The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a pivotal metric in the realm of customer experience, designed to gauge how much effort a customer has to put in to interact with your business. When customers find it easy to get their needs met, they are far more likely to remain loyal to your brand. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive deep into everything you need to know about CES, from its benefits and calculation to strategies for improving your score and increasing customer loyalty.
Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy it is for customers to interact with a brand or resolve issues. The metric’s core philosophy is simple: the lower the effort, the greater the loyalty. Introduced by the Corporate Executive Board (now part of Gartner) in 2010, CES rose to prominence when the Harvard Business Review published “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers,” underscoring that reducing customer effort is often more effective for loyalty than delighting customers.
CES surveys typically ask a single question:
"To what extent do you agree with the following statement: The product (or company) made it easy for me to address my needs?"
Responses are often collected on a 1–7 Likert scale:
The CES is calculated by averaging responses, where a higher score represents an easier, more satisfying experience. Here’s the formula:
Customer Effort Score = (Total Score of Responses) ÷ (Number of Respondents)
While there is no industry-wide standard for what constitutes a "good" CES, a general guideline is to look for a score above 5 on the 7-point scale. Regular benchmarking can help determine whether your CES is improving over time. If your score remains stagnant or negative, it’s essential to identify areas for improvement.
While both CES and Net Promoter Score (NPS) are crucial for customer experience, each serves distinct purposes.
Both metrics complement each other; CES focuses on ease, while NPS assesses overall loyalty. Together, they provide a holistic view of customer satisfaction and engagement.
CES 2.0 updated the original CES question format and scale to resolve certain limitations, making it more intuitive and applicable across different languages and cultures. CES 2.0 uses a 1–7 scale and refined language to better capture the customer’s experience of effort. This adjustment has helped organizations more accurately measure ease of interaction and take meaningful action to reduce friction.
The Customer Effort Score is a valuable tool for businesses seeking to foster loyalty through a seamless customer experience. By measuring and minimizing the effort required in customer interactions, companies can improve customer retention, reduce churn, and encourage positive word-of-mouth referrals. Adopting CES as a part of your customer satisfaction strategy is a powerful step toward providing a smooth, frictionless customer journey.
Product-Market Fit (PMF) is essential for any business striving to grow sustainably and resonate with its target audience. One of the most recognized tools to gauge PMF is the PMF survey, commonly referred to as the "Sean Ellis Test" or the "40% Test." This survey provides insights into how dependent users are on your product, offering data-driven direction on product development and strategy.
A PMF survey is designed to help businesses understand whether their product is indispensable to users. It’s simple yet powerful: if over 40% of respondents say they would be “very disappointed” if they could no longer use your product, it’s a strong signal of Product-Market Fit.
The core question of a PMF survey is:
“How would you feel if you could no longer use [this product]?”
The responses are typically:
By asking this question and aiming for the 40% “very disappointed” threshold, businesses can measure how much users value their product. This approach was developed by Sean Ellis, who discovered that companies reaching this benchmark often achieve higher traction and growth.
The PMF survey can validate desirability—a key component of Product-Market Fit. However, it’s not a definitive measure. High scores indicate that users appreciate the product, but they don’t confirm whether the product will succeed long-term. That’s why it’s important to follow up with open-ended questions to gather more context about the user experience and what could make the product even more valuable.
Besides the main question, consider adding open-ended follow-ups to gain deeper insights. Sample questions could include:
These questions help reveal not just user opinions but actual user behavior—critical for building a product that truly resonates with the market.
While reaching the 40% “very disappointed” benchmark is a key goal, understanding why users feel that way offers a deeper layer of insight. By asking open-ended follow-up questions, you can capture specific pain points, desires, and unmet needs that drive this sentiment. For example, some users might rely on your product due to unique features, while others may value the customer service or the way it integrates into their workflows. Knowing why allows you to make informed product tweaks and prioritize improvements that will have the most impact on customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Understanding why also helps prevent the risk of “false positives” that can arise when users express high attachment without clearly understanding what sets your product apart. This knowledge is vital for companies looking to refine their value proposition and adapt to evolving user expectations.
Segmenting responses by user behavior is equally important. Not all users interact with your product in the same way or with the same frequency, so treating all responses equally can lead to skewed insights. By segmenting respondents—such as by usage frequency, engagement level, or even customer type—you gain clarity on which groups are most dependent on your product. This segmentation allows you to:
By understanding user behavior and targeting follow-up questions to different segments, you can adapt your PMF survey to capture a holistic view of user satisfaction. This method of detailed segmentation provides not just a snapshot of product desirability but also a roadmap for targeted, impactful improvements.
