4 Types Of Customer Satisfaction Survey [+Templates & Question Examples]

customer satisfaction surveys

What exactly are the different types of customer satisfaction surveys? And how should you build them to collect actionable feedback?

That’s exactly what I’m going to cover in this article. Plus, if you don’t know where to start, you’ll find some examples and questions you should use in your surveys.

Let’s dive right in!

TL;DR

  • A customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire that businesses use to ask what their customers think about their products or services, their brand, or other interactions with their business (such as customer service or tech support).
  • There are four main types of customer satisfaction surveys: Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), and Product-Market Fit.
  • Question types in customer satisfaction surveys: open-ended, rating scale questions, binary scale questions, and Likert scale questions.
  • Using a survey creation tool is the most efficient approach to creating, deploying, and revising surveys, compared to custom coding one as it’s faster and allows easier iterations and testing.
  • Good surveys fit the look and feel of your product. Emojis help cut out the step of “translating” a feeling into a number, but numbers on a scale are more precise.
  • One important part of a customer satisfaction survey is what you do after you collect feedback from your users. With a tool like Userpilot, you can build and respond to customer satisfaction surveys directly in-app.
  • Want to build in-app surveys without coding? Book a Userpilot demo today to get started!

Try No-code Survey Builder with Userpilot!

 

What is a customer satisfaction survey?

A customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire used to collect user feedback and sentiment on:

  • your products or services
  • your brand
  • customer experience (interactions customer service team, tech support, feature usage)

Using these surveys helps you understand customer expectations and gain actionable insights into product improvement. But it doesn’t stop here. Acting on customer satisfaction data will help reduce churn and increase the lifetime value.

4 types of customer satisfaction surveys

The four most common types of customer satisfaction surveys are:

What they all have in common is that they measure user experience and sentiment using scales:

  • 0-10
  • 1-5
  • Very unlikely – Very likely
  • Sad face – Happy face

Customer satisfaction surveys are all about quantification.

Even non-numerical scales have a quantitative value behind the scenes. A happy face can have a 5 on a 1-5 scale that you run through your analytics formulas.

Let’s take a look at each of these four types of surveys.

Customer satisfaction survey type #1 – Net promoter score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey asks for a response on a scale of 0-10 to the question, “How likely are you to recommend our product to others?”

Customer satisfaction survey-Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Customer satisfaction survey builder in Userpilot

NPS measures customer loyalty on a scale of -100 to 100. The refined score from all of your survey responses tells you how satisfied your customers are overall.

To calculate your NPS score, categorize responses into one of three categories:

  • 0-6 – Detractor, would not recommend your product
  • 7-8 – Passive, moderately satisfied with your product but wouldn’t go out of their way to recommend it
  • 9-10 – Promoter, very satisfied with your product, very likely to recommend it to others

You take all of the responses and follow this formula:

(% of Promoter scores) – (% of Detractor scores) = Overall NPS score

How to calculate your NPS score

To get more insights into what made a user choose their score, use a qualitative follow-up question. This way you can collect specific feedback you can act upon to turn detractors into promoters (eventually) and reduce churn.

NPS follow up question
NPS follow-up question

Customer satisfaction survey type #2 – Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT) is an on-the-spot measurement that helps you understand the overall level of satisfaction users have with your product.

CSAT star rating survey
CSAT star rating survey

You should measure CSAT at different touchpoints in the customer journey i.e. with a specific product, feature, or interaction with a customer service representative.

Start by asking one of the following questions:

  • How helpful was [this tech support session/this article/this answer]?
  • How satisfied were you with [the waiting time/the answer from customer service]?

Customer satisfaction survey type #3 – Customer Effort Score (CES)

The customer effort score (CES) survey measures the users’ perceived effort in using a feature or performing an action in your product (i.e. upgrading or requesting support).

While convenience isn’t everything, the inconvenience will kill anything. This is why measuring customer effort in using your product will help you identify friction points as well as what’s perceived to be simple by your users.

Using Userpilot, you can set up score-based follow-up questions for your CES survey. This will help you take specific actions to improve on what is causing friction and replicate what users like.

Customer Effort Score (CES) survey
Customer Effort Score (CES) survey

Customer satisfaction survey type #4 – Product-Market Fit score (PMF)

Product-Market Fit (PMF) is a customer satisfaction survey that can give you an indication of whether your product has achieved product-market fit or not.

