Customer surveys: consider question wording and
types

Customer survey questions

The questions in your customer survey, particularly the wording of the questions and the question types used, affect the following:

• Response rate
• Willingness to participate
• Ease of subsequent analysis
• Accuracy of responses
• Customer satisfaction

Key tips

Keep the following points in mind when creating questions for a customer survey:

1. When asking how satisfied customers are with an item, also ask how important that item is to them. Something may be satisfactory but unimportant, or merely average but highly important to the customer.
2. Allow customers to leave comments for every complicated question. You will rarely be able to cover every relevant answer option. If customers cannot find a suitable answer and cannot add their own, they will become frustrated.
3. Consider the analysis in advance, but also think about the response rate. Numbers are easier to analyse than words. Images are more engaging for participants than numbers. Take all factors into account.
4. Survey participants tend to agree with statements and can easily be influenced – bear this in mind when wording your questions.
5. Ask only what is necessary. Short questionnaires increase the response rate.
6. Use the objectives of the customer survey to plan in advance what you want to ask and, above all, how to make the information quantifiable and measurable.
7. Take a look at both our survey templates on the website and the question templates in the survey tool itself.

Useful question types

Useful question types for customer surveys, with their advantages and disadvantages:

• Open-ended questions allow respondents to give individual answers but are also difficult to analyse.
• Matrix questions allow you to ask many questions quickly but are not appealing to customers.
• Rating questions using images, numbers or words are easy to create and answer. They can also be varied in many ways.

Learn more about the content of a customer survey