Timing is key for PMF surveys. Ideal times to send one include:
According to Buffer, about 40-50 responses can be sufficient if they come from diverse users who actively engage with your product. Focus on gathering responses from people who:
This ensures feedback reflects genuine, recent usage and minimizes the risk of skewed results.
Once you’ve reached Product-Market Fit, continue monitoring it as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Similar to the Net Promoter Score (NPS), the PMF survey can track user sentiment over time. Conduct surveys across different stages in the customer journey (e.g., onboarding, active usage, exit) to understand how sentiment changes.
As your product grows, maintaining focus on user-centric metrics like PMF helps prioritize feature development and avoid assumptions based solely on marketing feedback. PMF surveys can provide early signals about whether new features resonate, allowing teams to iterate before a full-scale launch.
After conducting the PMF survey, record the insights and determine actionable steps. Tools like a “Learning Sheet” can help document insights, making it easier to align on improvements and track progress.
In conclusion, the PMF survey is a powerful tool for businesses looking to find and maintain Product-Market Fit. While reaching a 40% “very disappointed” score indicates strong user dependency, it's essential to continuously validate and improve the product based on user insights, particularly through understanding why users value the product and by segmenting respondents for more targeted improvements.
User research is as much an art as it is a science. What people say can be heavily biased by many factors—many of which have been scientifically proven in the fields of research, cognitive psychology and behavioral science. Bias in surveys and user interviews can distort results and confuse teams— leading to misinformed critical product decisions. Below are seven practical tips to help you reduce bias and improve the quality of your user research and survey questions.
Even experienced researchers can easily to fall into asking leading questions that push respondents toward a particular answer. For example, instead of asking, "How helpful did you find this feature?" you could ask, "How would you describe your experience with this feature?"
Neutral wording helps reduce any preconceived notions or expectations. Any words that contain or imply subjective opinions can be heavily leading. Social desirability bias and acquiescence bias leads users to want to favorable or agreeable to the interviewer, rather than providing their true thoughts or behaviors.
Priming bias occurs when the order of your questions influences how respondents think or feel about later questions. Randomizing the order of questions for each participant can help mitigate this bias. For example, if you’re asking about both positive and negative experiences, leading with the positive can prime respondents to answer more positively in subsequent questions.
This can also happen in multiple choice questions—where the first answer primes and anchors subsequent choices. So if you show 'very satisfied' as the first answer to a customer satisfaction question—users will be led to choose more positive answers. By shuffling questions or answers, you can prevent any single question from affecting responses to subsequent ones.
Asking users to predict their future behavior or preferences often leads to inaccurate answers. People are generally optimistic about the future and will answer favorably if you ask them 'Will you use this?' Think about all the new year resolutions that never get acted on! Instead, focus on gathering facts about their past behavior. F
or instance, instead of asking, "Would you use this feature in the future?" ask, "When was the last time you used a feature like this?" People tend to give more reliable responses when talking about actions they’ve already taken versus hypothetical scenarios.
What people say do not necessarily correlate with what they do. This is called the 'say-do gap' in user research. When possible, design your research to include tasks or actions that involve making an explicit personal choice, showing evidence or performing an action—rather than just asking for opinions.
Exercises like asking people to sort or rank features/attributes (ie card sorting) or having them draw a graph that shows their emotional highs and lows across an experience—can be much more telling and aid in getting deeper answers. You can get pretty creative with this as well. I've heard of researchers asking participants to tear out images from magazines that represent their feelings about a brand to asking them to share their shopping cart history to discuss how they compared similar products.
Double-barreled questions ask about two things at once, which can confuse respondents and produce unreliable answers. For instance, “How satisfied are you with the interface and the customer service?” is asking about two distinct aspects of the product, which should be separated. Always ensure each question is focused on a single topic to avoid muddled responses.
Users’ experiences often vary based on their demographics, usage patterns, or familiarity with a product. By segmenting users based on their behavior (e.g., first-time vs. repeat users), you can tailor questions to capture insights that are more relevant to each group. This approach helps reduce generalizations and ensures that you gather more granular, actionable feedback.
