Here are some of the best questions for a SaaS customer survey about product reliability, plus practical tips for crafting your own. Specific lets you instantly build an effective, conversational survey tailored to product reliability feedback.
The best open-ended questions for SaaS customer surveys about product reliability
Open-ended questions give SaaS customers the space to share feedback in their own words, which often uncovers issues or ideas you haven’t anticipated. They’re best used when you want qualitative insights—specifics, stories, or unexpected pain points. Just keep in mind that open-ended questions are more demanding for respondents: Pew Research Center found their nonresponse rates can reach over 50% compared to 1–2% for closed-ended questions. [1] Use them intentionally and keep surveys concise.
What specific issues have you experienced with the reliability of our product?
Can you describe a time when our product did not perform as expected?
How do reliability concerns affect your daily work or business operations?
What steps have you taken to work around any reliability problems in our product?
What features or systems do you find most dependable, and why?
If you could improve one aspect of our product’s reliability, what would it be?
How does our product’s reliability compare to similar tools you’ve used?
What changes would boost your confidence in our product’s reliability?
Have reliability issues ever impacted your decision to recommend or renew with us?
Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience with our product’s reliability?
Top single-select multiple-choice questions for SaaS customer surveys about product reliability
Single-select multiple-choice questions are unbeatable when you want to quantify feedback or gently start a conversation—they’re less intimidating and faster to answer. Since they’re easy, response rates for these questions often run much higher: closed-ended questions in SaaS have nonresponse rates as low as 1–2%. [1] Use them for benchmarking, user segmentation, and as entry points for deeper “why” follow-ups.
Question: How would you rate the reliability of our product over the past month?
Very reliable
Somewhat reliable
Neutral
Somewhat unreliable
Very unreliable
Question: In the past month, how often have technical issues disrupted your work?
Never
Once or twice
A few times
Frequently
Question: Which aspect of our product do you find least reliable?
Login and authentication
Core features
Integrations
Performance/speed
Other
When to follow up with "why?" Don’t stop at single-choice data! After a customer picks an option (“Somewhat unreliable,” for example), always follow up with a simple “Can you share why?” or “What made you choose that?” This keeps the conversation going and uncovers richer details that pure stats miss.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? If you’re not sure you’ve listed all possible options, always add “Other.” Follow up with “Can you specify?” to let users surface pain points you didn’t predict. These insights often lead to your biggest product wins.
NPS-score: A must-have question for SaaS customer reliability surveys
Net Promoter Score (NPS) gives you a quantifiable, industry-standard measure of how likely customers are to recommend your SaaS based on their experiences—including reliability. NPS is especially powerful for reliability because dissatisfied users (detractors) often cite reliability as a core reason. Pairing the “score” with an open-text follow-up (“What’s the main reason for your rating?”) exposes reliability as a key theme in churn or advocacy. Want to launch an NPS survey in just a few clicks? Try the NPS survey generator for SaaS reliability.
The power of follow-up questions
Great survey feedback is rarely “one and done.” Automated AI follow-up questions (read more on how it works) turn your survey into a real conversation—exploring, clarifying, prompting for examples, and chasing down vague responses. In SaaS surveys, quality follow-ups are often the difference between actionable data and confusion.
SaaS customer: "Sometimes things crash."
AI follow-up: "Could you describe what you were doing when the crash happened? How often has this affected you?"
How many followups to ask? Generally, 2–3 targeted follow-ups for each open-ended question yield rich insights without overwhelming the respondent. Let users skip to the next question if the key info is already captured—Specific handles this setting for you, making it seamless.
This makes it a conversational survey: you’re having an engaging chat, not just filling out boxes. Respondents feel heard—and you get deeper, clearer product reliability feedback.
AI responses, open-text, follow-up analysis: With all these nuanced answers, it’s easy to analyze responses using AI (see how AI-powered analysis works). You can spot trends, distill key themes, and ask new questions—all without sifting through endless text.
These automated, real-time followups are a new way to build surveys. Try generating a conversational survey and see how much richer your data becomes.
How to use ChatGPT or AI models to generate better SaaS reliability questions
ChatGPT and other large-language models make brainstorming survey questions a breeze. It’s best to start broad, then refine by category and relevance.
To begin, simply prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for SaaS customer survey about product reliability.
But AI performs best with more context. Try this instead:
I work at a SaaS company that serves mid-size B2B customers. Our goal is to improve product reliability based on customer feedback. Suggest 10 open-ended survey questions for our customers to help identify pain points, unexpected issues, and new feature requests related to product reliability.
After generating ideas, organize them:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
This helps you focus. Then, dig deeper into your priority areas—like uptime or error recovery:
Generate 10 questions for the "uptime and performance" category.
What is a conversational survey? How AI survey generation changes the game
A conversational survey mimics natural dialogue, gently probing for more detail. Unlike the old “one-and-done” forms, every answer guides the next question, as if you’re chatting with an expert researcher. Specific’s conversational AI survey builder masters this flow: the survey feels like a helpful conversation, not a test.
Why does this matter? Conversational surveys generate much higher engagement—especially for SaaS customers who are busy or mobile. And the conversational format is proven: in SaaS, in-app surveys have 20–30% response rates, far outpacing email surveys at 8–20%. [2] Keep it concise and ask questions that resonate, and you’ll see a measurable lift in completion rates and data quality [3].
Manual Survey Creation | AI Survey Generator (Conversational) |
---|---|
Time-consuming, manual question writing | Instant survey creation with AI expertise |
Stale, generic forms | Dynamic, engaging conversation |
Fixed sequence, no real follow-ups | Smart follow-ups in context |
Difficult analysis of open text | Instant, AI-powered analysis—spot themes and trends |
Why use AI for SaaS customer surveys? The main benefit: AI drives engagement while making it painless to analyze even the most complex, “long text” feedback. Conversational AI surveys let you unlock actionable reliability insights at scale—without exhausting your team.
Want more on how to rapidly create a SaaS customer reliability survey? Our guide has a full walkthrough.
Specific offers best-in-class conversational survey experiences, ensuring feedback flows naturally—for SaaS teams and their users alike.
See this product reliability survey example now
Get actionable customer insights that directly inform your product roadmap. See how conversational, AI-powered surveys make feedback deep, fast, and easy—start engaging your customers meaningfully today.