Top questions for customer satisfaction survey: 2025 guide

In a world saturated with feedback requests, the quality of your questions for customer satisfaction survey efforts determines whether you receive generic responses or unlock transformative insights. Asking the right questions in the right way is the foundation of a customer-centric strategy, turning simple feedback into a powerful engine for growth, retention, and loyalty.

Generic surveys yield vague data, leading to misguided improvements and wasted resources. A well-structured survey, however, acts as a precise diagnostic tool. It pinpoints exact areas of friction, delight, and opportunity across the entire customer journey, providing clear direction for your business.

This guide moves beyond the basics, offering a comprehensive roundup of 10 essential question types designed to gather meaningful feedback. We will explore the strategic purpose behind each, provide specific, actionable examples, and detail how to deploy them effectively to gather data that drives real business results.

From measuring loyalty with Net Promoter Score (NPS) to uncovering operational hurdles with Customer Effort Score (CES), this is your blueprint for crafting surveys that customers actually want to complete. The goal is to gather the intelligence you need to thrive, ensuring every piece of feedback is a step towards a better customer experience. With a tool like GoodKudos, implementing these targeted surveys becomes a streamlined process, helping you turn valuable insights into immediate action.

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is a cornerstone metric for measuring customer loyalty and one of the most widely used questions for a customer satisfaction survey. Popularised by Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company, it distils complex sentiment into a single, powerful number. The core question is simple yet profound:

"On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?"

Based on their response, customers are categorised into three distinct groups:

• Promoters (9-10): Your most enthusiastic and loyal customers who actively advocate for your brand.
• Passives (7-8): Satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offers.
• Detractors (0-6): Unhappy customers who can damage your brand through negative word-of-mouth.

The final NPS score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters, resulting in a score ranging from -100 to +100.

Why Use NPS?

NPS is effective because it moves beyond simple satisfaction to gauge advocacy, a strong predictor of future growth. Companies like Apple and Amazon Web Services rely heavily on NPS to monitor customer loyalty and inform strategic decisions. Its simplicity makes it easy for customers to answer and for organisations to track over time, providing a clear benchmark for performance.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To get the most value from your NPS survey, follow these best practices:

• Always Ask "Why?": Immediately follow the rating question with an open-ended question like, "What is the primary reason for your score?". This qualitative feedback is where the real insights are found.
• Segment Your Data: Don't just look at the overall score. Segment your NPS results by customer cohort (e.g., new vs. long-term customers, by region, or by product purchased) to identify specific areas for improvement.
• Close the Loop: Act swiftly on the feedback you receive. Reach out to Detractors to resolve their issues and thank Promoters for their support. This proactive engagement shows customers you are listening and can significantly reduce churn.

For businesses looking to systematically gather and analyse feedback, platforms like GoodKudos can automate the NPS process, helping you track trends and turn customer insights into actionable growth strategies.

2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction Score, or CSAT, is a fundamental metric that directly measures a customer's contentment with a specific interaction, product, or service. Unlike broader loyalty measures, CSAT provides a snapshot of satisfaction at a key moment in the customer journey. The question is straightforward and adaptable:

"Overall, how satisfied were you with [specific interaction/product/service]?"

Responses are typically captured on a simple rating scale, such as 1-5 or 1-7, where the highest numbers represent the most satisfaction. The final CSAT score is calculated as the percentage of "satisfied" or "very satisfied" responses (e.g., scores of 4 and 5 on a 5-point scale).

Why Use CSAT?

CSAT is highly effective for gathering immediate, context-specific feedback. Its simplicity makes it easy to deploy at multiple touchpoints, from a completed support ticket to a recent purchase. For example, airlines use CSAT to gauge satisfaction with a specific flight, while e-commerce sites use it to assess the checkout process. This transactional feedback helps organisations pinpoint precise operational strengths and weaknesses.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To maximise the value of your CSAT questions for a customer satisfaction survey, apply these best practices:

• Deploy Immediately: Send the CSAT survey right after the interaction occurs while the experience is still fresh in the customer's mind. This ensures more accurate and detailed feedback.
• Keep It Concise: A high response rate is crucial. Limit the survey to 1-3 questions to respect the customer's time and encourage completion.
• Ask for Context: Follow the rating scale with an open-ended question like, "Could you tell us a bit more about why you chose that score?". This qualitative data provides the 'why' behind the number.
• Segment Your Results: Analyse CSAT scores by department, product, or customer segment. This helps identify which specific areas are excelling and which need improvement, allowing for targeted action.