Combining both qualitative and quantitative research methods can help reduce bias and cross-validate findings. For example, surveys provide numerical data that can reveal trends, while interviews or usability testing offer deeper context behind those numbers. By using a mix of methods, you can identify patterns, confirm hypotheses, and avoid relying too heavily on any single source of information.
The art of user research is in how the product manager, researcher or customer caring professional can best apply these techniques for their particular research goals and objectives. Even so, it's often that you will never have a completely clear picture of what users are saying or behaving to predict the types of product and business enhancements that will best satisfy their needs. Hopefully —armed with these types of bias reducing insights—you can improve the odds of your insights to be closer to what people actually want.
When you’re creating a customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey, it’s crucial to ask the right questions to get meaningful insights. Below, I’ve outlined 50 customer satisfaction survey questions across different categories, from general satisfaction to product-specific questions. These examples will not only help you measure satisfaction but also guide improvements in your product or service.
These questions provide a broad understanding of how satisfied customers are with your product, service, or overall experience. They are essential for gaining a high-level view of customer sentiment.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty by asking how likely they are to recommend your product or service. It helps you identify promoters (loyal customers), passives, and detractors who may require attention.
These questions measure how easy it is for customers to interact with your product or service. The lower the customer effort, the more likely they are to continue using your service.
These questions are essential for understanding the immediate satisfaction of customers after they have made a purchase. They help you identify issues with the buying process and determine how well your product meets expectations.
These questions dive deeper into specific product features or aspects of your service, helping you understand what resonates with customers and what needs improvement.
Customer support is a crucial touchpoint for customer satisfaction. These questions allow you to measure how effective and efficient your support team is in resolving issues.
These questions assess how intuitive and user-friendly your product or service is. They help you identify areas where customers may face challenges in navigation or ease of use.
These questions focus on how customers perceive the value they receive from your product or service. They are critical for understanding if customers feel they are getting what they paid for.
These questions help you assess whether your product or service is meeting or exceeding customer expectations. By understanding where expectations fall short, you can make improvements to align with customer needs.
Loyalty questions measure how likely customers are to continue using your product or service in the long run. These questions help you assess retention and understand the reasons behind continued usage or churn.
By organizing your customer satisfaction survey using these well-structured question types, you can collect a mix of quantitative and qualitative data that drives actionable insights. Use the right types of questions for different aspects of customer experience, and always be ready to refine your survey based on the feedback you receive.
As a market and user researcher, I often emphasize how vital the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is for businesses looking to measure and improve customer loyalty. NPS is more than just a number; it’s a reflection of how likely your customers are to recommend your brand to others. By understanding what a good NPS is and how to benchmark it, you can take proactive steps toward growth.
The NPS is a simple yet effective customer satisfaction metric developed in 2003 by Fred Reichheld. The beauty of NPS lies in its simplicity: customers are asked, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?” Their responses categorize them as:
To calculate your NPS, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. The score ranges from -100 to +100, with higher scores indicating better customer loyalty.
Defining a “good” NPS score can be tricky, as it varies widely across industries and regions. Here's a broad interpretation:
In terms of industry benchmarks, SaaS, Retail, and Technology sectors often lead with higher NPS scores, ranging from 60 to 80. On the other hand, industries like Telecom, Healthcare, and Financial Services tend to have more modest scores (10-40), making a score of +30 quite competitive in these fields.
When benchmarking your NPS score, it’s essential to account for factors that could skew your comparison:
Improving your NPS isn’t just about boosting numbers; it’s about enhancing the customer experience. Here’s how you can start:
While NPS remains a cornerstone of customer satisfaction metrics, the future lies in predictive analytics. As companies leverage machine learning, they can anticipate customer behavior based on NPS data, allowing for proactive adjustments to the customer experience before problems arise.
The Net Promoter Score is a valuable tool for any business aiming to measure customer loyalty and improve customer satisfaction. By benchmarking your NPS against industry averages, focusing on the qualitative feedback behind the numbers, and continually improving the customer experience, you can turn NPS into a true growth driver.
As an experienced market researcher, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful the Net Promoter Score (NPS) can be when used correctly. It’s more than just asking how likely someone is to recommend your product. The way you frame your NPS questions, and when you ask them, can unlock a world of insights into customer loyalty and help you grow your business.
Let’s dive into how to craft effective NPS questions and why this simple score can have such a big impact on your business.
The fundamental NPS question is:
While this question gives you a great starting point to gauge customer loyalty, the real insights come when you ask the right follow-up questions to dig deeper. NPS is not just about the score; it’s about understanding the reasons behind it.
