57 Voice of the Customer Survey Questions to Get You High-Impact Insights

Voice of the customer surveys are the first step in turning feedback into action. Using the insights you gather from the survey, your team can identify what influences satisfaction and loyalty, where customer experience can be improved, how customer sentiment evolves, and which product feedback themes recur. 

At the heart of the process are voice of the customer survey questions designed to capture the reasons behind customer ratings and expectations.

This process can be outlined in six simple steps:

1. Prepare your survey
2. Collect data
3. Classify that data into quantitative/qualitative
4. Prioritize customer pain points found in the data
5. Implement learnings from the data
6. Verify the success of your implementation with metrics, including CSAT, NPS, CES (customer satisfaction score, net promoter score, customer effort score)

This article will help you with the first step and explain why all six are important.

What is a voice of the customer survey?

A voice of the customer (VoC) survey is a structured questionnaire that collects direct feedback from customers at different points of contact, including after purchase, in the application, and during support engagements.

Voice of the customer survey questions are designed to gather a combination of quantitative metrics – such as customer satisfaction, NPS (Net Promoter Score), and CES (Customer Effort Score) – and qualitative, open-ended responses that explain the reasons behind those metrics.

A VoC survey helps you understand the customer experience: where pain points arise, what enhances loyalty, and what changes are needed in your service and product. The questions you ask should be aligned with your customer journey mapping efforts, while the voice of the customer format you use should be defined by the channel where, and moment of interaction when, you're asking customers for insights.

To get started, use the questions below to build your own voice of the customer survey template.

Why VoC surveys matter: Turning insights into action

Voice of the customer surveys measure key data points related to your CSAT, NPS, and CES scores.

They reveal customer pain points, your product's impact on experience and loyalty, and which changes to your solution will have the greatest impact.

To get the best results, link your survey questions to stages of the customer journey, and prioritize them based on their impact on churn, repeat purchases, and margin. 

With the data you gather, you can provide different departments with valuable, targeted insights: Your product team will receive specific product feedback, sales and support will receive script edit ideas, and marketing will receive guidance on creating clearer messaging.

To make your questions as effective as possible, maintain a neat survey design, with clear language, and focus on sharing short trigger surveys after relevant customer interactions. For example, after feature releases, check CSAT scores.

57 voice of the customer questions (grouped by goal) 

Below you'll find 57 voice of the customer survey example questions, organized by objective and theme: NPS and loyalty, product and features, support, brand perception, and opportunities for improvement. This format balances quantitative metrics (CSAT, NPS, CES) with qualitative open-ended responses to transform feedback into concrete actions.

When building your voice of the customer survey template, select 6–10 questions, with a mix of scales and open-ended fields. Link survey shares to events (such as a purchase or the use of a new feature). Aim for a completion time of around 2 minutes for your voice of the customer questionnaire.

A brief overview before the examples:

Here are voice of the customer question examples in five sections, with wording, options, and guidance on how to get the data you need.

Loyalty and NPS

For this survey, combine questions with a 0–10 scale for NPS and questions that have short open fields to get quantitative answers and qualitative context. Send out a pulse survey once a quarter to track trends.

1. How likely are you to recommend us to a friend/colleague? (0–10)
2. What was the main reason for your rating? (Open field)
3. Do you plan to make another purchase within 3 months? (Yes/No)
4. What could make you more willing to recommend us? (Open field)
5. What factor influenced your choice the most? (Price, Service, Product, Speed)
6. How easy was it to make a purchase? (Very easy, Easy, Neither easy nor difficult, Difficult, Very difficult )
7. How has your opinion of us changed over the last month? (It's improved, No change, It's worsened)
8. What alternatives did you consider before making your purchase? ([List of your competitors])
9. What convinced you to choose us right now? (Open field)
10. How clearly do we communicate our prices and terms? (Very clearly, clearly, Neither clearly nor unclearly, unclearly, Very unclearly)
11. What one aspect of the purchasing experience should be improved first? ([A list of stages in your purchasing process, e.g., Billing])
12. Would you be willing to participate in a short interview? (Yes/No)

After collecting the results, segment them by channel, region, and customer type to see where customer satisfaction is falling and why. Structure the answers into product updates for your backlog and turn them into hypotheses for product and customer service changes. For a quick start, prepare a mini interview script and add a link to the form, as this will provide guidance for prioritization in the voice of the customer questionnaire.

Product and features

The goal of product and feature feedback surveys is to understand which of your solutions bring value to the customer, so you can identify unnecessary steps in your roadmap and improve your product. Send the form after one to two weeks of active use or after the release of a relevant feature.

