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A customer experience survey asks customers about their interactions with your brand across various touch points—from initial discovery through purchase and beyond.
And they matter a lot. Because you might think you know what customers are facing when browsing your website or using your product, but when you learn about how that all happens in their true context and circumstances, you might learn some surprising stuff.
Consumers don’t hold back when it comes to sharing their brand experiences. Often, the bad reviews travels faster, sometimes coming from the well-meant advice of others: “Just tweet about it; that’ll get their attention.”
While this method may offer consumers a temporary fix to their beef with companies, it would be a lot better if brands were preventing these issues in the first place—a great way to boost customer loyalty. How? By investing more thought and effort into shaping stellar customer experiences, and proactively collecting customer feedback.
Understanding consumer experience goes beyond just product opinions or customer service interactions. It’s about the entire journey your customers take with your brand.
In this guide, we’ll dissect consumer experience research, touchpoint after touchpoint, showing you how to draw insights from the very people who know it best. We’ll walk you through example questions and give you some best practices to incorporate in your customer experience surveys. Here’s a quick summary:
Want to know more? Keep reading.
Customer experience surveys can be a revelation for brands stuck wondering why their marketing isn’t resonating or why satisfied customers just aren’t returning. Because sometimes your product or marketing isn’t actually the issue, and simple customer satisfaction surveys (CSATs) aren’t giving you the insights you need.
Broadening your view and diving into the customer experience might reveal a small hiccup in the purchasing process, a gap in customer support, or a disconnect in the messaging. Understanding these details allows brands to make precise adjustments.
Here’s the thing: creating experiences that perfectly match what your customers expect is really tough.
Making them smile when they buy or when they need help isn’t enough. Your responsibility to delight them is for the whole journey—before they’ve even decided to choose you and after they’ve paid.
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Understanding the consumer experience helps you be intentional in every interaction. It’s the little things, often. But there are big things at play here, too. When you’re not in tune with this experience, things can start to unravel quickly:
All in all, knowing the ins and outs of the customer experience will allow your brand to create tailored experiences that feel personalized, which will not just boost customer satisfaction scores, but also retain customers, and increase sales.
You could try to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and walk through every touchpoint. And while that is recommendable for some things, it isn’t the same as getting to know the true customer experience.
For starters: you know your product, service or website better than customers who haven’t interacted with it before.
So you’ll use it differently. You’ll miss the context that they are operating in. Moreover, you’re not necessarily your own target audience, and different segments can have different experiences.
That’s why customer experience surveys are the way to go. You can use them to get insights into every touchpoint, every stage of the journey:
Note: these types of surveys aren’t customer satisfaction surveys. You’re not just gauging whether or not people are happy, you’re zooming in on what they’re experiencing and what that means for the way they perceive your brand.
Before you dive into these customer experience example questions, remember they’re starting points, not a one-size-fits-all checklist for your customer satisfaction survey template. Your brand is unique, and so are your research needs.
Use these customer feedback questions as inspiration to put together a survey that digs into the specifics of your customer experience.
Tailor your questions to explore the unique aspects of your brand’s interaction with its customers.
Mix, match, and modify these prompts to zero in on what really matters for your business and the insights you’re seeking to uncover.
This question sheds light on critical information that could have sped up the customer’s decision-making process or boosted satisfaction.
By identifying these gaps, you can refine your communication strategy to better inform future customers.
If you understand what competitors offer that you don’t, you can pinpoint specific areas for improvement or innovation.
This customer feedback helps you to understand your competitive landscape better and adjust your value proposition accordingly.
This question reveals specific obstacles or frustrations customers encounter, which will give you direct targets for product improvement or service enhancement to make your customer’s response offerings more user-friendly.
Customer feedback on service interactions can highlight strengths and areas needing improvement.
Positive responses can be modeled, while negative experiences offer a roadmap for training and making improvements to customer support quality.
Customer suggestions provide tangible actions you can take to immediately enhance the customer experience. Quick wins!
This customer feedback is great for making quick adjustments that can significantly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty.
This question helps gather data on hidden aspects of the customer experience that might have been overlooked, allowing you to address and refine these areas to improve overall satisfaction.
