Best questions for customer survey about churn reasons

Here are some of the best questions for a customer survey about churn reasons, plus tips on how to frame them effectively. You can generate a tailored survey in seconds using Specific’s AI-driven tools.

Best open-ended questions for customer survey about churn reasons

Open-ended questions give customers room to explain their experiences in their own words, helping us surface unexpected insights and emotional context. These are essential when we want to understand the "why" behind churn, especially in complex or nuanced situations. And given that the average annual churn for most companies ranges between 10% and 25% [1], capturing why people leave is critical for actionable improvements.

1. What was the main reason you decided to stop using our service?

2. Can you describe a specific experience that influenced your decision to leave?

3. What did you expect from our product, and where did we fall short?

4. Were there any frustrations or obstacles that ultimately led you to churn?

5. How did your expectations change over time as you used our service?

6. If you considered switching to a competitor, what factors influenced that choice?

7. Is there something we could have done differently to keep you as a customer?

8. How would you compare our offering to alternatives you’ve tried or heard about?

9. Were there any features or aspects you found particularly disappointing?

10. Do you have any suggestions that might persuade you to return in the future?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for customer survey about churn reasons

Single-select multiple-choice questions are great for quantifying churn reasons across larger groups. They simplify the decision for respondents, jumpstarting conversation when open responses might feel daunting. These are a strong foundation for identifying trends that demand deeper follow-up.

Question: What best describes your primary reason for canceling?

• Too expensive

• Lack of useful features

• Poor customer support

• Other

Question: How likely are you to recommend our product to others after your experience?

• Very unlikely

• Somewhat unlikely

• Neutral

• Somewhat likely

• Very likely

Question: When did you decide to leave our service?

• After my first experience

• After a few months

• After a recent change or update

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" Follow-up questions like "Can you tell me more about your decision?" are essential when the initial response feels too generic or broad. For example, if a customer chooses "Too expensive," a follow-up that asks, "Which aspect felt overpriced relative to the value you received?" gives us actionable feedback.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Including "Other" allows us to capture reasons that our team didn’t anticipate. When a respondent chooses "Other," a follow-up question like "Please describe what led to your cancellation" often uncovers issues we may have overlooked, making our understanding more comprehensive.

Should you use an NPS question for churn reason surveys?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a universally recognized benchmark for gauging customer loyalty. Including an NPS question in your churn survey adds crucial context—helping identify not just whether customers would recommend you, but linking their sentiment directly to the reasons behind churn. It’s fast, interpretable, and easy to compare across time periods or segments, especially when paired with open-ended follow-ups. To save time, you can launch a tailored NPS survey for churned customers in minutes with Specific.

The power of follow-up questions

Automated AI follow-up questions elevate every customer churn survey. They help us clarify, probe, and extract hidden context from brief answers, ensuring we don’t walk away with surface-level, ambiguous responses. And since acquiring a new customer can cost up to seven times more than keeping an existing one [2], we can’t afford missed insights.

• Customer: "I left because it didn’t work well."

• AI follow-up: "Can you give a specific example of when the product didn’t work as you expected?"

How many followups to ask? In practice, 2–3 well-crafted follow-ups are usually enough. You want to gather rich insight without fatiguing the respondent, but it’s smart to set survey logic to stop once you’ve captured the necessary context. Specific lets you configure this balance precisely.

This makes it a conversational survey: Each follow-up transforms the survey from a static form into a genuine, adaptive conversation—making participation feel easier and feedback richer.

Analyze responses easily with AI: Thanks to AI survey response analysis and instant chat with your data, it’s easier than ever to make sense of open-ended feedback—even when your survey yields lots of unstructured responses.

Automated follow-ups are still a new concept for many, but the impact is clear: try generating a survey now to experience the difference for yourself.

How to prompt GPT or ChatGPT for better churn reasons survey questions

If you want AI to draft excellent churn survey questions, giving clear prompts is key. Start simple to get a broad list of possibilities:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for customer survey about churn reasons.

If you want richer questions, always include more background. This might be about your product, churn triggers you’ve noticed, or even your primary retention goals:

We sell subscription software to small businesses. Our churn rate jumped after a recent price change. Please suggest 10 open-ended questions for a customer churn survey that will help us understand both pricing and product concerns, along with any external factors influencing churn.

Then, to bring order to a list of questions, prompt AI to categorize them:

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

With categories in hand, pick the ones you want to dig into and refine the prompt further:

Generate 10 questions for the pricing concerns and competitor comparison categories.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey feels like a chat—not a sterile form. This design uses AI to adapt question wording, trigger smart follow-ups, and give respondents a sense of being truly heard. Unlike old-school manual surveys with fixed questions and no context, conversational surveys unlock richer stories, faster. Here’s a quick comparison:

Why use AI for customer surveys? The AI survey example approach is transformational: it enables both speed and quality at scale, amplifying research efficiency for product, CX, and operations teams. With response rates varying dramatically between email (15–25%), web (29%), and in-app methods (20–30%) [3], you want every response to count—and tailored, chat-like surveys deliver more value with less friction.

With Specific, we offer the best-in-class user experience for conversational surveys—both for you (the survey creator) and your customers. Feedback feels like a human exchange, not a data dump. If you’re curious about the basics, check out our guide on how to create a customer churn reasons survey or try our AI survey maker from scratch for any audience or topic.

See this churn reasons survey example now

Explore a live, AI-powered customer churn survey example—see how Specific’s dynamic questions and automated follow-ups reveal deep, actionable insights for your team. Experience the future of conversational research and create your own survey in just a few clicks.