Balance open-ended and closed-ended questions, relying on voice of customer survey questions for content and structure, and use the voice of the customer survey template to make it easy to prioritize data.

1. What is your main use for the product? ([List of options based on your main customer use cases])
2. How much did the product help you achieve the result, 1 being not at all and 5 being completely? (1–5)
3. Which features have you found the most useful? ([List of your product features])
4. What did you find unnecessary or confusing? (Open field)
5. How many steps did the scenario take from "logged in" to "done"? (1–10)
6. Where did you spend the most time? ([List of screens or stages])
7. How easy is it to find the feature you need? (Very easy, Easy, Neither easy nor difficult, Difficult, Very difficult)
8. What is missing from your daily work? (Open field)
9. Does our product replace other tools? Which ones? ([List of tools and use cases that your product can solve])
10. What effect has using our product had on your productivity? (Greatly decreased my productivity, Somewhat decreased my productivity, No effect on my productivity, Somewhat increased my productivity, Greatly increased my productivity)
11. Rate the stability of the product over the last week, 1 being not stable at all to 5 being completely stable. (1–5)
12. Which one of these features provides the most value? ([List of your features])
13. Would you like to test beta features? (Yes/No)

Link the answers to journey mapping: which steps cause friction, where the customer effort score drops. Add a summary in the form of "Top 3 pain points / Top 3 quick changes" to help your team make corrections immediately. Save these survey formats as voice of the customer templates so that they can be easily inserted into emails and web pages as questionnaires.

Customer service 

This is a short voice of the customer format to be shared after closing a customer service (CS) conversation. The goal is to record the speed of response, clarity of instructions, and the need for repeat contact. Keep the questionnaire to 5–6 questions so as not to cause survey fatigue, but add one open field to the respondent can provide more details. Include 1–2 voice of the customer survey questions to enable customers to share the reasons for the rating in their own words.

1. How quickly did we respond to your request? (Much slower than I expected, Somewhat slower than I expected, About what I expected, Somewhat faster than I expected, Much faster than I expected)
2. Was the response clear and complete? (Yes/No and Why)
3. Did you have to contact us again with the same issue? (Yes/No)
4. How easy was it to get help? (Very easy, Easy, Neither easy nor difficult, Difficult, Very difficult)
5. Rate the politeness and engagement of the specialist. (1–5)
6. Did you receive instructions or links to resolve the issue on your own? (Yes/No)
7. What could be improved in the support channel? (Response time, Clarity of answers, Friendliness of support staff, Technical knowledge of support staff, Ease of reaching support (availability, wait times, access), Consistency of information provided, Follow-up and resolution process, Range of support channels offered (phone, chat, email, etc.), Nothing, I'm satisfied, Other – please specify)
8. Has your issue been resolved completely? (Yes/No)
9. How well does the solution meet your expectations, 1 being not at all to 5 being completely? (1–5)
10. Would you like to evaluate the agent's performance anonymously? (Yes/No)
11. Which format would be more convenient next time? (Chat, Phone call, Email)

Summarize the results in a dashboard to get an understanding of common customer pain points. Use this information to adjust scripts, improve your knowledge base, and coach your team. Client survey questions like the ones above help you keep the data collection process stable, as you scale your team.

Brand Perception

Run brand perception surveys on a quarterly basis or after major campaigns to check brand recognition, the clarity of your value proposition, and consistency across your different channels. Add 1–2 customer survey questions to ask open-ended questions that allow customers to express themselves and clarify the reasons for their ratings.

1. In three words: how would you describe our brand? (Open field)
2. What do we promise in our communications, and does this match your experience? (Open field)
3. How much do you trust us when it comes to data/payment security? (1–5)
4. What emotions does our product/service evoke? (Open field)
5. How satisfied are you with our products or services? (Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral, Somewhat dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)
6. Where do you most often see our messages? ([List of channels where you're active])
7. Do we have a difference that you value? (Open field)
8. What brands would you consider as alternatives? ([List of your competitors])
9. How consistent are our messages across different channels, 1 being very inconsistent and 10 being completely consistent? (1–5)
10. What topic should we cover more often? (Open field)

Compare the answers with sales results and incoming traffic to see the impact of communication on metrics. This set includes practical survey questions to ask your customers, which can be easily supplemented with a section on "expectations vs. reality" in the service.

Though there is some crossover, brand perception and brand awareness surveys are different: Brand perception survey questions understand what people think and feel about your business; brand awareness surveys understand if they think about your business at all. Use the questions above and our brand perception survey template to gather the data you need.