Tools like GoodKudos can help you seamlessly integrate CSAT surveys into your customer journey, making it simple to collect, analyse, and act on this vital feedback in real-time.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

While satisfaction is important, research popularised by Matthew Dixon and Nicholas Toman of Gartner revealed that loyalty is driven more by reducing customer effort than by delighting them. The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a powerful transactional metric designed to measure exactly that: how easy it was for a customer to interact with your company.

This question for a customer satisfaction survey typically asks customers to rate their agreement with a simple statement on a 5 or 7-point scale (from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree"):

"To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue."

A low-effort experience is a strong predictor of repeat business and loyalty. Customers who have to jump through hoops to get a problem solved or make a purchase are far more likely to churn, regardless of the final outcome.

Why Use CES?

CES is highly effective because it focuses on a key driver of disloyalty: friction. Gartner's research found that CES is one of the top predictors of future purchasing behaviour, particularly after a customer service interaction. Companies like T-Mobile use CES to streamline their support processes, while software companies deploy it after support tickets are closed to identify and remove user roadblocks, directly improving customer retention.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To harness the power of CES, deploy it strategically and act on the insights:

• Deploy Immediately: Ask the CES question right after a specific interaction has been completed, such as a support call, a product return, or an online checkout. This ensures the feedback is fresh and accurate.
• Ask for Context: Follow up the rating with an open-ended question like, "What could we have done to make your experience easier?". This uncovers the specific points of friction that need addressing.
• Focus on High-Effort Feedback: Prioritise customers who report a high-effort experience. Reaching out to understand their struggles and fixing the root cause provides the highest return on investment for improving loyalty.
• Integrate with Other Metrics: Use CES alongside NPS and CSAT to build a complete, 360-degree view of the customer experience. A customer might be satisfied (CSAT) but still have found the process difficult (CES).

For businesses looking to identify and eliminate customer friction, a platform like GoodKudos can help you automate CES surveys at critical touchpoints, enabling you to reduce churn and build a more loyal customer base.

4. Open-Ended Qualitative Questions

While rating scales provide valuable quantitative data, open-ended questions unlock the rich, nuanced "why" behind customer sentiment. These questions for a customer satisfaction survey invite customers to provide detailed, unrestricted feedback in their own words, capturing insights that predefined options might miss. The format is typically a simple text box following a prompt.

Common examples include:

• "What is the one thing we could do to make our service better for you?"
• "Please describe any challenges you encountered during your recent purchase."
• "Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience?"

These questions allow you to hear the genuine voice of the customer, uncovering specific pain points, unexpected praise, and innovative ideas that can directly inform product development, service improvements, and strategic planning.

Why Use Open-Ended Questions?

Open-ended questions are essential for gathering context and discovering the unknown. While a low rating score tells you a customer is unhappy, their written feedback tells you why. For instance, Slack uses the question, "What would make Slack better for you?" to generate feature ideas for its roadmap, while Airbnb analyses detailed stories from hosts and guests to better understand platform dynamics and improve community safety. This qualitative data is a goldmine for actionable insights.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To effectively use open-ended questions without overwhelming your customers or your team, follow these best practices:

• Be Specific and Focused: Avoid vague prompts like "Any feedback?". Instead, ask a targeted question like, "What was the most frustrating part of your onboarding experience?". This focuses the customer's response and yields more useful data.
• Limit the Quantity: To prevent survey fatigue and abandonment, include no more than two or three open-ended questions in a single survey. Place them strategically after a related rating question to gather deeper context.
• Analyse with Technology and a Human Touch: For large volumes of responses, use text analytics or AI tools to automatically categorise feedback into themes (e.g., "pricing," "customer support," "feature request"). However, always manually review a sample (10-15%) to ensure accuracy and capture the nuances that algorithms might miss.