Coined by Sean Ellis, entrepreneur, and startup advisor, the PMF score is calculated by asking users ”How would you feel if you could no longer use the product?”.

Then it measures the percentage of users who answered ”very disappointed”.

PMF customer satisfaction survey
PMF customer satisfaction survey

If your score is 40% or above your product has achieved product-market fit.

This survey is particularly useful when you are not far enough into the life of your product to use an NPS survey to measure customer satisfaction.

Common types of customer satisfaction survey questions

To collect customer feedback, you have to ask the right question. Below are some typical types of customer satisfaction survey questions that give you an idea of what to ask.

1. Open-ended questions in a customer satisfaction survey

Open-ended questions allow users to express themselves in their own words, compared to a rating scale.

You get the benefit of their first-hand experience, and they can bring up problems you might not have noticed.

An open-ended question can stand alone or, as discussed above, it can follow a quantitative question.

When building your survey, keep in mind to avoid your own biases and ask questions in a way that doesn’t influence the user’s answers. Here are a few examples that you can use in your customer satisfaction surveys:

  • Was there anything in your [insert page/feature] we could improve? If so, what?
  • If the pricing were to change, would you be happy to pay more? Why or why not?
  • How does this feature solve your problem/help accomplish your goals? Why or why not?
  • We are looking to solve [problem x] – how would solving this problem with our product be helpful for you?
  • Is there anything you feel our product could do better?
Open-ended questions
Open-ended questions

2. Rating scale questions in a customer satisfaction survey

Rating scale questions (1-5, 1-10, happy to sad, etc) help you understand benchmarks and trends. They give you standardized data that you can assess over time, as long as you are consistent with the type of scale you use for a specific measurement.

Not sure how to phrase your questions? Try one from the list below:

  • How would you rate the usefulness of our product?
  • How easy was it to complete task x?
  • How would you rate the product’s value for money?
  • How satisfied were you with our customer success service today?
Rating scale questions
Rating scale questions

3. Binary scale questions in a customer satisfaction survey

Binary scale questions look for fast yes or no answers. It’s assessing customer satisfaction in its simplest form.

Binary scale questions are like taking a pulse. Sudden spikes represented by negative answers should be your trigger to investigate and take action.

Binary questions you could ask:

  • Did our product do what you wanted it to do?
  • Was this article helpful?
  • Did you find what you were looking for?
Binary questions
Binary questions

4. Likert scale questions in a customer satisfaction survey

Compared to the rating scale that asks users to rate an experience, the Likert scale measures how customers feel about a particular statement.

On a scale of 1-5 or 1-7, the first and last numbers represent extreme opposite views – often agreement/disagreement.

  • 1 – Strongly disagree
  • 2 – Somewhat disagree
  • 3 – Neither agree nor disagree
  • 4 – Somewhat agree
  • 5 – Strongly agree

It is OK for a Likert question to have a value judgment in it – you are asking whether your users “agree” that your super special sales team is super and special, not whether they are “satisfied” with your super special sales team.

Likert scale questions typically include a question:

  • To what extent do you agree with the following statement:

and then the statement (use only one at a time):

  • Navigating our website was easy.
  • The blogs and articles on our website were useful.
  • Our team has excellent customer service.
  • Our prices reflect the value of our product.
Likert scale questions
Likert scale questions

Ways to create and distribute a customer satisfaction survey

For conducting customer satisfaction surveys, you can custom code them or use a no-code tool to do it.

So what’s the difference between the two options?

Option 1: Custom code your user feedback survey

If you want an absolute blank check for customization, then you should custom-code your surveys.

Complete customization sounds nice, but imagine your developers’ reaction when they have to implement all the changes and test variants after you’ve launched the survey.

There’s a better way (hint: it’s fully customizable too and doesn’t require coding).

Option 2: Use a tool to build a user feedback survey with no code

There are many tools for building user feedback surveys. Some focus on measuring customer satisfaction only (like Satismeter), others (like Typeform) can build multiple types of surveys for you to embed in your app or website.

The best part of using a tool:

  • no need to code
  • customize the surveys to match the native design of your product
  • built and made changes fast
  • track and analyze responses

You can do all of the above and more with Userpilot.

In Userpilot, you build different types of surveys, customize your surveys with brand colors, and localization, and deliver them to different user segments – all from the same interface and with zero code.

