Collecting feedback is like asking for directions. If you ask it the wrong way, you’ll get vague or useless answers. If you ask the right way, you’ll know exactly where to go next. Same goes for writing great feedback questions. It's the key to getting good responses that will lead to smart decisions. You need clear, honest answers to improve your product and onboarding experience. 

Whether you’re designing a customer satisfaction survey, a product questionnaire, or an onboarding survey, the right approach can significantly impact response rates and the quality of insights you collect. So let us show you how to write feedback questions for answers that lead to actionable insights.

Why Good Survey Questions Matter

Not all feedback is helpful. If you ask a customer, “Did you like our product?”, they might say, “Yeah, sure.” But what does that mean? Will they use it again? Would they recommend it? Or did they just not want to be rude?

And that is why how you write your survey questions matter. 

Good survey questions help you:

• Understand why respondents feel a certain way
  
  
• Find what’s missing in your product
  
  
• Uncover pain points in the user experience
  
  
• Pinpoint how you can improve the user experience
  
  

And it's not only about how you write your survey questions. The question types also matter. Surveys that use a mix of open-ended questions and multiple-choice questions provide deeper insights. Open-ended questions allow respondents to elaborate, while multiple-choice questions offer structured data that’s easier to analyze. Different types of questions, such as Likert scale or scale questions, help quantify feedback while keeping responses structured.

So if your questions are clear and structured well, you’ll end up with great responses.

On the other hand, badly written feedback questions can do more harm than good. Poorly structured surveys lead to confusing data, biased results, and frustrated respondents. If your feedback process isn’t designed well, you might make product changes based on misleading information. And that’s a big problem. Imagine investing months into a new feature only to realize that users never actually wanted it—you just misunderstood their feedback. That’s why clarity and precision matter so much.

7 Golden Rules of Writing Feedback Questions

So let's go over some best practices when it comes to writing good survey questions. 

1. Keep It Short and Clear

Assume that people are busy and they don't have time. Keep your survey questions simple and to the point. Here is an example:

❌ “How satisfied are you with the onboarding process provided by our software, considering ease of use, clarity, and time efficiency?”

✅ “How easy was our onboarding process?”

Long-winded questions confuse respondents and make them more likely to abandon the survey altogether.

2. Avoid Yes/No Questions

Yes or no answers don’t tell you much. Instead, ask open-ended questions that encourage qualitative detail.

❌ “Did you find our onboarding helpful?” (Too vague)

✅ “What could we do to make onboarding easier for you?” (Invites high quality answer)

In addition, using survey question types such as Likert scale and rating scale questions helps quantify responses while keeping them structured. Such a questionnaire format ensures that responses are actionable and measurable. A simple 'yes' doesn't show much. But a 7 is noticeably stronger than 5. 

3. Stay Neutral

When designing survey questions, neutrality is key to gathering honest and unbiased responses. Leading questions can unintentionally push respondents toward a specific answer, which skews the data. If your question assumes a positive or negative experience, respondents may feel pressured to conform to that assumption rather than provide their true opinion.

For example, asking "How much did you love our product?" assumes that the customer loved it in the first place. This not only introduces bias but also alienates those who may have had a neutral or negative experience. Instead, a neutral question like "How do you feel about our product?" allows for a fuller range of responses.

To ensure neutrality in your surveys:

• Use open-ended or balanced phrasing (e.g., “What was your experience with our product?” instead of “How amazing was our product?”).
• Avoid words with strong emotional connotations that could sway responses.
• Offer response options that include both positive and negative choices, such as rating scales that range from "Very Dissatisfied" to "Very Satisfied."

4. Make It Feel Personal

People are more inclined to participate when they feel valued and believe their feedback matters. Adding a personal touch, such as addressing the respondent by name and using conversational language, can significantly improve response rates.

Compare these two approaches:

• Generic: “Please provide feedback on your experience.”
• Personalized: “Hey [Name], we’d love to hear how we did! What’s one thing we could do better?”

The second approach makes respondents feel like their opinion is genuinely important. It creates a sense of dialogue rather than just another corporate request for feedback.

Here are some ways to make your survey feel more personal:

• Use the respondent’s name if possible.
• Write in a warm, conversational tone rather than sounding robotic or overly formal.
• Show appreciation (e.g., “Thanks for being a customer! We’d love to hear your thoughts.”).
• Highlight how their feedback will be used (e.g., “Your input helps us improve—let us know what you think!”).

5. Avoid Double-Barreled Questions

A double-barreled question asks about two things at the same time, making it unclear what the respondent is actually answering. These types of questions lead to unreliable data because a respondent may feel differently about each aspect but can only select one response. This forces them to either choose an answer that doesn’t fully reflect their opinion or abandon the survey altogether.

For example, “How satisfied are you with our product and customer service?” assumes that a customer feels the same way about both. What if they love the product but had a bad customer service experience? Or vice versa? The answer they provide won’t accurately reflect their experience.

Instead, split the question into two:
✅ "How satisfied are you with our product?"
✅ "How satisfied are you with our customer service?"

This way, you get specific feedback on each aspect, making it easier to pinpoint areas for improvement.

How to Form Different Types of Survey Questions

One thing to mention is that not all questions are the same. Different types of survey question serve diferent purposes. Which is why each question type requires careful consideration to ensure respondents provide meaningful answers. Here’s how to approach different formats:

Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions allow respondents to express their thoughts in their own words, providing rich qualitative data. These are best used when you want deep insights or uncover issues you may not have anticipated.

• How to write them: Keep them concise and direct, encouraging detailed responses without overwhelming the respondent. Try to focus on asking for just one thing.
  
  
• Example: What is one thing you would change about our onboarding experience?
  
  
• Best used for: Understanding pain points, collecting detailed product feedback, and discovering new ideas.
  
  

Closed-Ended Questions

Closed-ended questions provide structured responses, making them easy to analyze. These include multiple-choice questions and Likert scale questions.

Multiple-Choice Questions

Multiple-choice questions help categorize responses and allow for easy data comparison.

• How to write them: Offer a balanced set of choices that cover all possible answers without leading respondents.
  
  
• Example: Which feature of our product do you use the most?
  
  
  
  • A) Dashboard
    
    
  • B) Reports
    
    
  • C) Integrations
    
    
  • D) Other (please specify)
    
    
• Best used for: Identifying trends and common behaviors.
  
  

Likert Scale Questions

Likert scale questions help gauge sentiment and measure attitudes toward a particular aspect of your product or service.

• How to write them: Use a clear scale with defined endpoints, such as strongly agree to strongly disagree.
  
  
• Example: On a scale from 1 to 5, how easy was it to complete the onboarding process?
  
  
• Best used for: Measuring satisfaction, usability, and customer sentiment.
  
  

By combining open-ended and closed-ended questions strategically, you can create well-balanced surveys that provide both qualitative and quantitative insights.

Write Good Survey Questions for Actionable Insights

If you take one thing away from this guide, it should be that crafting the perfect feedback question is an art. Ask it right, and you unlock valuable insights. Ask it wrong, and you get, well, a whole lot of nothing. And of course, you can't get to writing good survey questions right away. It takes time and practice. 

Which is why we suggest using a survey tool that makes it easy to create different question types as well as setting up survey templates for efficient feedback management. That's where Userflow comes in. Our in-app survey platform helps you to quickly build and deploy various different open ended and close ended questions. It also comes with dynamic targeting and personalization capacities to make sure your survey questions are gathering feedback in a smart way. 

So try Userflow for free today and see the difference it makes.

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