Here are some of the best questions for an inactive users survey about onboarding experience, plus practical tips to make them even more effective. You can build such a survey in seconds with Specific—so you spend less time creating and more time learning.
10 best open-ended questions for inactive users about onboarding experience
Open-ended questions let inactive users speak freely about their onboarding experience, giving you unfiltered feedback and surfacing pain points you might never expect. They’re ideal when your main goal is discovering issues, understanding motivations, or capturing nuance—especially in the critical onboarding phase. This direct approach can yield deeper insights than preset responses, especially when paired with conversational follow-ups.
Can you describe your first impression of our onboarding process?
What made you decide to stop using our product after starting onboarding?
Were there specific steps or information in the onboarding that you found confusing or challenging?
Is there anything you wish had been included in the onboarding experience?
What was the most helpful part of onboarding for you?
What would have encouraged you to complete onboarding and continue using our product?
How did you feel during and after onboarding?
Did you encounter any technical issues or blockers while onboarding?
Are there features or support you wish had been offered upfront?
What advice would you give us to improve onboarding for future users?
By giving open space for inactive users to express themselves, you’ll likely discover recurring friction points—and, crucially, the stories behind those dropoffs.
The best single-select multiple-choice questions for inactive users
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want quantitative feedback or want to lower the “activation energy” needed for inactive users to respond. Sometimes, giving clear choices makes it easier for people to answer—especially when they’re disengaged or short on time. These questions are also great as conversation starters, allowing you to dig deeper with targeted follow-up questions based on their response.
Question: What was the main reason you did not finish onboarding?
Too confusing / unclear steps
Lack of time
Didn’t see enough value
Technical issues
Other
Question: How satisfied were you with the onboarding materials (guides, videos, etc.)?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neutral
Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
Question: Did you feel you received enough support during onboarding?
Yes, fully supported
Somewhat, but more would help
No, not enough support
When to followup with “why?” When you want to uncover the true driver behind a quantitative response—like low satisfaction or unclear support—always ask “why?” after their initial answer. This turns simple choices into actionable insights (e.g., “You selected ‘Technical issues’—can you share more about what happened?”).
When and why to add the “Other” choice? Always add “Other” when you aren’t confident you’ve captured all possible reasons. A good followup (“Please explain what’s missing”) can reveal unexpected causes or ideas that aren’t on your radar.
Should you use NPS in inactive user onboarding surveys?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a quick way to measure how likely users are to recommend your product—and it works surprisingly well for understanding onboarding pain points with inactive users. By pairing the standard “How likely are you to recommend…” question with a tailored followup (“What’s holding you back?”), you surface deep-rooted onboarding issues that impact overall product sentiment.
If you’re curious, you can instantly generate an NPS survey for inactive users with Specific. It’s a proven formula: NPS + followups = next-level onboarding insights.
The power of follow-up questions
Automated follow-up questions are essential for maximizing insight from every inactive user response—especially when most people don’t always elaborate on their own. Specific’s AI-driven followup system identifies gaps, clarifies vague statements, and probes for context in real time, so you never miss key detail you’d normally chase down via endless email threads.
Inactive user: “The onboarding was too confusing.”
AI follow-up: “Can you point out which specific step or area felt confusing to you?”
This approach has a measurable impact—for instance, a study in the Journal of Extension found that follow-up surveys conducted sooner and more personally (within 2 months) boost response rates from 32% to 46%, making your feedback not only richer but also more frequent. [1]
How many followups to ask? Usually, 2–3 are enough—enough to clarify and explore, but not so many that you irritate the respondent. With Specific, you can easily set limits and allow users to skip questions when you’ve learned what you need.
This makes it a conversational survey: Rather than collecting stiff, one-way feedback, your survey becomes a friendly, expert-guided chat—one that users actually enjoy finishing.
AI response analysis is easy now: Even if the responses are mostly open text, you can use AI tools to instantly sort, summarize, and dig into themes—no manual number crunching needed.
These automated followups are a new concept for most teams. Try generating an onboarding survey and experience just how natural and thorough AI-powered followups can be.
Prompts for ChatGPT: get great questions, fast
If you want to brainstorm questions with ChatGPT (or a similar AI), start with a prompt like:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for inactive users survey about onboarding experience.
Always give more context! AI works better when you specify your product, your users, and your goals. Try:
We want to understand why users leave after onboarding in our productivity SaaS. Suggest 10 open-ended questions to uncover specific onboarding confusion or unmet needs.
Review your initial list, then organize your insights:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Next, double down on what matters. For example:
Generate 10 questions for the category “Onboarding Friction Points”.
This method gets you specific questions, faster, and ensures you’re never stuck starting from scratch.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey uses AI to deliver a personal, chat-like experience—unlike traditional survey forms, which feel stiff and transactional. With Specific, you just describe what you want, and the AI survey builder takes care of structuring the questions, dynamic followups, and analysis for you.
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Surveys (Conversational) |
|---|---|
Lots of manual work: design, edit, followup | Instant creation via AI prompts or guided chat |
Scripted, limited to preset answers | Dynamic, adapts to each user’s replies |
Tedious to analyze unstructured responses | Automatic, AI-powered qualitative and quantitative insights |
Easily forgotten or skipped by inactive users | Feels like a natural conversation—increases response rate and engagement |
Why use AI for inactive users surveys? Inactive users are harder to reach and less motivated, so you only get one shot. Conversational surveys draw them in by feeling human, flexible, and low-pressure—plus, you get better data thanks to smart followups and concise design (important, since shorter surveys see much higher response rates [4]). See this how-to guide if you want a quick step-by-step to get started.
Specific is purpose-built for this—offering an unbeatable, friendly user experience and automatic AI analysis, making the feedback process effortless and actionable for even the coldest users.
See this onboarding experience survey example now
It only takes a few moments to see how a conversational survey can reveal the onboarding bottlenecks that lead to user dropoff. Get richer insights and act faster with AI-powered followups and response analysis—make every answer count!