Looking for the voice of the customer questions to understand your users, analyze the market, and unlock growth opportunities?

In this article, we will cover the voice of the customer methodology. We’ve handpicked the right survey questions under different research categories to make everything easy.

You’ll also find techniques for collecting feedback and best practices to ensure everything goes well.

What is the voice of the customer survey?

VoC survey employs quantitative and qualitative research to understand customer needs, pain points, and perceptions of your company at different touchpoints in their journey.

Why are voice of customer surveys important?

By collecting and analyzing feedback through VoC surveys, SaaS businesses can gain valuable insights about customers.

This data allows product managers to make more informed product development and roadmap planning decisions.

Additionally, the surveys will let you uncover friction in the user journey and promptly address it to improve the customer experience.

Actively collecting feedback and taking action based on that feedback helps build trust and loyalty among customers. When customers see that their voices are heard, and their suggestions are being implemented, they feel valued and are more likely to remain loyal to your brand.

This, in turn, drives customer retention, reduces churn, and can even lead to positive word-of-mouth referrals.

What are the different techniques to collect VoC data?

You have multiple options when it comes to gathering feedback. Combine any of the following techniques based on your audience and research objectives:

• Customer interviews: This involves one-on-one conversations with customers to gather in-depth insights about their experiences, preferences, and suggestions, providing rich qualitative data that uncovers valuable insights and perspectives.
• Online reviews: Allow customers to share their opinions and experiences publicly on review websites. Encouraging new and existing customers to leave online reviews will give you a continuous stream of feedback that reflects customer sentiments and helps identify trends and areas for improvement.
• Focus groups: Focus groups are great when you just want feedback from a specific customer segment. But don’t rely entirely on this technique if you want data that represents the thoughts of your whole customer base.
• Customer surveys: Trigger in-app surveys like CSAT, NPS, or CES to gather large-scale user feedback and analyze the data to distill valuable insights.
• Social media platforms: Two primary ways to generate feedback on social media include engaging customers in the comment section of your posts and using the right tools to monitor brand mentions.
• Customer data from customer support interactions: Dig into chat logs or call recordings to uncover patterns and trends in customer inquiries, complaints, or requests.

Customer survey questions to include in your VoC survey

Selecting the right survey questions is crucial because even with the perfect audience and channel, asking the wrong questions can lead to biased or skewed responses.

Below are goal-specific questions to ask your audience:

Voice of the customer questions for customer research

Regularly conducting customer research can help you uncover insight to refine your user personas and better understand your target audience’s pain points.

You can also use the info to ensure your messaging better speaks to user needs.

Send the following questions to potential customers pre-launch, new signups (using welcome screens), or existing customers:

• Can you describe your role or profession and how our product/service fits into your work or life?
• What are the significant obstacles you face in your professional life?
• How does our product/service help you achieve those goals?
• Can you share any specific challenges or pain points that our product/service has helped you overcome?
• What other products or services do you use in conjunction with ours to meet your needs?
• Are there any specific demographics or user characteristics that you think our product/service caters to?

Voice of the customer questions to conduct market research

Send these surveys when planning product launches or revising your marketing and product strategies.

The data obtained will enable you to assess market demand, learn about market trends, set the right pricing, and identify product improvements that can help you stay competitive.

Examples of questions to ask:

• How much are you willing to pay for {product name}?
• What is the problem that the product/service helped to solve for you?
• How do you search for the products you want to buy?
• What factors influence your decision to purchase?
• What do you think is the biggest challenge our product/service faces in the market?

Voice of the customer questions to learn about competitors

Run these surveys to analyze your relative position to competitors and use the data to devise strategies to gain a competitive advantage.

Send competitor questions at different points in the user journey to identify and fix weak points and double down on strengths.

Some of the critical touchpoints for this survey are after onboarding, during product renewals, and as part of your exit or churn survey.

Sample questions to ask:

• Have you used any products/services offered by our competitors? If yes, please specify which ones.
• How would you compare our product/service to those offered by our competitors in terms of quality?
• What strengths and weaknesses of our competitors’ products/services have you noticed?
• Are there any features or functionalities offered by our competitors that you think we should consider implementing?
• How satisfied are you with our product/service in comparison to those offered by competitors?
• Are there any specific reasons you would choose a competitor’s product/service over ours?

Customer satisfaction VoC questions for understanding customer expectations

CSAT surveys help you measure customer satisfaction data at a granular level. You’ll also identify friction points and make contextual improvements to enhance the customer experience.

Send your CSAT surveys regularly, especially after specific events like first-time feature engagement, support interactions, etc.

Questions to ask:

• On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our product/service?
• How satisfied are you with {feature}?
• Agree or disagree: The onboarding program set me up for success.

Voice of the customer questions to collect product feedback

Product surveys provide insights to help you prioritize the product backlog and roadmap, come up with new feature ideas, and improve overall usability.

Like CSAT, you can conduct regular surveys to gain generic feedback on the product or send event-specific surveys. E.g., a new purchase, first-time feature interaction, after major product updates, etc.

