20 Product Survey Questions to Ask Users for Gaining Valuable Insights

20 Product Survey Questions to Ask Users for Gaining Valuable Insights cover

Any savvy SaaS owner or product manager should have a roster of product survey questions to draw from when gathering valuable data.

In this article, we’re going to set you up for success with a whopping 20 ideas to draw from and use in your own SaaS. What better way to gather customer feedback?

Well, let’s get started: we’ve got lots to cover.

TL;DR

  • A product survey is a tool used by companies to gain valuable insights from customers in a structured way.
  • A SaaS owner or product manager stands to gain a lot from launching a product survey. Surveys can help you figure out opportunities for improvement, product-market fit, and demand for new features.
  • Building a product survey is more complex than you might imagine. There are several key steps: start with a clear goal, build your survey, segment your users and send them relevant surveys, gather data, prioritize and deliver new features, and remember to close the feedback loop to keep your loyal customers happy.
  • No two surveys will be the same. But there are some common best practices that’ll help keep you on the right track: using a combination of open and closed questions, keeping it simple and focused, and avoiding double-barred and irrelevant questions.
  • One topic of survey questions to ask is about general research. Here they are:
  • What feature can we build for you?
  • Which features do you want to see more in the future?
  • Which feature you can’t live without?
  • How would you rate the value for money of this product?
  • How does our product compare to others you’ve tried?
  • Who would you use as an alternative to our product if it was no longer available?
  • Why did you choose us?
  • Along with general research, you might want to ask questions to help evaluate how people use your product:
  • What goals are you trying to achieve with this product?
  • Did our product meet your expectations?
  • How can we improve our product to better meet your needs?
  • What is that one thing you wish this product could do that it doesn’t already?
  • What do you find most frustrating about this product?
  • What do you love most about this product?
  • How was your experience using this product feature?
  • How easy is our product to use?
  • This next set of questions will help you understand user sentiments:
  • How was your onboarding experience?
  • How likely are you to recommend us to your friend/colleague?
  • How satisfied are you with this product?
  • How would you feel if you could no longer use our product?
  • How would you describe our product in one word or sentence?
  • Of course, none of this is possible without the right tool for the job. Userpilot is a powerful product adoption platform that makes it simple to build surveys and analyze feedback.

What is a product survey?

A product survey is a tool that lets you gather feedback from customers in a structured way. Product surveys consist of a series of questions that help to understand customer experiences and satisfaction with your product.

How can product surveys benefit product managers?

A SaaS owner or product manager stands to benefit greatly from launching a product survey. Why?

The answers they receive to an intelligent range of product survey questions will help them build a deep, rich understanding of how their customers are interacting with their product.

Surveys can also help you figure out:

  1. Where your opportunities for improvement are
  2. How satisfied users are with your product
  3. How close you are to achieving product-market fit
  4. Which new features should you create

How to conduct a product feedback survey?

Building a product survey is harder than you might imagine: you can’t just dump a load of random product survey questions and expect them to mesh together nicely.

Let’s cover the key steps you’ll need to follow to ensure your product survey is a success and gets a high response rate.

  1. Set a clear goal. Begin with the end in mind: what exactly are you trying to achieve with your product survey? Is it broad research before development, is it identifying how people find a specific feature, or something else?
  2. Create product surveys. Once you’ve identified the goal, you need to actually put your survey together. A no-code builder like Userpilot is a great option.
  3. Segment users and send them relevant product surveys. You can identify distinct customer segments based on a range of characteristics: frequency of usage, demographics, behavior, and more. You’ll have a far better response if you target a user group carefully.
  4. Collect customer feedback and analyze responses. Once your product survey is launched, you need to make sure you’re gathering customer feedback carefully before analyzing the data (both quantitative and qualitative).
  5. Prioritize and execute. Work on tackling the highest priority items your research has generated and implement improvements to your product.
  6. Follow up and close the feedback loop. Make sure you close the feedback loop with your customers – announce what you’ve released to make sure they know you’ve acted on their suggestions.

