Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire: How to Create One

The two words are often used interchangeably, and in everyday use that is fine. There is a subtle distinction worth knowing:

• A questionnaire is the instrument — the actual set of questions you have written.
• A survey is the whole process — designing the questionnaire, distributing it, collecting responses and analyzing them.

In other words, the questionnaire lives inside the survey. This guide focuses on building the questionnaire well; the customer satisfaction survey guide covers the end-to-end process.

A well-structured questionnaire moves from broad to specific and ends with room for open feedback. A reliable order is:

1. 1A short introduction: one line on the purpose and how long it will take.
2. 2An overall satisfaction question to anchor the questionnaire.
3. 3Two to four specific questions about the experience you care about (quality, support, delivery).
4. 4An effort or ease question, which is a strong predictor of loyalty.
5. 5A loyalty or recommendation question if repeat business matters.
6. 6One open-ended question inviting anything else.
7. 7Optional consent to follow up, and a thank-you message.

Here is a complete general-purpose questionnaire you can copy and adapt. It uses a consistent 1–5 scale for the rating questions.

Thanks for choosing us — this short survey takes about a minute and helps us improve.

1. 1Overall, how satisfied are you with [company]? (1–5, Very dissatisfied to Very satisfied)
2. 2How well did we meet your expectations? (1–5)
3. 3How satisfied are you with the quality of [product/service]? (1–5)
4. 4How easy was it to get what you needed? (1–5, Very difficult to Very easy)
5. 5How satisfied were you with our support, if you contacted us? (1–5, or Not applicable)
6. 6How likely are you to use us again? (1–5)
7. 7What is the main reason for your overall rating? (open text)
8. 8Is there anything else you would like us to know? (open text)
9. 9May we contact you about your feedback? (Yes / No)

This structure works across most industries. For a version organized as a copy-ready template with short, detailed and situational variants, see the customer satisfaction survey template or start from the CSAT survey template.

The scale is where many questionnaires go wrong. A few principles keep your data clean:

• Be consistent: use the same scale for every rating question in the questionnaire, and keep it the same over time.
• 1–5 is the most common and easiest for respondents; it maps naturally to labels from “Very dissatisfied” to “Very satisfied.”
• 1–7 offers slightly more granularity and is used in academic research, but the extra points rarely change the decisions you make.
• Always label the endpoints so respondents know which end is positive.
• Keep the positive end on the same side across questions — flipping it confuses people and corrupts the data.

• Send at the right moment — shortly after a purchase, delivery or support interaction, while the experience is fresh.
• Match the channel to your audience: email, SMS, in-app prompts, or a link at the end of a chat.
• Keep the invitation short and honest about how long the questionnaire takes.
• Cap frequency so the same customer is not surveyed repeatedly in a short window.
• Make sure it works on mobile, where most people will answer.

Timing and channel affect who responds, which affects your results. The customer feedback survey guide goes deeper on distribution channels.

Once responses arrive, the goal is to turn them into decisions, not just a number:

• Calculate your headline metric — for a 1–5 satisfaction question, the percentage choosing 4 or 5. The CSAT calculator does the math from raw counts.
• Read the open-text answers and group them into themes; AI can speed this up, as covered in analyzing open-text responses.
• Segment by customer type, channel or journey stage to find where satisfaction differs.
• Track the trend over time rather than reacting to single-period swings, especially at low response volumes.
• Close the loop: follow up with dissatisfied customers who consented to contact.