Customer Feedback Survey: Questions, Examples and Template

The two overlap, but they have different goals — and knowing which one you are running keeps the questions focused.

• A satisfaction survey measures how happy customers are, usually with a rating you can trend over time (for example CSAT).
• A feedback survey is broader: it gathers opinions, suggestions, complaints and ideas, often with more open-ended questions.
• Satisfaction surveys answer “how are we doing?”; feedback surveys answer “what should we change?”

In practice, most good feedback surveys include a satisfaction rating too — the score anchors the qualitative feedback. The difference is one of emphasis, not a hard line.

A balanced feedback survey draws from a few categories. Pick a handful, not all of them:

• Overall experience: a single satisfaction or rating question to anchor the survey.
• Specific touchpoints: product quality, support, delivery or onboarding — whatever you want to improve.
• Effort: how easy it was to get what they needed.
• Loyalty: likelihood to return or recommend.
• Open feedback: what to improve, what they liked, and anything else.

Here is a complete general-purpose customer feedback survey you can copy and adapt to your business:

We'd love your honest feedback — this takes about a minute and helps us improve.

1. 1Overall, how satisfied are you with your experience? (1–5)
2. 2How well did we meet your expectations? (1–5)
3. 3How easy was it to get what you needed? (1–5, Very difficult to Very easy)
4. 4What did you like most about your experience? (open text)
5. 5What is the one thing we could improve? (open text)
6. 6How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? (0–10)
7. 7Is there anything else you would like to share? (open text)

You can adapt this into a ready-made survey from the CSAT survey template, or create your survey with AI and edit each question.

• After a key moment — a purchase, delivery, onboarding step or support interaction — while it is fresh.
• At regular intervals for relationship feedback, such as quarterly for ongoing subscriptions.
• Before renewal or at risk moments, to catch problems while you can still act.
• Not too often — cap how frequently a single customer is asked so surveys do not become noise.

Timing shapes who responds and what they say. A feedback survey sent days after the experience will get vaguer answers than one sent the same day.

Meet customers where they already are. Common channels include:

• Email — flexible and familiar, good for post-purchase and relationship surveys.
• In-app or on-site prompts — high relevance when tied to a specific action.
• SMS — high open rates for short, time-sensitive surveys.
• End-of-chat or post-call prompts — ideal for support feedback.
• A shareable link you can add to receipts, signatures or follow-up messages.

• Track your rating questions over time to see whether things are improving.
• Group the open-text answers into themes — AI can do this quickly, as covered in analyzing open-text responses.
• Segment by customer type, channel or journey stage to see where feedback differs.
• Prioritize changes by how often an issue appears and how much it affects satisfaction.
• Close the loop: tell customers what you changed based on their feedback.

For a metric-by-metric view of what to track, see customer satisfaction metrics.