To get actionable feedback, follow the core NPS question with something like:
This question allows customers to explain their reasoning and provide specific examples of what they like or what needs improvement. For me, as a researcher, it’s the open-ended feedback that helps pinpoint exactly where the friction or satisfaction comes from.
If you want to go further, ask:
This prompts customers to offer suggestions for improvement, which is invaluable for making data-driven decisions that actually address customer pain points.
One of the things I love about NPS is its flexibility. Depending on the stage of the customer journey, you can tailor the core question to gather more relevant insights. Here are a few examples:
For Product Feedback:
This version helps you evaluate ongoing product satisfaction and gather insights from regular users.
For Customer Service Feedback:
This helps evaluate how well your support team is performing and whether those interactions boost or diminish customer loyalty.
For B2B Businesses:
In B2B, it’s critical to know whether your clients are willing to refer you within their industry network.
As a researcher, I can’t stress enough how valuable NPS can be when you go beyond just collecting scores. Here’s why it’s so crucial:
After working with countless businesses, I’ve seen what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to gathering effective NPS feedback. Here are a few best practices I recommend:
NPS is more than just a score—it’s a strategic tool that can unlock powerful insights into your customers’ experiences. By asking the right questions and following up with meaningful action, you can improve customer loyalty, drive business growth, and stay ahead of the competition.
Remember, the goal isn’t just to get a high score; it’s to understand what drives those scores and use that knowledge to continuously improve your product or service. When you approach NPS with curiosity and a genuine desire to improve, you’ll be amazed at the results.
Understanding your customers is crucial for any business striving for success. Customer feedback surveys are the most effective way to gauge customer satisfaction, identify areas for improvement, and ultimately enhance the overall customer experience.
In this blog post, we'll delve into the art of crafting the perfect customer feedback survey, exploring the types of questions to ask, the best practices for survey creation, and how to utilize the feedback you gather.
A customer feedback survey is a structured questionnaire designed to collect insights, opinions, and experiences from customers regarding a specific product, service, or the overall brand.
The feedback gathered from these surveys is invaluable for understanding customer perceptions, preferences, and satisfaction levels, which in turn helps businesses make informed decisions and improve their offerings.
Customer feedback surveys offer several benefits, including:
Before creating your survey, clearly define what you aim to achieve. Whether it's improving a product, enhancing customer service, or understanding customer preferences, having clear objectives will guide the survey design.
Long surveys can lead to respondent fatigue. Aim for brevity while ensuring you gather all necessary information. Ideally, the survey should take no more than a few minutes to complete.
Incorporate a variety of question types, including multiple-choice, Likert scale, open-ended, and rating scale questions. This provides a comprehensive understanding of customer feedback.
Avoid jargon and technical terms. Use simple and clear language to ensure respondents understand the questions without confusion.
Personalize the survey experience by using features like skip logic and question branching. This tailors the survey to the respondent's previous answers, making it more relevant and engaging.
Add your brand logo, colors, and styling to the survey to make it visually appealing and consistent with your brand identity.
Identify the right touchpoints to send surveys, such as post-transaction, after customer support interactions, or following a website visit. Timing is crucial to capture accurate and relevant feedback.
Assure respondents that their feedback will be anonymous and confidential. This encourages honesty and increases response rates.
Offering incentives like gift cards, credits, raffles and giveaways can increase completion rates and improve customer feedback survey answers.
Test your survey on a small group before sending it out to all your customers. This helps identify any issues with question clarity, survey length, or technical problems.
1. Offer IncentivesIncentive such as gift cards, raffle giveaways and credits can increase completion rates and higher quality customer feedback.
Allow respondents to skip questions they don’t know the answer to or are not comfortable answering.
Avoid biased questions. Instead of asking, “How was our amazing customer success team today?” ask, “Did our team resolve your problem?”
Shorter surveys generally have higher completion rates. Aim for brevity and focus on your core objectives.
Use conversational language and avoid jargon. Make your survey easy to understand.
Open ended questions allow for customers to provide feedback in their own words and offer clues to deeper needs and issues.
Ensure every survey you send has a clear goal. Know who the questions are for, what you are asking, and how you will use the information.
Customer feedback surveys are an essential tool for understanding and improving the customer experience. By asking the right questions, following best practices, and acting on the feedback you receive, you can make informed decisions that enhance your products, services, and overall customer satisfaction. Start crafting your customer feedback surveys today and unlock valuable insights that drive continuous improvement and success.