Tools like GoodKudos can help you seamlessly integrate open-ended questions into your surveys, organising the qualitative feedback you receive and making it easier to analyse alongside your quantitative metrics.

5. Likert Scale Questions

Likert scale questions are a foundational tool for measuring attitudes and opinions in a customer satisfaction survey. Developed by psychologist Rensis Likert, this method asks respondents to specify their level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements on a symmetric, ordinal scale. It provides nuanced data that goes beyond a simple yes or no.

Example: "The checkout process was simple and straightforward."

Respondents choose from a range of options, typically on a 5-point or 7-point scale:

• 5-Point Scale: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree.
• 7-Point Scale: Adds "Slightly Disagree" and "Slightly Agree" for more granular feedback.

These scales quantify subjective experiences, allowing you to analyse sentiment on specific aspects of your business, from product features to customer service interactions.

Why Use Likert Scale Questions?

Likert scales are highly effective because they are easy for customers to understand and quick to complete, yet they capture the intensity of their feelings. They are versatile and can be applied to measure nearly any dimension of the customer experience. For instance, an e-commerce store can use them to gauge satisfaction with website navigation, while a consultant can measure a client's agreement with the effectiveness of their recommendations. This makes them an indispensable type of question for any customer satisfaction survey.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To maximise the value of Likert scale questions, consider these best practices:

• Choose the Right Scale: Use a 5-point scale for general feedback where simplicity is key. Opt for a 7-point scale when you need more detailed, nuanced insights, such as in brand health tracking or detailed product usability studies.
• Keep Statements Clear and Singular: Each statement should focus on a single idea. Avoid "double-barrelled" questions like, "The delivery was fast and the packaging was secure," as a customer may agree with one part but not the other.
• Balance Your Wording: Mix positively and negatively phrased statements (e.g., "The user interface is intuitive" and "I found the setup process confusing") to prevent response bias, where users mindlessly select the same answer for every item.
• Follow Up for Context: While the scale provides the "what," you still need the "why." Pair a low-scoring Likert item with an open-ended question like, "Could you tell us more about why you disagreed with that statement?"

For organisations wanting to build sophisticated surveys with various question types, a platform like GoodKudos can help you design, distribute, and analyse feedback from Likert scales and other key metrics, transforming customer opinions into clear, actionable data.

6. Multiple Choice and Select-All-That-Apply Questions

Multiple choice questions provide a structured way to gather quantifiable data, making them an essential component of many questions for customer satisfaction survey. These formats ask respondents to select answers from a predefined list, simplifying analysis and allowing for direct comparisons across customer segments.

The two main types are:

• Single-Select Multiple Choice: Respondents choose one option from a list. This is ideal for questions where answers are mutually exclusive, such as, "What is your primary reason for contacting customer support?"
• Select-All-That-Apply (Multi-Select): Respondents can choose multiple options from a list. This is useful for understanding multifaceted experiences, like, "Which of the following features do you use on a regular basis?"

These questions transform complex qualitative feedback into easily digestible quantitative data, enabling you to spot trends and patterns quickly. For instance, an e-commerce store can use a multi-select question to identify which payment options are most popular, or a SaaS company can use a single-select question to pinpoint the main reason for subscription cancellations.

Why Use These Question Types?

Structured questions like these are effective because they are easy for customers to answer and straightforward for businesses to analyse. They reduce the effort required from the respondent, which can increase completion rates. By standardising the possible answers, you eliminate ambiguity and can generate clean, reliable data for reports and dashboards. They are particularly powerful when used to segment feedback from other open-ended or rating-scale questions.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To maximise the value of your multiple choice questions, consider these best practices:

• Offer Comprehensive Options: Ensure your list of answers is as exhaustive as possible. Conduct preliminary research or analyse open-ended feedback to inform your options. Always include an "Other (please specify)" option to capture responses you may have missed.
• Keep Lists Concise and Clear: For single-select questions, aim for 5-7 options to avoid overwhelming the respondent. For "select-all-that-apply," a limit of 7-10 is best. Ensure each option is distinct and clearly worded to avoid confusion.
• Randomise or Alphabetise Options: To mitigate order bias, where respondents are more likely to pick the first items they see, present the options in a random or alphabetical order. Keep static options like "None of the above" or "Other" at the end of the list.

