Here are some of the best questions for a SaaS Customer survey about onboarding experience, plus tips on how to craft them. With Specific, you can build a tailored onboarding survey in seconds—just generate a survey using our AI-powered platform.
Best open-ended questions for SaaS Customer onboarding experience surveys
Open-ended questions are invaluable for SaaS customer onboarding surveys. They let customers express real experiences in their own words, giving you richer, more actionable insights than checkboxes ever could. Use them when you want depth and context from your survey—especially if you’re looking for honest feedback you might not have anticipated.
What was your first impression when you started using our product?
Can you describe any challenges you faced during onboarding?
What, if anything, surprised you (good or bad) in your initial setup?
How did our onboarding resources (help docs, videos, guides) work for you?
Was there a step in setup where you felt stuck or unsure? Please explain.
What could we have done differently to make onboarding easier for you?
Did you reach out to support during onboarding? What was your experience like?
Which feature did you find hardest to understand, and why?
If you could change one thing about our onboarding process, what would it be?
How did onboarding shape your perception of our product overall?
When you use these questions, you invite honest reflection that goes far beyond surface-level feedback. This matters because 55% of customers will stop using a product they don’t understand, and 75% jump ship in the first week if onboarding feels tough [1].
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for SaaS onboarding surveys
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want to quantify responses or break the ice for a deeper conversation. Sometimes, giving customers a few easy options lets them respond faster—and can motivate them to share more detail in a follow-up question.
Question: How clear were the onboarding instructions?
Very clear
Somewhat clear
Not clear
Didn’t use the instructions
Question: How long did it take you to complete the onboarding process?
Less than 15 minutes
15-30 minutes
More than 30 minutes
Other
Question: Did you need to contact support during onboarding?
Yes
No
When to follow up with "why?" If someone says onboarding wasn’t clear, or that it took longer than expected, ask “Why?” or “Can you share more?” These follow-ups uncover what’s behind a choice, turning a stat into a story.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? If your audience might have experiences outside of the options listed, always offer “Other.” A follow-up question can then prompt for details, capturing unique cases you didn’t expect—often the source of your biggest insights.
Should you use an NPS question in onboarding surveys?
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) asks, “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” It’s a powerful measure, especially for onboarding, because it shows how your new users feel after their first experience. NPS helps you identify promoters, passives, and detractors—each needing different follow-up questions to dig into their reasons for the score.
Given that 86% of customers say they’ll remain loyal if onboarding and education are solid, NPS can spotlight how well your onboarding truly delivers [2]. To generate an onboarding NPS survey, try our NPS template for SaaS onboarding.
The power of follow-up questions
Static survey forms fall short if responses are vague or missing important context. That’s where automated follow-up questions shine—a conversational survey doesn’t just capture answers, it adapts and digs deeper. For more, check out our article on automatic AI-powered followup questions.
SaaS Customer: “The setup was a bit confusing.”
AI follow-up: “Can you tell me which part of the setup was most confusing?”
SaaS Customer: “I didn’t use your support resources.”
AI follow-up: “Was there a reason you didn’t use them? Were they hard to find, or did you prefer figuring things out yourself?”
How many follow-ups to ask? There’s a sweet spot—two or three follow-ups per answer are usually enough. Collect the context you’re after, then move on. Specific lets you control follow-up intensity or skip to the next question once you’re satisfied.
This makes it a conversational survey: Real conversation happens through natural back-and-forth, not a rigid sequence of form fields. You build rapport and get better responses.
AI makes it easy to analyze all the responses. Even with lots of unstructured feedback or multi-layered answers, AI can summarize and distill key themes—read more in our guide to analyzing SaaS onboarding survey responses using AI.
Automated, AI-driven follow-up is a new research superpower—generate your onboarding survey now and see how the experience feels for yourself.
Composing prompts for ChatGPT to get great onboarding survey questions
You can get creative with AI tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm onboarding survey questions. Start simple:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for SaaS Customer survey about Onboarding Experience.
AI works best when you give it rich context. Try this prompt for more targeted results:
Our SaaS product helps small marketing teams automate their workflows. We’re launching a new onboarding experience and want to identify where people get stuck and how we can improve. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for our onboarding survey and explain why each one matters.
Next, ask the AI to organize its ideas:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Once you see the categories, pick the areas you want to dive deeper into and prompt again:
Generate 10 questions for categories “pain points,” “resources,” and “first impressions.”
This approach helps you focus on the topics that matter most to your product and your users’ onboarding experience.
What is a conversational survey—and why use AI?
A conversational survey mimics real conversation. Instead of a static questionnaire, users chat with an AI that asks questions, reacts to answers, and drills down when clarity is needed. This style brings higher engagement (people are used to messaging!), richer context, and fewer abandoned responses. For a full walk-through, see our article about creating a SaaS onboarding feedback survey.
Here’s a quick comparison to drive the point home:
Manual survey creation | AI survey generation |
|---|---|
Manual editing and logic set-up | Instant survey drafting from a prompt |
Hard to keep questions fresh | AI suggests expert-vetted questions |
Static, one-way forms | Conversational, interactive, real-time followups |
Complex analysis for open text | AI-powered summaries and chat-based analysis |
Why use AI for SaaS Customer surveys? With nearly all businesses now adopting AI tools (98% are using some AI, and 40% are using advanced tools like chatbots [3]), there’s no reason to stick with static feedback forms. AI gives you speed, smart question design, follow-ups, and instant data analysis. Feedback becomes a real asset—not just a checkbox activity.
If you want both the power of conversational AI surveys and an outstanding user experience for you and respondents, Specific is purpose-built for this. Try our AI survey generator or see key features like the AI survey editor in action.
See this onboarding experience survey example now
Put these ideas to work with a real AI-powered onboarding survey. See your customers’ full story, discover deeper insights, and dramatically improve your onboarding process—all in just a few minutes with Specific’s conversational survey engine.