Survey audience settings

As your survey responses come in, you can track user feedback over time.

survey analytics
Survey analytics in Userpilot

Try Userpilot and Collect Actionable Insights with Survey Analytics

 

Customer satisfaction survey examples and templates

I knew it. You are here for the customer satisfaction survey examples, right? Below you’ll find customer satisfaction survey template ideas from different SaaS companies!

With no further ado, let’s jump into it.

Userpilot NPS survey question example

Of course, I’m going to start with an example from our tool, Userpilot. I just had to. (shameless promotion alert)

Here’s how a simple NPS built with no code looks like:

NPS customer satisfaction survey

Using the same UI, it’s easy to set up a full NPS survey and start collecting feedback.

NPS survey follow up question
NPS survey follow-up question

Asana NPS survey example

NPS surveys don’t need to come in one shape and form. Yes, the question and scale are the same but the placement and customization are up to you.

Asana collects NPS responses using a pop-up. Although it’s a small one, not having a dismiss button can be annoying for users.

Asana nps survey banner
Customer satisfaction survey banner Source: Asana

It can also be closed by accident due to its positioning, or intentionally by clicking on a random number just to make it go away.

It can also be closed by accident due to its positioning, or intentionally by clicking on a random number just to make it go away.

Miro NPS survey example

If you want to increase the response rate g, create an NPS survey the way Miro does.

They deliver an NPS survey while users are using their product, but at the bottom screen without disrupting user experience.

Miro NPS survey example
Miro NPS survey example

Monzo CSAT survey example

“On a scale from sad face to happy face…” is a nice way to start a question. Monzo does a 1-5 scale question with emojis rather than numbers, giving more of a human feel to their interactions.

Monzo customer satisfaction survey with emojis
Monzo customer satisfaction survey Source: Monzo

It’s great for collecting quick feedback – no need to “translate” emotions into numbers, but you still have the numbers for analysis on the backend.

Hubspot CSAT survey example

While you’ve probably never seen a 2 cross the face of a confused person, numbers allow for more precision and gradation in a survey response. “Somewhere between an uneasy smile and panicked grimace” is not very precise – emojis can only go so far.

On larger scales, always use numbers as it’s easier for the user to answer.

Hubspot customer satisfaction survey scale of 1-7
Hubspot customer satisfaction survey Source: Hubspot

Nicereply CSAT survey example

This survey by Nicereply has big, friendly emojis. No digging deep into the grab bag of emojis, just a simple happy, blah, and sad.

customer satisfaction survey from nicereply using emojis
Nicereply customer satisfaction survey Source: Nicereply

This approach is great if you need a quick opinion on something. Don’t make users think, give them a few options and make it easy for them to gauge their feelings.

This works well when you want to assess interactions that happen often and need to track overall changes over time.

Grammarly CSAT survey example

Here’s another example from Grammarly.

Right after you finish writing your document using Grammarly, it asks you how helpful it is to use its feature. So the idea is to ask contextually when the impression is still fresh in mind.

Grammarly CSAT survey example
Grammarly CSAT survey example

Slack PMF survey example

Even big brands had to go through this process. If you’re still figuring it out, here’s a PMF example from Slack to encourage you to keep going.

product-market fit used by Slack, created on Typeform
PMF survey results about Slack Source: Hitenism

How to follow up on customer feedback?

One important part of a customer satisfaction survey is what you do after you collect feedback from your users.

Sure, analyze and act on feedback to improve your product. But also, remember this should be a two-way communication loop, and you should always reply to customer concerns.

Customers will appreciate you for it and you can retain existing customers and reduce churn in doing so.

First, you need to segment your users. You can’t send the same automated response to everyone.

Here are a few ways you can segment users based on their feedback and some examples of responses personalized for each.

1. Send an e-mail to thank customers who returned a high rating and ask for more in-depth feedback. Happy users will be most willing to help you out with this.

Personal e-mail in response to high NPS score
Personal e-mail in response to high NPS score.

2. If your survey was delivered in-app, follow up in the same context – launch an in-app experience to provide proactive support.

While email might feel more personal it’s also easier to get lost in the inbox.

Plus you can make in-app messaging feel personal too.

In-app tooltips built with Userpilot. Get a demo to start building in-app experiences for your users!

Targeted Survey Follow-up Made Easy with Userpilot

 

Conclusion

You make your best decisions with accurate, up-to-date information. Customer satisfaction surveys help you get that information

Want to get started with building targeted, customized surveys that your users will respond to? Get a Userpilot Demo and see how you can create and launch effective surveys on our platform.

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