For organisations aiming to build structured yet insightful surveys, platforms like GoodKudos can help you design effective multiple choice questions, distribute them to your audience, and automatically analyse the results to uncover meaningful customer insights.

7. Demographic and Segmentation Questions

While not direct measures of satisfaction, demographic and segmentation questions are a crucial component of any effective customer satisfaction survey. They provide the context needed to transform raw data into strategic insights. These questions collect identifying information about respondents, allowing you to slice your data and understand how satisfaction varies across different customer groups.

Common segmentation questions include:

• "How long have you been a customer?" (e.g., Less than 6 months, 6-12 months, 1-3 years, 3+ years)
• "Which of our products/services do you use most frequently?"
• "What is your primary role or job title?" (For B2B surveys)
• "How often do you make a purchase from us?" (For e-commerce)

By asking these questions, you can uncover patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. For example, a SaaS company might discover that new users have a much lower satisfaction score than long-term customers, highlighting a need for better onboarding. Similarly, an e-commerce store could find that high-value customers are less satisfied with delivery times than infrequent shoppers.

Why Use Demographic and Segmentation Questions?

These questions are vital because they enable targeted action. Instead of making broad, company-wide changes based on an average satisfaction score, you can identify specific pain points for distinct segments. A telecom company might learn that customers on a particular plan are consistently dissatisfied, allowing them to investigate and improve that specific offering. This level of granularity is essential for allocating resources effectively and driving meaningful improvements in customer experience.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To implement segmentation questions without negatively impacting survey completion rates, follow these best practices:

• Be Strategic and Succinct: Limit yourself to 3-5 essential segmentation questions. Only ask for data you know you will use to analyse the results.
• Place Them at the End: Ask demographic questions at the conclusion of the survey. Respondents are more likely to complete them after they have already invested time in answering the core satisfaction questions.
• Use Pre-populated Data: Where possible, use data from your CRM to pre-fill information like customer tenure or plan type. This respects the customer's time and improves data accuracy.
• Prioritise Privacy: Be mindful of sensitive data. Clearly explain why you are asking for certain information and make non-essential questions optional. Always ensure your practices comply with data privacy regulations like GDPR.

Systematically collecting and analysing this data can be complex, but platforms like GoodKudos can help you build surveys with powerful segmentation logic, making it easier to connect feedback to specific customer profiles and inform your strategy.

8. Behavioral and Intention Questions

Behavioral and intention questions move beyond feelings and opinions to measure what customers have done or plan to do in the future. Instead of asking about satisfaction directly, these questions for a customer satisfaction survey focus on concrete actions, which often serve as powerful proxies for loyalty and product value. They bridge the gap between sentiment and revenue-impacting behaviour.

"Would you purchase from us again in the next six months?"

This type of question probes future intent and provides a direct indicator of retention. Other examples include:

• "Have you recommended our services to a colleague in the past three months?" (Measures past advocacy behaviour)
• "Do you plan to increase your usage of our product over the next quarter?" (Predicts expansion and upsell opportunities)
• "Would you be interested in trying our new [specific feature] when it is released?" (Gauges interest for new feature adoption)

These questions help you quantify loyalty through actions rather than just attitudes, segmenting customers based on their likely future value.

Why Use Behavioral and Intention Questions?

These questions are effective because they are less abstract than satisfaction ratings. A customer's stated intention to renew their subscription or upgrade their plan is a tangible forecast of future revenue. Companies in the SaaS and e-commerce sectors use these questions to identify at-risk customers, spot growth opportunities, and validate product roadmaps. They provide a clear, action-oriented lens through which to view your customer base.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To get the most value from these questions, apply the following best practices:

• Be Specific and Time-Bound: Ask about concrete actions within a realistic timeframe (e.g., "the next 3-6 months") rather than vague, indefinite intentions. This improves the accuracy of the responses.
• Combine with "Why?": Follow up an intention question with an open-ended probe like, "What is the main factor influencing your decision?". This reveals the drivers behind their intended actions.
• Segment by Intent: Use the answers to group customers into categories such as 'high retention risk', 'strong upsell potential', or 'likely to churn'. Tailor your follow-up strategies for each segment accordingly.
• Track Intent vs. Reality: Over time, compare customers' stated intentions with their actual behaviour. This analysis helps you refine your questions and better understand the reliability of the feedback you are collecting.