Identifying moments of uncertainty helps evaluate how effectively your brand supports and reassures customers throughout their journey, pinpointing opportunities to enhance guidance and trust.
Focusing on specific positive or negative experiences provides clarity on what works well and what doesn’t, guiding strategic decisions to replicate success and mitigate issues.
Direct insights into customer frustrations and proposed solutions will show you a clear path to preventing future dissatisfaction, improving the overall customer experience.
Understanding the reasons behind last-minute purchase hesitations can reveal barriers in the purchase process. These insights can directly help you to improve conversion rates.
Collecting more customer data and feedback on how customers interact with your content and the effectiveness of different communication channels from the customer’s perspective can help optimize these touchpoints for better engagement and information dissemination.
Fishing for direct suggestions for changes allows customers to voice their most desired improvements, guiding your product development priorities.
These types of customer satisfaction survey results and questions help you gauge the likelihood of repeat business and the reasons behind it can help identify what keeps loyal customers coming back or what might drive them away.
Capturing your customers’ initial emotional responses and impressions provides valuable feedback on the effectiveness of your onboarding experience and initial product/service impact.
This question lets you collect feedback on customers’ perceptions of your brand values and image. It gives you an indication of how well your brand messaging aligns with customer expectations and values.
Identifying gaps between customer expectations and the reality of your offering can spotlight areas for improvement and innovation.
Do you know how your customers feel thanks to your business? This question helps you gain insight into the practical and emotional impact of your product/service on customers’ lives and can highlight its value and areas where further enhancements could enrich customer experiences even more.
Encouraging customers to share ideas for holistic improvements can reveal innovative ways to create a more positive experience across all touchpoints.
Linking the motivations behind purchases to satisfaction levels helps assess how well your product/service is meeting customer expectations, informing strategies to maintain or enhance customer satisfaction score.
It’s not just a question of when, it’s also a question of ‘how often’?
Ideally, you do it regularly, across different touchpoints and survey both paying customers and those who are still shopping around.
Because sending a customer experience survey shouldn’t be a reactive measure; it’s a proactive step to understanding your customers better.
Whether you’ve noticed a spike in complaints or just want to stay ahead, it’s important to time your surveys wisely. Regular surveys can help you keep a close eye on customer sentiment, allowing you to address any issues before they escalate.
Ideally, integrating these surveys into your customer journey at key milestones—like after a purchase or interaction with customer service—ensures you’re always in tune with your customers’ needs and expectations.
Ready to get a clearer picture of your consumers? Attest customer experience survey templates are here to make it easier. Dive into our Brand Perception, Customer Profiling, or JTBD (Jobs to Be Done) templates to kick-start your consumer insights journey.
They’re straightforward, easy to use, and packed with the kind of questions that reveal what your consumers really think and need.
Perfect for fine-tuning your marketing, product development, or overall strategy. Check them out and see how you can start understanding your consumers on a whole new level today.
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By conducting customer surveys, you can pinpoint exactly where your service excels or needs improvement. This direct feedback is crucial for training your team and refining your approach, ensuring that every customer call or interaction adds positively to your customer’s experience.
Asking the right customer feedback questions helps you understand the effort your customers put into their interactions with your brand, from navigating your ordering process to getting their issues resolved. This knowledge allows you to streamline processes and improve customer satisfaction.
Measuring how much effort customers need to exert to use your product or service, or resolve issues, is vital. A lower customer effort score (CES) usually correlates with higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and, ultimately, a decrease in customer churn.
Analyzing survey data gives you a comprehensive view of your customers’ opinions and experiences. This insight helps you make informed decisions to address issues, improve customer experiences, and keep your customers satisfied and loyal.
Understanding your target audience is key to designing effective customer surveys. Tailoring questions to fit the specific needs and preferences of your existing customers or a particular loyal customer segment ensures that the feedback you collect is relevant and actionable.
A representative sample ensures that the survey data accurately reflects the broader customer base’s opinions and experiences. This accuracy is crucial for making informed decisions that positively impact a wide range of customers, from new prospects to long-term loyalists.
Senior Customer Research Manager
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