Exceptional customer experience (CX) is a critical differentiator that can make or break a brand in your competitive landscape. Understanding your customers' emotions and identifying touchpoints along their journey is crucial for fostering loyalty and satisfaction. This is where Customer Experience Tools come into play, providing businesses with the insights and capabilities needed to optimize every aspect of the customer journey. Let's explore the best tools available in 2024 to help your business thrive.
Customer Experience Tools are software solutions designed to help businesses monitor, analyze, and improve their interactions with customers across various touchpoints. These tools leverage data and analytics to uncover valuable insights, enabling proactive steps to address issues and enhance the overall customer experience.
When selecting the right Customer Experience Tools for your business, consider the following factors:
To simplify your search and understanding of customer experience tools, just understand these four categories that most tools fall into.
These tools are essential for understanding how users interact with your website. By analyzing user behavior, businesses can identify key areas for improvement and enhance the on-site experience. Tools like Google Analytics and Mixpanel provide insights into user paths, conversion rates, and engagement metrics, allowing for data-driven optimizations.
Product Experience (PX) tools help businesses gain a deeper understanding of how customers use their products. These tools collect data on user behavior within the product, providing valuable feedback that can inform development and improve user satisfaction. Solutions like Hotjar and Productboard enable teams to visualize user interactions, gather feedback, and prioritize feature development based on actual user needs.
Effective onboarding is crucial for new user activation and retention. Onboarding tools guide users through the initial stages of using a product, ensuring they quickly realize its value. Tools such as Userpilot and Appcues offer personalized onboarding experiences, interactive walkthroughs, and behavior tracking to help users get the most out of a product from the start.
Exceptional customer service is a cornerstone of a great customer experience. Support tools facilitate efficient issue resolution and proactive customer engagement. Platforms like Intercom and Zendesk centralize customer interactions across various channels, enabling businesses to provide consistent and timely support. These tools often include features such as live chat, ticketing systems, and knowledge bases to empower customers and support teams alike.
Analyzing user behavior on your website is the first step towards optimizing the customer experience. These tools help you understand user behavior and improve on-site experiences.
Example use-case: During a website overhaul for an e-commerce client, Google Analytics can identify a high drop-off rate on the checkout page. By optimizing this step, you can increase conversion rates upwards to 15%.
Example use-case: Using Mixpanel, you can pinpoint where users drop off in a mobile app onboarding process, allowing you to redesign and significantly improve user retention.
Example use-case: Integrating Google Optimize with Hotjar, you can see not only which changes worked but why they worked, thanks to qualitative data from session recordings.
Example use-case: Using Outfunnel to track web behavior, you can tailor email campaigns that directly addressed user interests, resulting in up to 25% increase in email engagement.
Product experience (PX) data helps product teams understand how users feel about your product and make informed decisions about optimizing the user and customer experience.
Example use-case: You can use Hotjar to monitor where users scroll, click and move their mouse to improve user experience. Combining individual user behavior monitoring with analytics and feedback can help you find ways to retain and convert users effectively.
Example use-case: By centralizing feedback with Productboard, you can prioritize features that directly addressed customer pain points, leading to higher user satisfaction.
Example use-case: Using Maze for concept testing can help you validate new product features with real user feedback before full development, saving time and resources.
Onboarding is the customer’s first step into a real product experience. The way you handle it affects your customer relationships and retention rates.
Example use-case: Implementing Userpilot for onboarding, you can reduce the time to first value and activation for new users—which can directly lead to higher retention and revenue.
Example use-case: Using Appcues, you can increase feature adoption by upwards of 30% by targeting users who had not yet engaged with new functionalities.
Example use-case: Deploying Whatfix for a complex enterprise software, you might be able to see upward to 50% reduction in support tickets related to onboarding.
Example use-case: Walnut lets you create detailed product demos, reducing the sales cycle by upwards of 20% as prospects could better understand the product's value.
Example use-case: Using Scribe, you can creat comprehensive onboarding guides that significantly reduced the time spent on customer support.
Even frictionless products require great customer service. Your customers should be able to get assistance whenever they need it—whether through a self-service solution, live support, or both.
Example use-case: Deepgram contact center lets you reduce work for human customer service agents and extract valuable customer insights from call transcriptions easily
Example use-case: Intercom lets you provide customer support across different time zones, keeping response times low and customer satisfaction high.
