Best questions for saas customer survey about customer satisfaction (csat)

Here are some of the best questions for a SaaS customer survey about customer satisfaction (CSAT), plus practical tips for creating them. If you want to build your own survey fast, you can easily generate one with Specific—just describe your goal and receive expert-level questions in seconds.

Best open-ended questions for customer satisfaction surveys

Open-ended questions dig deeper for qualitative insights you can’t get from one-click answers. They reveal customer motivations, highlight unmet needs, and expose friction points—crucial for SaaS where user experience is everything. These are particularly valuable after a new feature launch or support interaction.

Here are 10 open-ended questions every SaaS customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey should consider:

1. What is the main reason you chose our product over alternatives?

2. Can you describe a recent experience you had with our product that stood out, positive or negative?

3. What features or benefits make our product most valuable to you?

4. Is there anything you find frustrating or difficult when using our product?

5. How has our product helped you achieve your business goals?

6. If you could change one thing about our product, what would it be and why?

7. How responsive and helpful have you found our customer support team?

8. Are there any tasks or workflows you wish our product supported better?

9. What could we do to exceed your expectations in the future?

10. Is there anything else you want to share about your experience with us?

The impact of these open questions is clear: with 86% of consumers willing to pay more for a better customer experience, capturing their thoughts in their own words lets you tailor your roadmap and service to what really matters. [1]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for SaaS customer satisfaction

Single-select multiple-choice questions are ideal when you need to quantify satisfaction or quickly gauge sentiment across a large group. They lower the barrier to participation—sometimes it’s easier for SaaS users to pick from a few options, especially in a busy workday. These questions are a great way to “kick off” the conversation, which you can then deepen with targeted follow-ups for richer context.

Question: How satisfied are you with the overall experience using our product?

• Very satisfied

• Satisfied

• Neutral

• Dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

Question: What aspect of our product do you find most valuable?

• Ease of use

• Feature set

• Customer support

• Reliability

• Other

Question: How likely are you to continue using our product over the next 12 months?

• Very likely

• Somewhat likely

• Unsure

• Unlikely

• Very unlikely

When to follow up with "why?" After a customer chooses an option (e.g., "Dissatisfied"), ask "Why did you select this option?" An open follow-up lets you understand drivers behind the score, which is especially valuable because CSAT scores tend to average out—for actionable insights, you need the story behind the numbers.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Include "Other" to catch feedback you might not anticipate. If someone picks it, trigger a follow-up like "Can you describe what you had in mind?" These responses often spotlight unique needs or hidden pain points you hadn’t considered, giving you a competitive edge.

Why include an NPS-type question?

NPS (Net Promoter Score) asks customers how likely they are to recommend your product to a friend or colleague. For SaaS customer satisfaction (CSAT), it’s a tried-and-true metric that benchmarks loyalty, captures overall sentiment, and predicts retention. It works especially well because it’s standardized—letting you track your progress over time or compare to industry averages. For context, SaaS companies often target CSAT scores between 75% and 85% to stay competitive, and leading in NPS almost always mirrors stronger business results. [2]

If you want to include NPS in your next customer survey, you can use Specific’s NPS survey generator for SaaS customers—customizable but ready to launch in seconds.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are where good surveys become great. Contextual AI-powered followups—like those explained in our automated follow-up questions article—let you probe deeper when a SaaS customer’s answer needs clarification.

With Specific, every survey can instruct the AI to ask smart follow-ups based on the previous reply, right in the same chat. This real-time, conversational approach captures details that might be missed in a static form. It not only saves time for your team (no more chasing for clarification by email), but makes analysis easier and enables richer, higher-fidelity insights.

• SaaS customer: "I feel it’s sometimes slow."

• AI follow-up: "Could you describe when you notice the product is slow? Is it during specific actions or times of day?"

How many followups to ask? Typically, 2-3 follow-ups per question are enough to gather what you need. It’s wise to let users skip if the answer is already clear—a setting built into Specific out of the box for maximum control.

This makes it a conversational survey—your users aren’t filling a form, they’re having a natural, guided conversation with your brand. That makes feedback flow smoother and responses feel less like a burden.

Easy to analyze, even with lots of text: Thanks to integrated AI survey response analysis (see our analysis guide here), you can ask the AI to summarize themes and trends—even across 1,000s of open-ended followup replies, so qualitative data becomes actionable insights.

These automated AI follow-ups are a game-changer—try generating a SaaS customer satisfaction survey and see how lively (and effective) your feedback collection can become.

Prompts for ChatGPT and AI survey builders

Coming up with the right questions can be daunting, but a well-crafted prompt for ChatGPT or any AI survey maker makes the process easier. Just be sure to give context about your users, your SaaS product, and your goals.

Initial brainstorm prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for SaaS customer survey about customer satisfaction (CSAT).

But, AI always works better with detail. Here’s a more context-rich prompt:

We offer a B2B SaaS productivity tool used by marketing teams. Most of our customers are small tech startups. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that will help us understand customer satisfaction and what helps users achieve their goals.

After you have a draft list, ask the AI to structure it for you:

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

Then, once you spot categories that matter most (say, “support experience”), you can dive deeper:

Generate 10 questions for the category 'support experience'.

Tweak these prompts in our AI survey builder or chat-based survey editor to make your customized CSAT survey for SaaS customers in less time and with better results.

What makes a survey conversational?

A conversational survey goes beyond digital forms—it’s an interactive chat that adapts questions in real time based on previous responses. Instead of listing static items, an AI survey probes deeper when it senses ambiguity, asks the next logical question, and makes respondents feel heard.

Here’s how AI survey generation stands out compared to old-school manual survey design:

Why use AI for SaaS customer surveys? AI survey generation lets you tap into deeper user insights, keeps participation high, and slashes time spent preparing, distributing, and analyzing your CSAT surveys. Plus, features like our AI survey editor streamline updates—you chat to change questions, the AI edits instantly.

Check out our practical guide on how to create a customer satisfaction survey—packed with field-tested best practices and more examples for SaaS teams.

Ready to see how smoothly data can flow? Specific is built for exceptional user experience in conversational surveys, both for you as the creator and for every SaaS customer who responds.

See this customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey example now

Start building deeper user insights today. Unlock conversational survey experiences that help you gather actionable SaaS customer satisfaction feedback faster than ever—no manual setup, just smarter results.