Best practices for creating the right product survey questions

No two surveys will be the same. But there are some common best practices that’ll help keep you on the right track:

  1. Ask close and open-ended questions. Both questions generate useful data: open-ended questions will be more expansive and tell you ‘why,’ but close-ended questions are better at telling you ‘what.’
  2. Use simple language and avoid jargon. You’ll introduce friction if you overcomplicate things.
  3. Keep questions simple. Avoid double-barrelled questions (multi-part questions are much harder to answer with clarity).
  4. Keep your questions relevant. Your users are busy people: respect their time, remember their attention span might be short and don’t waste their time with vague, generic, or irrelevant questions.

Product research survey questions to ask

So, by this point, you’re probably wondering about the product research survey questions you should be asking. Let’s explore some of the most popular ones and how they’ll help product managers make better product decisions.

#1 – What feature can we build for you?

What’s it for? This question will help you identify missing features (i.e., features your users might be expecting but you’re not providing).

How can it help? It’ll help inform your development efforts. And remember, not every customer request needs to be built. Ensure new features are in sync with your business and product vision.

Screenshot of Userpilot interface
Feature request form in Userpilot.

#2 – Which features do you want to see more in the future?

What’s it for? It’ll help you to build an understanding of which features your customers are and aren’t interested in.

How can it help? Not only does it help inform and generate ideas for your backlog, but it also gives you a sense of which features you might want to retire (if backed up by analytics data).

Screenshot of Userpilot feature survey
Ask customers what they would like to see.

#3 – Which feature you can’t live without?

What’s it for? To help identify your main, ‘showstopper’ feature.

How can it help? You can focus your efforts on maintaining product quality (and improving the thing that makes your product unique).

Screenshot of Userpilot survey
Product survey created in Userpilot. Book a demo now.

#4 – How would you rate the value for money of this product?

What’s it for? Getting a sense of whether your users think your product’s pricing is justified or not.

How can it help? If you’re getting negative responses, you need to improve your value proposition or you will soon start to experience churn as competitors appear.

#5 – How does our product compare to others you’ve tried?

What’s it for? It gives you a straightforward view of how your product compares to your competitors across a range of dimensions.

How can it help? Answers to this question will give you a sense of where you fit in the market against factors like affordability, performance, experience, and more.

#6 – Who would you use as an alternative to our product if it was no longer available?

What’s it for? To identify your main competitor.

How can it help? This question will help you carry out an in-depth analysis of your main competitor and identify if they offer any killer features which you might not.

#7 – Why did you choose us?

What’s it for? To identify your primary product value.

How can it help? Understanding the driver behind your user’s choices will help you prioritize your efforts on maintaining your key value proposition and improving it over time.

Screenshot of Userpilot survey
In-app survey created in Userpilot.

Product evaluation survey questions to ask

As well as more general research, you might want to ask questions to help evaluate how people use your product. You’ll need to gear your product survey questions accordingly. Let’s go!

#8 – What goals are you trying to achieve with this product?

What’s it for? To understand the jobs your users are trying to get done by using your product.

How can it help? It’ll help you focus your efforts on building features that directly help your customers achieve their goals. Remember, you can also use the answers to this question for segmenting users based on distinct goals.

Screenshot of goals survey
Understand goals to make better product decisions.

#9 – Did our product meet your expectations?

What’s it for? To understand potential weak points.

How can it help? This survey question can help you identify early signs of churn. You can address the weak points you’ve identified and prevent unnecessary churn.

#10 – How can we improve our product to better meet your needs?

What’s it for? To figure out opportunities for improvement.

How can it help? It can help by brainstorming ideas from your customer base. You can then effectively populate a product backlog full of features that’ll delight your users and add value.

Screenshot of Userpilot interface
Gather ideas for product improvements.

#11 – What is that one thing you wish this product could do that it doesn’t already?

What’s it for? To conduct a detailed gap analysis between what you offer, and what features your users need.

How can it help? These sorts of product survey questions are perfect for helping you figure out your in-demand features and where you should focus your development efforts on. This will make sure your customers don’t leave you for a competitor!

#12 – What do you find most frustrating about this product?

What’s it for? To identify user pain points and frustrations.

