want to gain an accurate view of loyalty and sentiment.

New features customer feedback survey

What are they? This type of customer feedback form helps you crowdsource ideas for new features from your customer base. You could make this specific or look to capture general pain points that you can synthesize into distinct feature offers.

Another variation is a customer feedback form template, which helps you understand how a given feature is performing after it’s been released.

When should you use them? Use them in two main scenarios: to generate quality ideas for new feature development before you start accruing development costs, and to understand how new features are performing.

Product or service customer experience feedback surveys

What are they? One accurate way to gather feedback about your customer’s experience with your product/service is through churn surveys.

A churn survey consists of typically short, punchy questions sent to your customers after they have decided to leave your product, cancel their membership, or downgrade their subscription plan.

When should you use them? Some churn is inevitable: but you want to avoid it where you can. The type of customer feedback form will help you understand the reason your customers want to cancel or leave in the first place and identify opportunities for improvement.

You can also offer them alternatives before they leave (i.e., a cheaper plan) which helps improve retention.

Best practices for creating effective customer feedback forms

We’ve unpacked the various types of customer feedback forms, but how do you go about building forms that witness a high response rate?

In this section of the article, we will explore some feedback form best practices in detail.

Simplify the customer feedback form to avoid survey fatigue

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

Simplicity is at the heart of any successful customer feedback form template. Your absolute focus should be on avoiding any time wastage: your customers are busy people and their time is valuable.

In practice, that means:

• Don’t ask too many questions
• Keep the copy simple
• Avoid too many form fields

The more punchy and focused the survey, the better chance you have of gathering accurate information. All of that lowers survey fatigue (a loss of interest in filling out surveys).

Look at the feedback form built with Userpilot below. It doesn’t skip on any important information and yet takes a short time for the user to fill it.

Include open-ended questions in feedback forms

Any researcher will tell you the value of open-ended questions: they encourage deeper answers and help you understand the ‘why’ behind your customers’ responses. Rather than simply getting a binary view of satisfaction, you can figure out reasons underpinning decision-making.

The example from Jira below is a good one: it combines a quantitative measure with an open-ended qualitative input field.

Remove bias from customer feedback questions

It’s incredibly easy to skew research by asking biased questions. You can formulate questions to make it more likely to get the responses you want or influence your customers’ opinions. You should try to avoid that at all costs as you need to get to the truth.

Here are a couple of examples to consider:

• Biased question: How happy are you with your onboarding experience?
• Unbiased question: How was your onboarding experience?

Send customer feedback forms to the right users

You need to ask the right questions to the right customers at the right time. If you fire off feedback forms at random, not only will you risk gathering a random selection of information, but you’ll suffer poor response rates.

Customer segmentation is important: you can segment users by their job title, jobs to be done, specific pain points, patterns in product usage, stage in the customer journey, and more.

Mix active and passive customer feedback forms

Another tip for quality feedback forms: use a combination of active and passive forms.

Active forms are typically triggered automatically based on user activity (i.e., a customer doesn’t have control).

Passive forms can be launched on-demand by your customers (i.e., if they want to submit feedback on their own).

Slack uses both to collect data about the customer’s experience.

These survey questions encourage users (in an active form) to give an understanding of their experience.

Slack enables users to share feedback whenever they want by giving the following command.

Customer feedback form examples to take inspiration from

In this section of the article, we’re going to look at what comprises a good feedback form sample. These great examples will help you gather valuable information and understand more about how customers interact with your product.

Collecting feedback with in-app feedback widget – Miro example

This in-app widget from Miro (an example of a passive feedback form) can be used by their customers to give on-demand feedback.

Notice how the feedback widget is subtle – it doesn’t disrupt the customer’s experience with using the product.

Understanding customer loyalty with NPS survey – Userpilot example

NPS surveys are a great way to collect information that helps you understand customer loyalty (rather than just specific, individual pieces of user feedback). The rating scale will allow you to build a picture of how likely your target audience is to recommend your product or service.

The below example from Userpilot is what a good NPS survey should look like.

Determining product-market fit with PMF survey – Slack example

A product manager’s primary responsibility should be analyzing and moving your product closer to achieving PMF. This multiple-choice form is not a long survey, and it won’t take much of your customers’ time, but it can be hugely effective.

Understanding customer experience with CES survey – Nicereply example

A CES (or customer effort score) survey is a feedback form (typically with fewer questions) that gathers information on the overall experience of completing a specific task.

The below example from Nicereply is a good example of a CES survey.

Identifying churn reason with cancellation survey – Asana example

Some churn is inevitable: but rather than passively accepting it, a churn survey can help you understand the reasons why a customer wants to leave or cancel their membership in the first place.

The below churn survey example from Asana asks clear questions and provides an ‘other’ option to collect qualitative feedback.

How to collect customer feedback form responses with Userpilot?

Userpilot is an intensely powerful tool for delivering effective product experiences.

In a crowded marketplace with lots of options, Userpilot stands out: the range of features available, the attractive pricing options, the ease of use, and the range of integrations are second to none.

Let’s explore how you can use it to easily create engaging forms.

Use a feedback form template and customize it

Userpilot makes it simple to quickly build dynamic feedback forms (without a huge amount of technical ability).

Predesigned templates help give you a framework for collecting customer feedback effectively. The customization options are particularly impressive: you can tweak content, aesthetics, and structure with ease.

Collect feedback form responses with microsurveys built your way

You can easily build microsurveys from scratch for an even greater level of control over branding. Userpilot enables you to:

• Add multiple sections,
• Include images and engaging videos,
• Boost engagement with emojis,
• Drive action with CTA buttons and much more.

All of that makes collecting customer feedback a dream. It’s perfect for building a form you need for a specific use case.

Trigger customer feedback forms to the right segment

With Userpilot you can segment users by a huge range of attributes: product usage, roles, use cases, journey stages, jobs to be done, demographics, and more.

That level of depth makes targeting and personalizing the experience toward distinct user groups much easier (and enables you to create a far more effective product experience).

Conclusion

We’ve covered a lot!

Hopefully, you now have a solid understanding of exactly what a customer feedback form is, the various different types and what they’re used for, and most importantly how to create them in your own product.

If you want to get started, make sure you choose the right tool for the job. Get a Userpilot Demo and see how you can gather valuable customer insight today.