For businesses aiming to connect customer feedback directly to business outcomes, a platform like GoodKudos can help you deploy these targeted questions and analyse the resulting data to make smarter, more predictive decisions.

9. Comparative and Competitive Positioning Questions

Understanding customer satisfaction in isolation is valuable, but placing it in the context of your competitive landscape provides a strategic edge. Comparative and competitive positioning questions are designed to measure how customers perceive your company, products, or services relative to your direct rivals. These questions go beyond internal metrics to provide crucial market intelligence.

Key questions in this category include:

• "How would you rate our [specific feature, e.g., price, quality, service] compared to [Competitor X]?"
• "Why did you choose our solution over other alternatives you considered?"
• "What, if anything, could cause you to switch to a competitor?"

By asking these types of questions for your customer satisfaction survey, you can pinpoint your unique selling propositions (USPs) and identify areas where you are falling behind. This direct feedback is invaluable for shaping product roadmaps, marketing messages, and overall business strategy.

Why Use Comparative Questions?

This approach is powerful because it reveals your competitive advantages and disadvantages directly from the customer's perspective. For instance, a software company like Salesforce might use these questions to benchmark its feature set against HubSpot or Pipedrive, learning precisely which functionalities are winning or losing deals. Similarly, an airline can use them to understand if customers prioritise its punctuality over a competitor’s lower price. This intelligence helps you defend your market position and proactively address competitive threats.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To gain meaningful competitive insights, follow these best practices:

• Be Specific: Instead of asking about the entire market, name one or two direct competitors your customers are most likely to know. This focuses the feedback and yields more actionable data.
• Compare Specific Attributes: Ask customers to compare you on distinct attributes like price, ease of use, customer support, or product quality. A general "how do we compare?" is too vague to be useful.
• Understand Switching Triggers: Frame questions to discover what would motivate a customer to leave. A question like, "Would you switch to a competitor if they offered a 15% discount?" can reveal price sensitivity and loyalty levels.
• Combine with Loyalty Metrics: Cross-reference competitive feedback with your NPS score. This helps you understand if a poor perception relative to competitors is a key driver for creating Detractors or if a strong competitive position is what defines your Promoters.

Organisations aiming to systematically gather and analyse this competitive intelligence can use platforms like GoodKudos to deploy targeted surveys, segment responses, and translate customer feedback into a stronger market position.

10. Importance and Priority Questions

Understanding what customers want is one thing; knowing what they value most is another. Importance and priority questions are designed to move beyond general satisfaction, helping you identify which features, services, or attributes have the biggest impact on the customer experience and their purchasing decisions.

These questions ask customers to explicitly rate or rank the importance of various factors. Common formats include:

"On a scale of 'Not at all important' to 'Extremely important', how important is [specific feature/attribute] to you?" or "Please rank the following features in order of importance to your business needs."

By gathering this data, you can distinguish between "nice-to-have" features and "must-have" requirements. This allows you to allocate resources, guide product development, and focus marketing efforts on the areas that truly matter to your customers, ensuring your investments deliver the highest possible return.

Why Use Importance and Priority Questions?

These questions are crucial because they provide a clear roadmap for prioritisation. Instead of guessing where to invest time and money, you get direct feedback on what will deliver the most value. Software companies like ProductBoard use feature voting systems to crowdsource importance, while banks might ask customers to rate the importance of attributes like security, mobile app ease of use, and customer support to guide their service improvements. This approach prevents wasting resources on low-impact changes.