How can it help? A better understanding of issues that annoy your customers will help you conduct a thorough analysis of what needs to change in your product’s functionality.

#13 – What do you love most about this product?

What’s it for? To figure out what your unique value proposition is.

How can it help? This will help you work out where users derive the core value from your product: you should then either focus on maintaining that or preferably, making it even better!

#14 – How was your experience using this product feature?

What’s it for? To understand a customer’s experience of using a particular feature.

How can it help? This is a customer effort score (CES) survey which is helpful for understanding if a user is experiencing any bugs or issues while using a feature.

Screenshot of Userpilot CES survey
CES survey created in Userpilot.

#15 – How easy is our product to use?

What’s it for? To understand general ease of use.

How can it help? Ultimately, you want to make sure your app is simple and easy to use. A usability survey will help you understand whether that’s the case or not: remember to ask ‘why’ to collect actionable insights.

Customer sentiment questions to ask

Product managers should be more in touch with their customers’ sentiments than anyone else. This set of questions will help you build that understanding.

#16 – How was your onboarding experience?

What’s it for? To give you an understanding of the onboarding experience.

How can it help? Asking an open-ended question, along with a close-ended one, can help you understand exactly where the friction points in your onboarding process are. You need to remove these friction points to shorten the time to value.

Screenshot of Userpilot onboarding experience
Onboarding feedback form example.

#17 – How likely are you to recommend us to your friend/colleague?

What’s it for? To understand customer loyalty.

How can it help? A net promoter score (NPS) survey will help you determine how many users are likely to recommend your product. Additionally, you can interview detractors and figure out what is causing them issues.

Screenshot of Userpilot survey
NPS survey in Userpilot.

#18 – How satisfied are you with this product?

What’s it for? A CSAT survey will help you understand customer satisfaction.

How can it help? Pairing a close-ended question with an open-ended one will determine how many users are satisfied and why are they. You’ll also be able to identify ‘at-risk’ users, address their concerns and avoid potential churn.

Screenshot of Userpilot interface
CSAT survey created in Userpilot.

#19 – How would you feel if you could no longer use our product?

What’s it for? To identify whether your product satisfies the market’s demands.

How can it help? This will help you understand the product-market fit, which is vital for your continued success. A PMF survey will impact your business priorities and will ensure you remain relevant even when you scale your SaaS.

Screenshot of Userpilot interface
PMF survey built in Userpilot.

#20 – How would you describe our product in one word or sentence?

What’s it for? To understand customer perception.

How can it help? This will reveal how your customers really feel about using your product: it’ll help you get your brand positioning exactly right (and reap the financial rewards).

How to conduct in-app product surveys with Userpilot?

Of course, none of this is possible without the right tool for the job: Userpilot is an excellent option. Let’s explore how you can use it to create engaging product surveys.

Create in-app surveys from scratch or use survey templates

Userpilot makes it easy to build surveys quickly with a range of pre-built survey templates. You can also create surveys from scratch if you prefer that. There is a huge range of customization options at your disposal to align the surveys with your brand identity.

Screenshot of Userpilot interface
Easily build surveys with pre-built templates.

Trigger in-app surveys to the right user segments

You shouldn’t treat your customers as one homogenous group.

With Userpilot, you can segment users on in-app behavior, their role, feature usage, organization type, and many more attributes. This flexibility is pivotal for triggering relevant surveys and in-app messages.

Userpilot offers powerful segmentation.
Userpilot offers powerful segmentation.

Analyze survey results to identify trends

Data is power. Luckily, with Userpilot you’ve got the ability to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. Looking at both sets of data will allow you to identify trends, and take action where appropriate.

Screenshot of Userpilot interface
Quantitative analysis in Userpilot.
Screenshot of Userpilot interface
Qualitative analysis in Userpilot.

Conclusion

That wraps up the article!

Hopefully, you now have an excellent understanding of the type of product survey questions you might ask your users, when you’d ask them, and how to use the data to make more informed product decisions.

If you want to get started with building product surveys yourself, get a Userpilot Demo and see how you can gather valuable insight today.

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