Questions you can ask:

• What specific features or aspects of our product do you like the most?
• Is there anything missing from our product that you want to see added or improved?
• Did the product meet your expectations?
• Have you encountered any issues or difficulties while using our product/service? If yes, please describe.
• How would you rate the ease of use and user interface of our product?

Voice of the customer questions to measure customer experience

Trigger the right questions to understand the customer experience with different aspects of your product.

You can then analyze the responses to know which parts of the user experience need improvements.

Some questions to ask:

• Did you encounter any challenges or issues when interacting with our company?
• How likely are you to continue using our product/service based on your experience?
• Rate your experience with {feature}?

Voice of the customer questions to gauge brand loyalty

Brand loyalty questions are great for measuring your overall product health. These questions also help you predict business growth.

When you have the data, segment users based on their responses and implement personalized retention marketing strategies for each group to improve loyalty.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys are best for measuring customer loyalty.

NPS questions to ask:

• Would you recommend our product/service to others?
• Why or why not?

VoC questions to collect customer feedback on customer service

This survey lets you evaluate the performance of your customer support team and improve.

The best time to trigger is right after customer service interactions—phone calls, closed tickets, etc.

Questions to ask:

• Is there anything specific we could do to improve our customer service experience?
• Were you satisfied with the level of customer service you received?
• How easy was it to interact with our support team?

Voice of the customer questions to test new products and features

Collect feedback on the beta version of a feature to iterate and perfect it before the mass launch.

Don’t trigger this survey randomly. Prioritize your loyal customers, as they would be more motivated to help you because they love the tool.

Customer survey questions to ask when testing new features/products:

• Have you encountered any challenges or difficulties while using the new product/service/feature? If yes, please describe.
• Are there any specific improvements or enhancements you would suggest for the new product/service/feature?
• How would you rate the value for money offered by the new product/service/feature?
• Would you recommend the new product/service/feature to others? Why or why not?
• Have you noticed any bugs or technical issues while using the new product/service/feature?
• Does the new product/service/feature meet your expectations in terms of performance and reliability?
• How does the new product/service/feature align with your overall goals or objectives?

Best practices when creating a Voice of the Customer program

You can use the above questions directly or customize them to fit your brand and audience. Whichever the case, it’s vital to note the following best practices:

Avoid leading and loaded questions

The reason is that they introduce bias into survey results and compromise the validity of the data collected.

• Leading questions

These questions are designed to subtly direct or influence respondents towards a particular answer or point of view.

Example: “Wouldn’t you agree that our product is the most efficient solution on the market?” This question already suggests that the product is indeed the most efficient, potentially leading respondents to agree regardless of their actual opinion.

• Loaded questions

These questions contain assumptions or premises, often giving no room for a contrary response.

Example: “Don’t you think our competitors’ outdated software is holding your business back?”

Use both close-ended and open-ended questions to collect holistic VoC data

Close-ended questions give you numeric facts about where you stand. On the other hand, open-ended questions explain the reasons behind numbers and give you actionable insights.

Combining both survey types lets you identify trends, and patterns, and easily identify how to improve.

Trigger customer feedback surveys contextually for existing customers

Survey timing and placement are just as important as the questions you ask. Use segmentation and custom events to trigger your surveys at the right moment and collect accurate feedback.

For example, waiting two days before asking someone about their interaction with a support rep won’t deliver as much accurate feedback as when you ask it immediately after the interaction—the experience is still fresh, so they can provide actionable feedback easily.

Use the same format to capture feedback across the customer journey

Maintain consistency to avoid confusing users and provide a better survey UX.

For example, if you used a 10-point rating scale at one customer touchpoint, use the same at other touchpoints too.

If you used a Likert scale (1-5 or 1-7) and the least number represented “deeply dissatisfied,” don’t repeat the same scale and change things up, making the highest number represent “deeply dissatisfied.”

Users who took the first survey will get confused, and you’ll have skewed results.

Build your VoC surveys with Userpilot

Userpilot is a user onboarding and product adoption software that helps businesses improve engagement and customer success.

Our platform allows you to trigger contextual in-app surveys, segment customers for better results, and analyze survey data to obtain rich insights.

Create surveys code free from scratch or benefit from our templates

Userpilot has different types of survey templates and functionalities to enable you to send the kind of surveys you want.

You can use emoticons, hearts, stars, radio-button, progress bars, etc., to make surveys more engaging.

Our platform also allows you to change the survey color and background to match your brand.

Trigger automated answers or follow-up questions to user responses

Say no to manual follow-ups and use that energy and time for something else. With Userpilot, you can set different follow-up questions and conditions for each to be triggered.

Analyze responses over time

By allowing you to collect and analyze survey responses over time, Userpilot helps you ensure your survey questions serve their initial goal.

In the future, you can look into this data and determine if you need to change or adjust your questions.

Conclusion

The success of your VoC program relies heavily on the quality of your questions, the channel you use, and the timing of your surveys.

This article has shown you how to maximize all three. It’s time to start creating your surveys!

Book a demo now to see how Userpilot can help you save time with the right templates, send the voice of the customer questions to the right customer segments, and analyze the results with ease.