Product Management

Customer Onboarding Survey: Examples of 25 Questions To Include

Lindy Drope
Updated:
November 26, 2024

Onboarding new customers can sometimes feel like you’re flying blind, especially if you’re trying to create a customer onboarding survey that actually works. 

But hey, you’re not alone!

We've got your back with a wealth of customer onboarding survey tips to give you the most valuable data, along with AI tricks to make these questions even more effective.

We’ll cover: 

  • What is a customer onboarding survey? 
  • Why use AI tools for customer onboarding surveys?
  • 25 essential questions to include in your customer onboarding survey
  • Analyzing and acting on survey results with AI
  • Best practices for creating customer onboarding surveys

Let’s dive right in.

What is a customer onboarding survey?

You've just launched your shiny new product, and users are flocking to it like seagulls to a dropped ice cream cone. But how do you know if they're actually enjoying the experience or getting ready to uninstall your app?

A customer onboarding survey is a set of questions you ask your new users shortly after they start using your product. It's your chance to get to know them better. 

Let’s go a little further: 

  • Fishing for feedback, not compliments. The purpose of these surveys isn't just to stroke your ego. The idea is to gather valuable insights to improve your onboarding process and overall user experience. 
  • A way into your users’ hearts. Collecting feedback during onboarding can help you get valuable data into user behavior and preferences. It gives you a peek into your users' minds, helping you identify pain points, celebrate wins, and make informed decisions about your product. Plus, it shows users that you care about their opinions.

Why use AI tools for onboarding survey questions?

Creating customer onboarding survey questions can feel more like a game of intuition than know-how. But that’s no bueno if you actually want to get results.

Here's why you should jump on the AI bandwagon for your onboarding surveys:

  • AI as a starting-off point. An AI tool can act like an assistant to save you from the dreaded "writer's block" when it comes to crafting those oh-so-important onboarding questions. Blank pages don’t look so scary now, do they?
  • High levels of personalization. Gone are the days of one-and-done surveys that make your customers feel about as special as a number in a spreadsheet. These tools can analyze data and tailor questions to each individual. This makes customers feel special and valued.
  • Data crunching that'll make your head spin. Your data team probably pulled more than their share of all-nighters, drowning in spreadsheets and trying to make sense of survey responses. Now, they can catch up on their beauty sleep, as AI tools can work 24/7 to collect, sort, and analyze your survey results. 

25 customer onboarding survey questions that actually work 

1. What prompted you to choose our product/service?

Understanding what drives your customers is akin to having a unique insight. It reveals their motivations, needs, and the problems they hope your product solves. This knowledge helps you tailor your marketing and improve your product.

2. Have you tried any other similar products before you tried ours?

Discovering your customer's journey through similar products helps you understand your competition and how you fit into the bigger picture. Knowing their preferences gives you an edge in highlighting what makes your product unique.

3. Which of our product features is most important to you?

By learning which features customers value most, you can emphasize those in your marketing and even consider expanding or enhancing them for greater appeal.

4. What's the biggest issue that you want our product to solve for you?

By pinpointing the problems customers hope to solve, you make sure your product hits the mark. You can align your development efforts with their needs, creating a product that becomes as indispensable as breathing. (Well, not that indispensable)

5. How was your experience with the onboarding process?

The onboarding experience is a customer's first impression. Understanding their experience helps you refine this super-important phase, making it smoother and more welcoming.

6. Were there any challenges you faced during onboarding?

Identifying onboarding challenges is like finding roadblocks on a journey. By removing these obstacles, you create a smoother path for new users, which increases their chances of success with your product.

7. How satisfied are you with the support you received?

Customer support is the backbone of a great experience. Evaluating how effective it is helps you improve response times, knowledge, and overall satisfaction, leading to loyal customers.

8. What features do you find most valuable so far?

Knowing which features resonate most with your customers guides your product roadmap. It helps you give priority to improvements so that your product evolves to meet their needs.

9. Are there any features you found difficult to use?

Usability is heavily linked to customer satisfaction. Uncovering hard-to-use features allows you to simplify and refine, creating a product that users enjoy using. (Instead of one that gives them gray hairs)

10. How likely are you to recommend our product/service to others?

This question measures the holy grail of customer satisfaction: Advocacy. High scores indicate your customers are your best salespeople, spreading the word about your product.

11. Do you have any suggestions for improving our onboarding process?

Direct customer feedback is a goldmine. These suggestions give you a hugely useful roadmap for improving your onboarding process and enhancing the overall customer experience.

12. On a scale of 1-10, how useful is the product to you?

We don’t have to tell you how important it is to understand the perceived value of your product. It reveals how well your product meets customer expectations and helps you justify your pricing.

13. Based on your experience with our product so far, how likely would you be to recommend it to friends or family?

Again, putting your finger on the customer advocacy pulse reveals how likely customers are to become brand ambassadors. This means they’re ready to spread positive word-of-mouth and attract new users.

14. On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our product so far?

Initial satisfaction sets the tone for the customer's journey. High scores indicate you're on the right track, while low scores highlight areas where you could do better. 

15. How would you rate our signup process?

The signup process is the gateway to your product. Evaluating how easy and efficient it is to use and efficiency helps you lower the barrier of entry for new signups. 

