Inactive Users survey about usability issues

It's frustrating when inactive users slip through the cracks due to usability issues—but you can generate a high-quality AI-powered survey right here, in seconds, and start understanding their pain points. Specific puts expert survey tools at your fingertips.

Why surveying inactive users about usability issues matters

If you’re not actively asking your inactive users why they lost momentum, you’re missing out on key opportunities to improve your product and reduce churn. A huge 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience[1], and 67% name unpleasant experiences as the reason they leave[1]. When you aren’t running targeted usability feedback surveys for inactive users, you risk:

• Letting silent, frustrated users disappear—without any insight into what went wrong.

• Making decisions based on guesswork, not real evidence about blockers or friction points.

• Missing patterns in usability problems that only this group experiences.

• Allowing competitive products to sweep up your would-be returning users by simply listening better.

The importance of surveying inactive users about usability issues comes down to this: you don’t improve what you can’t measure. Rich, qualitative feedback from people who tried your product, lost interest, and never told you why is some of the most valuable data you’ll get. If you want to learn more about what questions work best, here’s a helpful guide: best questions for inactive users surveys about usability issues.

Why use AI for inactive user surveys?

Traditional survey creation is a slog—every question, entry, and follow-up must be typed in by hand. With an AI survey generator, you describe what you want to learn, and the AI builds out a quality survey tailored to your audience and the topic, handling best practices behind the scenes.

Here’s why that’s a massive leap:

AI survey generators don’t just save time—they also help you capture richer insights. For instance, surveys built with AI have achieved up to a 25% higher response rate due to personalization—meaning you don’t just get more responses; you get better data[3].

At Specific, we’ve refined this into a best-in-class experience: every survey feels like a friendly chat (not an interrogation), and our AI guides the conversation for both survey creators and respondents. Dive into more on this at AI survey generator.

Designing survey questions that drive real insight

The difference between a surface-level survey and one that sparks meaningful responses? Asking the right questions—and following up the right way. Here’s a quick contrast:

• Bad question: “Why did you stop using our app?” (too broad, likely to prompt vague replies)

• Good question: “Can you walk me through a moment where you struggled to use a specific feature or complete a task?”

With Specific, our AI survey editor helps you frame questions so you draw out actionable details, not one-word answers. You don’t have to worry about writing like a researcher—the AI suggests or generates clear, bias-free questions tailored to your audience and topic. If you want a practical tip: avoid piling up several questions into one (“double-barreled” questions), and always ask for real examples (“Tell me about…” not “Did you ever…”).

We’ve put more detailed guidance in our best-practices article if you want to dig deeper.

Automatic follow-up questions based on previous reply

One huge advantage of AI: instead of just registering a one-line answer, Specific’s conversational surveys ask smart, contextual follow-up questions in real time—as if an expert interviewer is in the loop. This not only saves you a ton of back-and-forth (no more “Can you clarify what you meant…?” emails), but it captures rich context and nuance on the spot.

If you skip follow-ups, your feedback quickly loses clarity, like this:

• Inactive user: “Didn’t like the dashboard.”

• AI follow-up: “Could you share what felt confusing, missing, or frustrating about the dashboard for you?”

• Inactive user: “Too slow.”

• AI follow-up: “Was the slowness something you noticed when logging in, or after performing certain tasks?”

Without automated probing, you’re left guessing at root causes. Specific’s AI-driven follow-ups ensure you get context right away. You can read more about how this works at AI follow-up questions.

These follow-ups turn your survey into a conversation—it’s not just a form, it’s a conversational survey that adapts to what each user shares.

I highly recommend trying this by generating your own survey here. The instant feedback loop is a total game-changer for getting actionable answers from inactive users struggling with usability issues.

Delivering your usability survey: Landing page or in-product

Once your survey is designed, how do you put it in front of inactive users? With Specific, you get two flexible delivery options that fit your goals:

• Sharable landing page surveys: Perfect for reaching out via email campaigns, support tickets, or drip messages to users who haven’t opened your app in a while. You simply send a link—it works on any device, and feels just like a normal chat.

• In-product surveys: If you have a web or app experience and you’d like to prompt inactive users when they next log in or visit a certain page, you can show a conversational widget at just the right moment. Great for capturing feedback from people who return after a hiatus, or as part of a win-back campaign inside your platform.

For inactive users and usability issue surveys, landing page delivery is especially powerful since it meets users where they are (usually outside the app).

Each method ensures your conversational survey is engaging, context-aware, and optimized for rapid completion—no copy-pasting or clunky email threads.

AI-powered analysis: Insights, not overwhelm

Once responses roll in, don’t get buried in raw data or spreadsheets. Specific’s AI survey analysis instantly summarizes every answer, pulls out common patterns, and points you straight to actionable usability fixes. There’s automatic topic tagging and instant chat—you ask the AI questions about your results and get real answers in seconds, with no analysis expertise required.

Want to boost your skills at making sense of all those open-ended responses? Check out how to analyze inactive users usability issues survey responses with AI for a breakdown of all the key moves.

Create your usability issues survey now

Generate your AI-powered survey for inactive users in seconds—just click, and see how easy it is to gather meaningful usability insights and take action fast.