Best practices for customer feedback surveys

Customer feedback is one of the most important things you can get that has no intrinsic value in and of its own, but can be turned into a gold mine for your product. It helps you find pain points for your customers and their experiences as well as potential opportunities- think features that might make more of their peers purchase your product or tweaks that may make your service less reliant on customer support.

Today we’re discussing how you can actually improve the response rates on your surveys, which is even more important for startups, where validation and revalidation is an absolute requirement for success.

As the image suggests, it’s mostly about time.

Creating the Perfect Feedback Form

1. Keep It Short and Focused

Research consistently shows that being concise is essential. Customers are more likely to complete a form that requires minimal time investment.

• Limit the Number of Questions: Studies suggest that forms with 5–7 questions tend to see a 30–50% higher completion rate compared to longer surveys. When asking for feedback, every question should serve a clear purpose without becoming a chore.
• Time to Complete: Try to aim for a total completion time of less than two minutes. If a form takes too long, users may abandon it before finishing, and a submitted form with 5 question responses will always be better than 20 responses to questions that you never get to read. Research shows 2 minutes is the threshold where abandonment rates skyrocket.

2. Use Engaging Question Types

The way you ask questions can significantly impact response quality and engagement levels:

• Multiple-Choice and Rating Scales: Questions like “How likely are you to recommend our product?” exposed as a rating type question or multiple type choice questions are easy for respondents to answer quickly. These types of questions have been shown to yield up to 20–30% higher engagement compared to open-ended questions.
• Open-Ended Questions: While these can provide detailed insights, they should be used sparingly. A single open-ended question at the end of the form asking for any additional comments is often sufficient.

3. Optimize the Question Order and Design

A well-thought-out sequence can improve the overall user experience:

Mobile-First Design: With over 60% of internet traffic being done on mobile devices, making sure your design is responsive is essential. Clear fonts, ample spacing, and intuitive touch targets can make a big difference.

Start Simple: Begin with straightforward questions (like ratings or multiple-choice) to warm up respondents.

Logical Flow: Group similar topics together. For example, if you’re asking about product features, keep all related questions in one section.

Our questions picks for high response rates

1. What do you like most about our product/service?
2. What do you like least about our product/service?
3. Was your issue resolved?
4. How likely are you to recommend us (1-5)?
5. How can we improve our service?
6. Any additional comments?

To make sure you can get started in a jiffy, we’ve added these questions to our customer feedback template, which you can use to create your survey in seconds for free.