Product survey questions for current users, with a follow-up interview guide

Product survey questions work best when they are tied to a moment in the customer's use of the product: just after setup, right after they use a feature, at a regular check-in, when they cancel, or before you build something new for them. Ask three to five questions about what just happened, keep the survey to about a minute, and invite a few respondents to a follow-up call. The survey tells you how common an answer is. The calls tell you why.

This page covers surveys of people who already use your product. If you are deciding what to build for a market you don't serve yet, see product research survey. If you want to know whether the product has found its market, see the product-market fit survey.

A worked example

Suppose you run an app that small accounting firms use to collect documents from their clients at tax time. About 400 firms use it. Two questions keep coming up: why many firms stop sending client requests after their first month, and whether to build an e-signature add-on that a few firms have asked for. This example is hypothetical and is used throughout the page.

Questions by moment

After setup

• "What were you hoping [product] would help your firm do?" Open text
• "Have you sent your first document request to a client yet?" Yes / No / Not yet, but I plan to
• If no: "What has stopped you so far?" A short list built from support tickets and a few calls, plus "Other (please specify)"
• "Before [product], how did your firm collect documents from clients?" A short list, plus "Other"

Right after using a feature

NN/g's guidelines for feedback requests sum up the timing as "task, then ask": wait until someone has finished a real task, and don't interrupt them in the middle of it.

• "Did the client reminder do what you needed just now?" Yes / Partly / No
• Optional: "What were you trying to do?" Open text, with a character limit

A regular check-in (every quarter or so)

• "In the past week, did you use [product] to request documents from a client?" Yes / No. Ask one yes/no question per task rather than a "select all that apply" list. Pew Research Center found forced-choice questions tend to give more accurate answers and generally avoids select-all lists.
• "What is one thing your firm still does outside [product] during tax season?" Open text
• "How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?" Very disappointed / Somewhat disappointed / Not disappointed. This is the product-market fit question; read the linked guide before you interpret it.

At cancellation or downgrade

• "What is the main reason your firm is canceling?" A list from past cancellations, plus "Other"
• "What will your firm use instead?" Open text
• "May we call you for 15 minutes about this?" Yes / No

Before building something new

When you test a new product or feature with current users, describe it in two or three plain sentences without selling it, then ask questions that connect it to what they already do:

• "The last time a client needed to sign something you sent, how did you handle it?" Open text
• "How well would this fit the way your firm works today?" Very well / Somewhat / Not very well / Not at all
• "Who at your firm would decide whether to add this?" Owner / Partner / Office manager / Other

Leave out "Would you use this?" and "Would you pay for this?" A yes costs the respondent nothing. Validating feature requests and researching willingness to pay cover tests that ask for a real action.

Keep it short and well timed

NN/g recommends that a feedback survey take around one minute, and found that the two to three minutes many companies ask for is too long. It also recommends telling people how many questions there are, putting the optional open-text field at the end and asking in the channel where the interaction happened rather than defaulting to email.

Two wording habits from Pew are worth adopting for product surveys:

• Randomize lists with no natural order. People completing a survey on their own tend to pick options near the top.
• Keep wording identical between rounds. If you want to compare this quarter with last quarter, change nothing in the question or its position.

What the survey can and cannot tell you

NN/g describes surveys as the one common research method that is both quantitative and attitudinal: good for measuring how many people hold a view, poor at explaining behavior. Its example is cart abandonment. Analytics can show that people abandon carts, but "why" is a question for qualitative methods such as usability testing.

In the accounting example, the survey might show that 40% of firms who stopped sending requests chose "clients didn't respond" as the reason. That is a count. Whether clients ignored the email, couldn't find the upload link or preferred to hand over paper is a question for a conversation.

A follow-up interview guide

Pick people who agreed to a call, and choose them on purpose:

• Firms that stopped after the first month, split by the reason they chose
• Firms whose open-text answers you could not interpret
• Firms that asked for e-signature, plus a few that didn't
• Heavy users in a type of firm you did not expect

A 20-minute call can follow this outline:

1. Context (3 minutes). "Tell me about your firm and who handles client documents at tax time."
2. The event (7 minutes). "In the survey you said [answer]. Walk me through the last time that happened. What did you do first? Then what?" Keep asking what happened next until you reach the end of the story.
3. The workaround and its cost (4 minutes). "What did you do instead? How long did that take? Who else was involved?"
4. The concept, if relevant (4 minutes). Describe the idea in the same words as the survey. "Think back to the last time a client had to sign something. Where would this have fit, and where wouldn't it?"
5. Close (2 minutes). "Is there anything I should have asked? Is there someone else at your firm I should talk to?"

Ask permission before recording; recording consent covers how. Write notes in the same format after every call so you can compare them. Analyzing customer interviews explains how to turn a stack of notes into a decision.

Your next step

Pick the one moment that matters most for your current decision, write three to five questions for it, and plan five to eight follow-up calls before you send the survey.

Your survey only reaches your current users. To hear from people outside that group, such as those who built or ran similar products, Instant Expert can find people who match a description you write. You review who it finds, it sends your invitations, and you pay only for calls that get booked. The directory page for product professionals in accounting software shows the kind of people you can reach.