16. How could we improve our signup process?

Direct feedback on the signup process allows you to optimize it, making it more inviting and user-friendly, leading to higher conversion rates. You know, sales

17. Were your initial expectations met when getting started with the product?

Understanding if you meet initial expectations helps you bridge the gap between marketing promises and product delivery. This actually measures whether your product gave a good first impression or not. 

18. Do you find our product easy to use?

Usability is the cornerstone of customer satisfaction. If your product is easy to use, customers are more likely to stick around and become loyal advocates.

19. Rate the usefulness of these features to you

This question reveals the features that truly matter to your customers. This insight helps you prioritize future development efforts, so you’re building stuff they actually want.

20. What feature did you expect in the product but did not find?

Identifying missing features reveals gaps in your product offering. Addressing these gaps can lead to increased customer satisfaction — and an expanded market reach. 

21. What do you dislike the most about our product?

Honest feedback on dislikes helps you pinpoint areas for improvement. Addressing these concerns can turn haters into your biggest fans. 

22. What do you like about our product?

Knowing what customers love about your product helps you highlight your strengths in marketing and sales efforts. It reinforces your value proposition and attracts like-minded users.

23. Have you reached out to our customer service team? If so, how was your experience?

Evaluating customer service interactions helps you measure the quality of your support. It reveals chances for improvement, which spells happier customers and more brand loyalty. 

24. What first impression did our product leave on you?

First impressions are lasting. Understanding the initial impact of your product allows you to create an even more compelling and memorable user experience.

25. Does our product integrate well with other similar products you use?

Knowing how your product fits into the customer's existing way of doing things helps you identify integration opportunities. In turn, this can lead to more users adopting your product and feeling more satisfied. 

Analyzing and acting on survey results with AI

OK, so you've collected a mountain of survey data, and now you're staring at it like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. 

Let's dive into how AI can turn that jumbled mess into actionable insights:

  • AI: The Sherlock Holmes of survey sleuthing: Picture this — you're sifting through thousands of responses, trying to spot patterns like a desperate Where's Waldo enthusiast. Enter AI, your trusty magnifying glass. It can identify trends and correlations that would make even the most caffeinated analyst's head spin.
  • From "meh" to "aha!" in 60 seconds or less: Remember those late nights spent crafting PowerPoint slides, hoping to impress the boss with your keen insights? Well, AI is about to become your new best friend (sorry, coffee). It can generate recommendations faster than you can say "synergy." 
  • Time to put on your action pants: Now that AI has done the heavy lifting, it's time for you to shine. Armed with AI-driven analysis, you can implement changes that'll make your customers happier than a kid in a candy store.

Best practices for creating customer onboarding surveys

Now, here are some ways you can turn your surveys from snooze-fests into engagement bonanzas.

Let’s take a look: 

  • Set goals like you’re in an “Ocean’s Eleven” movie: First things first, you need to know what you're after. Are you trying to uncover user pain points? Measure satisfaction? Or maybe you're just nosy and want to know what your customers had for breakfast.

    Whatever it is, set clear objectives and goals for your survey. This will help you craft questions that actually matter instead of asking about their favorite color (unless that's somehow relevant to your product).
  • Use AI to choose your topics: Use AI to identify key survey topics and let technology do the heavy lifting. It can analyze user behavior, previous survey responses, and industry trends to suggest topics that will make your survey more insightful. 
  • Make your survey user-friendly and approachable: Remember, your users are doing you a favor by filling out your survey. The least you can do is make it user-friendly and accessible. Think of it as designing a theme park ride — it should be enjoyable, not nauseating. Use clear language, avoid jargon, and for the love of all that is holy, don't make it longer than a CVS receipt. 
  • Efficient question branching is what’s up: You can let AI personalize the survey experience by tailoring questions based on previous responses. This not only makes the survey more engaging but also provides deeper insights into the experiences of individual customers. 

How Lindy AI can optimize your customer onboarding surveys

Need a high-level AI tool to take the pain of customer onboarding surveys right off your hands? 

Lindy can help. It’s not just the Swiss Army knife of AI tools; you can create multiple Lindy versions (“Lindies”) that can tackle different tasks and collaborate sight unseen. 

Let’s see how Lindy can help you with the AI survey generator

  • Automated survey creation: Lindy streamlines survey design, creating tailored questions based on your specific goals and customer data – in seconds. This helps you ask the right questions every time. 
  • Hyper-relevant question suggestions: Lindy uses AI to recommend relevant questions, so you capture the most valuable insights.
  • Real-time analysis and reporting: Lindy instantly looks at survey responses, generating comprehensive reports with actionable insights and trends.
  • All the integrations you need: Lindy integrates with your existing tools and platforms out of the box, including CRM, email marketing, and project management software, centralizing customer data. Once you hook them up with Lindy, your data collection will be smooth sailing. 
  • Societies of Lindies: You can create multiple Lindies for any task and watch them pool their collective brains to work as a team. 
  • Working in the background: Lindy operates discreetly in the background, continuously learning and adapting to your needs, ensuring you always have the most up-to-date insights and recommendations.

Try Lindy for free.

Summing up

You can’t say we didn’t give you a huge hand, right? 

We went from customer onboarding survey tips right into a list of 25 questions that will keep your customers engaged as they happily type away praise for your product or service. 

Remember: Surveys don't have to be as dry as that week-old cheese you left uncovered in the fridge. Sprinkle in some personality, keep it short and sweet, and watch the responses roll right in.

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