Example use-case: Implementing Document360 can help you reduce the number of support tickets by upwards of 30%, as customers found answers in the knowledge base.
Example use-case: Using Freshdesk, you can automate ticket assignment, reducing response times and improving customer satisfaction.
Example use-case: Implementing Zendesk can let you create a seamless customer experience across email, chat, and social media, increasing overall satisfaction.
Example use-case: Using HubSpot’s Service Hub, you can improve your ticket resolution time by upwards of 35%, leading to happier customers and a more efficient support team.
Today, SaaS (Software as a Service) can be leveraged to maximize business value for organizations of all sizes. These tools are available as mobile apps, web, and desktop applications. The cloud has revolutionized software deployment, making it faster, more cost-effective, and easier to manage. Vendors offer solutions hosted on their servers, ensuring quicker access and efficient issue resolution.
Some vendors charge a one-time fee, while others offer subscription-based models. It's crucial to choose software capable of integrating with other systems to facilitate information exchange and collaboration.
Follow these three steps to select the best CX software for your needs:
To transform your CX and achieve greater customer loyalty, you must use the right tools. Meeting CX objectives requires proactivity and alignment with business goals. Poor tool choices can lead to failed investments and higher operational costs.
You probably agree by now that delivering an exceptional customer experience is more critical than ever. The tools you choose to manage and enhance your customer interactions play a pivotal role in achieving this goal. By leveraging a comprehensive suite of Customer Experience Tools, businesses can gain invaluable insights, optimize processes, and foster deeper connections with their customers.
Web Tracking and Analytics Tools enable businesses to understand and refine user behavior on their websites, ensuring that potential customers have a smooth and engaging online experience from their very first visit.
Product Experience Insights Tools offer a detailed view of how customers interact with your product, providing the data needed to make informed decisions that enhance user satisfaction and retention.
Customer Onboarding Tools ensure that new users quickly find value in your product, reducing churn and building a solid foundation for long-term customer relationships through personalized and efficient onboarding experiences.
Customer Service and Support Tools are essential for maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. By providing timely and effective support, businesses can resolve issues promptly and keep their customers happy.
Choosing the right combination of these tools requires a clear understanding of your business goals, customer needs, and the specific challenges you face. It’s also crucial to ensure these tools integrate seamlessly with your existing systems to provide a unified view of the customer journey.
As a UX researcher, designer, product manager, or marketing lead—you already know conducting a successful user survey will get you the insights you need to improve your UX, conversions, customer satisfaction and product growth.
There’s just one catch: surveys, like any other form of UX research, can significantly strain resources and require proper planning and setup. You have to make sure you are asking the right questions, target the right users at the right time and be able to gather and analyze the data effectively and efficiently.
There must be an easier way. (Of course, we all know what that solution is—it’s why you clicked on this guide.)
Choosing the right UX survey tool can more than half the time and effort needed to ask, analyze, and action insights from your UX and user survey.
Here, we’ll cover everything you need to know to find and pick the best UX survey tool for your research.
TL;DR: you need a UX survey tool because manually orchestrating and analyzing your UX surveys is a huge drain on resources. Not to mention, properly collecting and dealing with vast amounts of data yourself can easily lead to mistakes or cognitive biases that impact the effectiveness of your research.
UX survey tools can make your job easier. By helping you cut down the time and effort spent on setting up, conducting surveys, and processing data, UX survey tools enable you to reallocate resources to more important aspects of your UX design process, and focus back on implementing the insights you gather.
The main thing is looking for an innovative tool that saves you time doing mundane work.
Not all UX survey tools are created equal. Each tool has unique features tailored to different stages of the UX survey process. This guide will help you navigate through the top 10 UX survey tools, categorized by their specific functionalities, to find the one that best suits your needs. Keep scrolling to discover the best tools that will revolutionize your UX research.
Breaking it down, UX survey tools consolidate and streamline your UX research process, leaving less room for error and more room for insights. They typically offer solutions for setting up questions, collecting data, and analyzing feedback for insight extraction. S
There are 3 major types of user survey tools—Survey builders, All-in-one solutions and Embedded/on-site survey tools
Survey builders focus on helping you setup the right sets of questions with controls for multiple choices, open ended questions, likert-scales, advanced routing logic and more.
All-in-one solutions provide a comprehensive suite of tools to manage the entire UX survey process from creation to analysis, including features like AI-assisted questions, automated reporting, and participant recruitment.