Actionable Tips for Implementation

To effectively use these questions for customer satisfaction survey, consider the following best practices:

• Create an Importance-Performance Matrix: Plot importance ratings against your current satisfaction scores for the same features. This instantly reveals your strengths, weaknesses, and key opportunities. High importance, low satisfaction areas are your top priorities.
• Segment Your Data: Analyse importance ratings by customer type (e.g., high-value vs. new customers). What's critical for one segment may be less important to another, allowing for more targeted product and service strategies.
• Test True Priority: To gauge how much a feature is truly valued, follow up an importance question with, "Would you be willing to pay more for an enhanced version of this feature?". This helps separate genuine need from a simple preference.

For businesses aiming to systematically gather and analyse what customers value most, platforms like GoodKudos can help you build targeted surveys that uncover these crucial insights, turning customer priorities into a clear plan for business growth.

10 Customer Satisfaction Question Types Comparison

From Questions to Action: Transforming Feedback into Your Greatest Asset

We have explored a comprehensive toolkit of question types, from the direct simplicity of Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores to the nuanced insights of open-ended and Likert scale questions. This journey through ten distinct categories has equipped you with the knowledge to craft a powerful customer satisfaction survey, one that goes far beyond surface-level metrics. You now understand how to measure not just satisfaction, but effort, loyalty, and competitive positioning.

The true mastery of customer feedback, however, lies not in the asking but in the acting. A well-constructed survey is merely the launchpad. The ultimate goal is to translate raw data into a strategic asset that fuels growth, enhances customer relationships, and builds a resilient brand. Each response is a signpost, guiding you towards a better product, a more refined service, and a more profound understanding of the people you serve.

From Data Points to Strategic Direction

The initial step after collecting responses is analysis, but it's crucial to look beyond isolated numbers. A low Customer Effort Score (CES) for your support portal isn't just a data point; it's a direct signal of friction in the customer journey. A collection of open-ended responses mentioning a specific feature isn't just qualitative feedback; it's a roadmap for your next product update.

To make this transition effective, you must:

• Segment your feedback: Analyse responses based on the demographic and behavioural questions you included. Are new customers struggling more than long-term users? Do clients from a particular industry have unique needs? Segmentation turns a monolithic block of data into actionable cohorts.
• Identify recurring themes: Use text analysis tools or manual review to pinpoint common words, phrases, and sentiments in your open-ended feedback. These themes often highlight your biggest strengths (which you can amplify in your marketing) and your most urgent weaknesses (which you must address internally).
• Share insights across your organisation: The feedback gathered is not solely for the marketing or customer service department. Insights from your survey should inform product development, guide sales conversations, and even shape high-level business strategy. Create a system for disseminating these key takeaways to all relevant teams.

Beyond the Survey: The Power of Social Proof

While a survey can tell you that a customer is satisfied, it often misses the compelling story behind that satisfaction. A "9 out of 10" is encouraging, but it lacks the emotional weight and persuasive power of a real human story. This is the critical gap between private data and public social proof. Your most satisfied customers are your greatest marketing asset, yet their powerful stories often remain locked away in survey results.

This is where you must bridge the divide between feedback collection and testimonial amplification. The positive sentiment you uncover through well-chosen questions for a customer satisfaction survey is the raw material for building trust with new prospects. A potential customer is far more likely to be convinced by a peer's genuine success story than by any claim you make about your own business.

Key Takeaway: Your survey's purpose isn't just to measure sentiment; it's to identify your happiest customers so you can invite them to share their stories. This transforms a simple feedback loop into a powerful engine for generating social proof.

Don't let your best customer voices fade into a spreadsheet. The final, most crucial step is to create a platform for those voices to be heard. By actively seeking out and showcasing testimonials, case studies, and reviews from the advocates you've identified, you create a self-perpetuating cycle of trust and growth. You move from simply measuring satisfaction to actively leveraging it, turning happy customers into your most authentic and effective sales force.

Ready to turn your survey insights into compelling social proof? Good Kudos makes it effortless to collect, manage, and display video and written testimonials from your happiest customers. Instead of letting positive feedback sit in a database, use our platform to build a stunning 'Kudos Wall' that builds trust and drives conversions. Start your free Good Kudos account today and transform customer satisfaction into your most powerful marketing asset.