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Best questions for canceled subscribers survey about product usability

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Adam Sabla

·

Aug 23, 2025

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Here are some of the best questions for a canceled subscribers survey about product usability, plus tips for crafting them. We’re big fans of making this quick—Specific lets you build a survey in seconds with its AI survey generator.

Best open-ended questions for canceled subscribers about product usability

Open-ended questions help uncover nuanced insights by letting respondents answer in their own words. They’re perfect when you want context, stories, and specifics—not just numbers. Here are the 10 best open-ended questions to ask canceled subscribers about product usability:

  1. Can you describe the biggest challenge you faced when using our product?

  2. What part of the product did you find the most confusing or frustrating?

  3. Was there a specific task you tried to accomplish but couldn’t? What happened?

  4. How did our product’s usability compare to others you’ve tried?

  5. What aspect of the product would you have improved the most before deciding to leave?

  6. Can you share an example of a time when the product did not work as expected?

  7. What would have made the product easier or more enjoyable to use?

  8. Were there any features you never used because they were difficult to find or understand?

  9. How did you attempt to troubleshoot issues, and did you find enough support or resources?

  10. If you could change one thing about the overall user experience, what would it be?

Using open-ended questions like these helps product teams get actionable feedback. Remember, even testing with as few as five users uncovers up to 85% of usability issues—sometimes, all it takes is a simple chat with your canceled users to get the answers you need. [1]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for canceled subscribers about product usability

Single-select multiple-choice questions are great when you want to quantify issues or quickly spot trends. They also work as warm-up prompts—it’s often easier for people to pick from a few options before diving into open feedback. Here are three targeted examples for canceled subscribers, along with their choices:

Question: What was the primary usability issue that led you to cancel your subscription?

  • Navigation was confusing

  • Important features were hard to find

  • Product was too slow

  • Couldn’t accomplish key tasks

  • Other

Question: Which device did you use most often to access our product?

  • Desktop/laptop

  • Tablet

  • Smartphone

  • Other

Question: How satisfied were you with the overall ease of use of our product?

  • Very satisfied

  • Somewhat satisfied

  • Neutral

  • Somewhat dissatisfied

  • Very dissatisfied

When to follow up with "why?" The best time to ask "why?" is right after someone selects an answer—a follow-up gets at the specific reasons behind their choice. For example, if a user selects "Navigation was confusing," a follow-up could be: "Which part of the navigation did you find unclear or difficult to use?" This approach quickly uncovers actionable detail for each response.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include "Other" when you aren’t certain your choices cover all scenarios. It invites honest responses and unexpected insights—by letting people elaborate, you discover usability problems you didn’t anticipate.

Using an NPS question for canceled subscribers on usability

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a trusted metric for understanding brand advocacy, but it’s also insightful for canceled subscribers. Asking an NPS-style question—“How likely are you to recommend our product to others based on your usability experience?”—lets you measure sentiment, benchmark over time, and trigger targeted follow-ups to dig into root causes. If you want a no-fuss way to set this up, try generating a custom NPS survey for canceled subscribers with the NPS survey builder from Specific.

The power of follow-up questions

Automated follow-up questions can transform your canceled subscribers survey. With dynamic, real-time probing—like the feature explained in our automatic AI follow-up questions overview—you gather depth you’ll never get through static forms. Specific’s survey engine uses AI to detect gaps, clarify, and gently nudge for real examples or elaboration. That’s how you get context-rich, actionable responses without endless manual emails. Conversation feels effortless, and insights multiply.

  • Canceled subscriber: “It was hard to find what I needed.”

  • AI follow-up: “Can you tell us which features or sections you struggled to find?”

How many followups to ask? We’ve found that 2–3 targeted follow-ups are usually enough. You want to dig for clarity but avoid fatigue—Specific allows you to automatically skip to the next question after collecting the info you need, so it never feels tedious for the respondent.

This makes it a conversational survey: Each follow-up turns the survey into a two-way chat. That’s why these are called conversational surveys—the respondent feels genuinely heard, and you get much more meaningful data.

Survey analysis with AI: Even with all these open-ended responses, sorting through feedback is easy. AI autofinds themes and lets you analyze survey responses with powerful tools—what used to take hours is now done in minutes, with nothing lost in translation.

Automated follow-up questions are a new standard in survey design—don’t just take our word for it, generate a survey now and see for yourself how much richer your data becomes.

How to compose prompts for AI to create your canceled subscribers usability survey

If you want to use ChatGPT, Specific, or any survey AI to come up with questions, the magic is in the prompt. Start with a direct ask:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for canceled subscribers survey about product usability.

You’ll get even better questions if you add more context—tell the AI about your product, your goals, or particular pain points you’re curious about. For example:

Our SaaS is for small business owners, and we recently saw an uptick in cancellations due to complaints about usability on mobile. Please generate 10 insightful questions for a canceled subscribers survey so we can learn about their product experience and what didn’t work for them.

Once you’ve got a draft list, ask the AI to organize them for clarity:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

With categories in hand, select the most important ones to deepen your understanding. For instance:

Generate 10 questions for the “mobile usability” and “feature discoverability” categories.

What is a conversational survey?

Conversational surveys are different from static lists—they’re dynamic, responsive, and feel much more like a real discussion than a boring old form. With tools like Specific’s AI survey generator, you design and launch a truly interactive survey by describing what you want, and the platform builds the experience for you.

Here’s a quick comparison:

Manual survey creation

AI-generated (Conversational) surveys

Manual question writing & form building

Simply prompt, describe & generate full survey instantly

Limited probing (static forms)

Automatic follow-up questions—just like an expert interviewer

Difficult to analyze open text

Easy AI-driven insights & summaries

Low respondent engagement

Natural chat—higher response rates, richer stories



Why use AI for canceled subscribers surveys? It’s simple—AI survey generation (especially for usability feedback) is many times faster, eliminates form-building headaches, and pulls out pain points that you’ll miss with a manual approach. Plus, AI can ask tailored follow-ups in real time, just as a skilled researcher would.

If you’re curious about how to combine the benefits of conversational surveys with rapid iteration, start with our guide on how to create a canceled subscribers survey about product usability.

Specific offers a best-in-class conversational survey experience, for both survey creators and respondents. The process is frictionless and often reveals the “why” behind what analytics alone cannot show—making every piece of feedback powerful and actionable. If you want to see more AI survey examples or try out the format, Specific is built for this kind of work.

See this product usability survey example now

Try our conversational survey example to hear directly from canceled subscribers, uncover usability pain points, and turn those insights into real product wins. Generate high-quality responses—and see how effortless deep research can be with automated follow-ups and instant AI insights.

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Sources

  1. VWO. Usability Testing Statistics: How Many Participants & Why?

  2. UserGuiding. 33+ UX Statistics & Trends in 2023

  3. Zippia. 16+ User Experience Statistics [2023]: UX Trends & Conversion Rates

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.