Embedded/on-site survey tools are designed to gather user feedback directly within your website or app, providing real-time insights without disrupting the user experience.
Typeform stands out with its sleek and intuitive interface. It allows for easy survey building with various question types and conditional formatting. While it excels in survey creation, it lacks advanced analysis features.
Key Features:
• Stylish, user-friendly interface
• Ready-to-go templates
• Conditional question branching
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at £21/user per month.
Google Forms is a free and straightforward tool ideal for quick surveys. It offers simple form creation, automatic feedback summaries, and easy distribution. However, it lacks advanced analysis capabilities, requiring manual data handling or integration with other tools.
Key Features:
• Simple form creation
• Automatic summaries
• Easy distribution
Pricing: Free as part of Google Workspace.
Jotform is a versatile tool that allows you to create surveys, forms, and collect payments directly through your forms. It supports conditional logic, integration with various business apps, and automated workflows.
Key Features:
• Conditional logic for forms
• Payment collection
• Integration with marketing services, project management tools, and CRMs
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $34/month.
Maze is a comprehensive continuous product discovery platform that supports multiple UX research methods, including surveys, usability, and prototype testing. It offers a wide range of question formats, AI-powered follow-up questions, and automated metrics and reporting. Maze also provides templates to speed up your workflow and integrates with tools like Slack, Figma, and InVision.
Key Features:
• AI-assisted question formulation
• Automated follow-up questions
• Detailed reporting and metrics
• Participant recruitment via Maze Panel
• Extensive integrations
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $99/month.
Qualtrics is a robust tool offering end-to-end solutions for UX surveys. It includes features for trend identification, feedback analysis, and survey building. Despite its complexity and steeper learning curve, it provides comprehensive insights.
Key Features:
• Trend and theme analysis
• Detailed feedback analytics
• Extensive survey building options
Pricing: Custom pricing available; free trial offered.
UXtweak is an all-in-one user research tool that provides a whole suite of features, including a customizable survey builder. It’s easy to set up and provides detailed analytics with intuitive UI, making it a great choice even for beginners.
Key Features:
• User-friendly interface
• Comprehensive analytics
• Extensive testing features
Pricing: Free plan available; pro plans start at $70/month.
Formerly known as SurveyGizmo, Alchemer supports multiple languages and offers robust analytics. It’s not the easiest tool to use, particularly for beginners, but it provides extensive customization options.
Key Features:
• Multi-language support
• Detailed analytics
• Customization options
Pricing: Starts at $49/month for basic plan; pro plans start at $149/month.
QuestionPro is a versatile survey tool designed to help you make better business decisions. It offers a suite of survey solutions including a research suite, customer experience platform, workforce platform, and academic platform.
Key Features:
• Extensive survey customization
• Multi-channel distribution
• Advanced reporting and analytics
Pricing: Free plan available; advanced plan starts at $99/month.
Hotjar is an all-in-one analytics and feedback tool that helps you understand your users through heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. It allows you to embed surveys directly on your website or app to gather in-the-moment feedback.
Key Features:
• Heatmaps and session recordings
• In-the-moment contextual user feedback micro-surveys
• User-friendly survey creation
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $39/month.
Sprig offers in-product surveys and targeted feedback tools designed to capture user insights directly within your website or app. It excels in gathering micro-surveys and real-time feedback without disrupting the user experience.
Key Features:
• In-product micro-surveys
• Real-time feedback
• User-friendly interface
Pricing: Free trial available; paid plans start at $75/month.
Choosing the right UX survey tool can make a world of difference in your research process. Here’s how to find the perfect match:
1. Identify Your Priorities: Are you looking for robust analysis, easy survey creation, or seamless integration? For example, Maze offers a comprehensive suite that supports multiple research methods, making it ideal for teams needing versatility.
2. Ease of Use: Ensure the tool has an intuitive interface. Tools like Typeform are known for their user-friendly design, which can streamline the survey-building process.
3. Integration Options: Check if the tool integrates well with your existing systems. Hotjar, for instance, integrates analytics and feedback collection seamlessly, providing a holistic view of user interactions.
4. Support Options: Look for tools with robust customer support and resources. Qualtrics offers extensive resources and support to help you navigate its complex features.
5. Scalability: Choose a tool that can grow with your research needs, offering additional methods and features. UXtweak’s extensive testing features make it a scalable option for expanding research requirements.
By selecting the right UX survey tool, you can streamline your research process, gather valuable insights, and improve your product’s user experience. Happy surveying!