Improvement opportunities 

When looking for opportunities to improve your offering, the trick is to find the points of greatest friction and turn them into a plan for change. Send out this survey after incomplete actions (such as an abandoned cart, refusal, or return) or after complex processes, such as complex integrations or deliveries. Add 1–2 questions that record the reason for refusal in the customer's own words.

1. Which stage of this process was the most challenging? ([Stages of the process they've gone through])
2. What took the most time and why? ([Stages of the process they've gone through] and an open field)
3. What information was missing on the page/in the application? (Open field)
4. Which step in the checkout process seems unnecessary? ([Stages of the process they've gone through])
5. Where did you expect a different price/delivery/payment option? ([Stages of the process they've gone through])
6. What prevented you from completing the action on the first try? (Open field)
7. What support channel was missing at that moment? ([A list of your support channels])
8. What feature or integration is missing the most? ([A list of your features])
9. What glitch or bug have you encountered recently? (Open field)
10. What small change could we make tomorrow? (Open field)
11. Are you willing to test prototypes and provide feedback? (Yes/No)

After gathering the data, compile a list of "Top 3 quick fixes" or "Top 3 system changes" with an assessment of their impact on CES and conversion. 

Request short interviews with respondents to provide clarity on exactly what challenges they faced and to build clear prioritization criteria. Use subsequent voice of customer interview questions and regular "pulse" checks to see how the changes reduce customer effort and increase customer satisfaction.

Best practices for designing effective VoC surveys

Launch surveys after an event, such as a purchase, feature use, contact with support, or delivery. By being proactive, you can ensure that responses are based on customers' current feelings rather than past impressions. After all, 86% of buyers say they are willing to pay more for a better experience. 

Make the wording unambiguous, without combining several topics in one question. Randomize the answer options, leaving the "Other" item with an open comment field. To maintain focus and control over metrics, prepare survey questions to ask your customers in advance for each trigger.

Consider how respondents will engage with your survey. Will they use mobile? If so, make sure the design allows for spacious fields, minimal scrolling, and seamless layout adaptation to any screen size.

Segment the sample by channel, region, and customer type to compare and contrast results across demographics and better understand who your ideal customers are.

Make sure you explain the purpose of the survey and how you will use the results in advance, as transparency increases response rates. Spend time on writing great survey questions for customers using short, unambiguous wording without jargon.

Assign responsibility for each step of the survey and give stakeholders implementation deadlines and guidance on how to verify the effects after changes have been made.

To standardize the submission and reduce coordination, adapt your voice of the customer interview questions for email, in-app, or chat – the format should be the same, even if the channels are different, so that the data can be easily compiled into a single report.

Final thoughts: Turning feedback into growth

Voice of the customer surveys work when responses can inspire improvements to your product, service, and communications. Combine quantitative metrics with qualitative comments, and map the structure against your customer's journey, so you can record the impact on conversion, retention, and loyalty. A regular cycle of "collect → prioritize → implement → measure" makes customer survey question creation part of your daily practice, rather than a one-off campaign.

Start now: instead of a general questionnaire, collect a set of 6–10 voice of customer survey questions for one goal and launch a short pulse after a key event, making sure you pass on the insights to the owners of each process.

Maintain your own library of voice of the customer survey templates to streamline strategic research, including control questions to track shifts in customer satisfaction and experience.

The main thing is to close the data loop. If each release has a metric and each signal has an owner and a deadline, answers to VoC questions turn into predictable growth, better customer experience, less friction, and higher repeat revenue.

If you need help getting started with a survey tool like Checkbox, contact us, and we'll advise you on how to set everything up.

Voice of the customer survey question FAQs

What are the best VoC survey questions?

The best voice of the customer survey questions combine open-ended with closed-ended questions to gather both quantitative and qualitative data.

How do you structure a voice of the customer questionnaire?

Make sure you focus on one goal for your questionnaire, keeping the question number to between six and ten.. Make it easy for respondents to fill out the survey quickly, but have around 25% open-ended questions to get valuable insights. Trigger these surveys after key events (purchase, support, feature use) and make sure they're adapted to all devices, but potentially mobile-first. Make it clear what the purpose of the survey is and end with a consent request and an opt-in so you can follow-up.

What should you avoid in VoC surveys?

Avoid double-barreled or leading wording, giant forms, vague scales, too many required fields, collecting unneeded personally identifiable information (PII), mixing topics in one item, and running surveys without owners or a plan to act on the results.

How can you use NPS, CES, and CSAT together?

Send out CSAT and CES surveys right after interactions, but run NPS quarterly. Analyze the data separately to understand how NPS is affecting loyalty, how CES is highlighting friction points, and what CSAT reveals about experience. Assess them together to gain an understanding of churn and expansion metrics.

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