Google Forms and Typeform are excellent for beginners due to their simplicity and ease of use.
Qualtrics and Alchemer are known for their robust analytics capabilities, providing deep insights into survey data.
Yes, tools like Google Forms, Jotform, and Maze offer free plans with essential features.
Absolutely. Tools like Maze and Hotjar offer extensive integrations with other platforms like Slack, Figma, and InVision. Additionally, you can use tools like Zapier to connect form data to integrate into your existing workflows and processes.
Sprig is excellent for in-product surveys, providing real-time feedback without disrupting the user experience.
A customer feedback management tool is a digital platform designed to help businesses collect, organize, prioritize and analyze feedback from customers. These tools are essential for gaining insights into opinions, sentiments, and suggestions, allowing organizations to enhance product development, improve customer service, and build customer loyalty.
Feedback management tools come equipped with various features, including feedback forms/surveys, feature roadmap voting and multi-channel feedback aggregation and management. They cater to multiple needs, from market and product research, customer experience optimization to feature prioritization. Whether you're a startup gathering user opinions on a new product or a large enterprise tracking customer satisfaction across different regions, feedback management tools provide the critical insights needed for informed decision-making and improved products and services
Best for AI-driven feedback for product insights
Price: From $99/creator/month
Website: https://www.zeda.io
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary: Zeda.io leverages AI to provide deep product insights by centralizing feedback from multiple channels. Its advanced analytics and customizable roadmaps make it a robust choice for product teams looking to prioritize improvements effectively.
Best for tracking customer feedback and feature requests
Price: From $79/month
Website: https://www.canny.io
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary: Canny excels in capturing and tracking feature requests, making it ideal for businesses that value customer input in their product development process. Its voting system and public roadmaps enhance transparency and customer engagement.
Best for omni-channel customer support teams
Price: Available upon request
Website: https://www.useresponse.com
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary:UseResponse offers a comprehensive solution for omni-channel customer support, integrating various communication channels into a single platform. Its AI-powered chatbots and real-time collaboration features enhance efficiency in managing customer interactions.
Best for creating customizable, detailed surveys
Price: From $25/user/month (billed annually)
Website: https://www.surveymonkey.com
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary:SurveyMonkey is a versatile survey tool known for its extensive customization options and robust data analysis capabilities. It's well-suited for businesses seeking detailed, targeted insights from their customer surveys.
Best for measuring customer satisfaction scores
Price: From $39/month for up to 100 responses
Website: https://www.nicereply.com
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary:Nicereply specializes in measuring customer satisfaction through customizable surveys and real-time feedback collection. Its focus on key metrics like NPS and CSAT makes it an excellent choice for businesses aiming to understand and improve customer satisfaction.
Best for comprehensive product feedback management
Price: From $500/month (min 5 seats)
Website: https://www.uservoice.com
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary:UserVoice is a powerful tool for managing product feedback, offering features like smart vote capturing and comprehensive reporting. It's best suited for larger businesses that need detailed insights and robust feedback management capabilities.
Best for gathering website-specific customer feedback
Price: From $19/month for unlimited users and feedback
Website: https://www.feedbackify.com
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary:Feedbackify focuses on collecting website-specific feedback through customizable forms and widgets. It's an affordable solution for businesses looking to gather actionable insights directly from their website users.
Best for Salesforce users seeking integrated feedback
Price: Available upon request
Website: https://www.getfeedback.com
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary:GetFeedback offers seamless integration with Salesforce, making it an ideal tool for businesses that rely on this CRM platform. Its real-time feedback collection and analysis capabilities help businesses act quickly on customer insights.
Best for creating engaging, interactive forms
Price: Free plan available, paid plans start at $29/month
Website: https://www.typeform.com
Key Features:
Best for collecting and leveraging customer reviews
Price: From $225/user/month
Website: https://www.trustpilot.com
Key Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Summary:Trustpilot Business excels in collecting and displaying customer reviews, making it a powerful tool for building trust and improving services. Its integration with various eCommerce platforms and advanced fraud detection features make it a robust choice for businesses focused on leveraging customer reviews.
Choosing the right feedback management tool depends on your business needs, usability preferences, and budget. From cost-effective solutions like Typeform to advanced platforms like Zeda.io and UserVoice, there is a wide array of options available to suit different use cases.
Effective feedback management tools help you systematically collect and analyze customer feedback, enabling you to make informed product decisions, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately build better software.