Here are some of the best questions for a SaaS customer survey about time to value, plus some practical tips to create high-impact questions for genuinely useful insights. You can build conversational surveys with Specific in seconds—meaning deeper insights, less hassle.
Best open-ended questions for SaaS customer survey about time to value
Open-ended questions let us dig beneath simple yes/no or multiple-choice replies and uncover nuanced insights. They’re ideal when we want to understand the customer’s expectations, pain points, or the real narrative behind their journey. Use them when you want stories, not just stats.
According to a 2024 benchmark report, the average time-to-value (TTV) for SaaS companies is just under 2 days, but this metric varies by product complexity and industry. This makes customer perspective even more valuable. [1]
What was your initial expectation when you signed up to use our product?
Can you describe your experience from sign-up to achieving your first “aha” moment?
What specific action or result made you feel the product was valuable?
Were there any obstacles that slowed down your progress toward seeing value?
How clearly did you understand what to do first after starting your trial?
What resources (guides, videos, onboarding, support) did you use to help reach value faster?
If you could change one thing in our onboarding process, what would it be?
How did our product compare to your previous solutions in terms of time to value?
Can you remember a moment when you felt stuck? What helped you move forward?
Is there anything we could have done to help you see value sooner?
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for SaaS customer survey about time to value
Single-select multiple-choice questions are incredibly useful for quantifying feedback and uncovering trends fast. They’re great for nudging a conversation forward—sometimes it’s easier for respondents to pick an option rather than compose an answer from scratch. These questions start the dialogue, and follow-up questions can then go deeper for qualitative details.
Question: How quickly did you feel you received value from our product?
Within the first day
Within the first week
Within the first month
It took longer
Question: What was the biggest factor in helping you see value quickly?
Onboarding tutorial
Customer support
Product documentation
Intuitive design
Other
Question: How satisfied are you with the speed at which you reached value?
Very satisfied
Satisfied
Neutral
Dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
When to follow up with “why?” When someone chooses an option—especially less positive ones—always ask “why?” as a conversational follow-up. This helps you uncover the reasoning behind their choice. For example, if a respondent selects “It took longer” to reach value, asking “Why do you think it took longer?” can reveal product gaps or onboarding friction.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? Whenever you’re not 100% sure you’ve covered all relevant options, “Other” gives voice to unexpected insights. You can then immediately prompt for more details—sometimes the best ideas lie outside what we’ve anticipated.
NPS-style questions: When net promoter score makes sense for time to value
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely trusted method to gauge overall satisfaction and referral likelihood. For time to value in SaaS, an NPS-style question helps understand if customers who reached value quickly become your top promoters—or if delays directly impact overall sentiment. Pairing traditional NPS with questions specifically about the onboarding and activation experience gives you deep insight into both loyalty and product fit. It's easy to generate an NPS survey tailored for time to value in a few clicks.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where the magic happens. They provide context, resolve ambiguities, and make each response actionable. Instead of forcing you to chase answers by email or Slack, we built automatic AI follow-up questions right into each survey. The AI listens and asks targeted clarifying questions, just like a skilled researcher—but faster and more scalable.
SaaS customer: “I found onboarding hard.”
AI follow-up: “Could you share which step or part of onboarding felt most challenging?”
How many follow-ups to ask? In most cases, 2-3 follow-up questions are enough to capture key context—especially when respondents seem unsure, or you notice vague wording. With Specific, you can control this via survey settings, and always allow respondents to skip to the next question if you’ve collected what you need.
This makes it a conversational survey—one that flows naturally and feels like a real conversation, thanks to these dynamic follow-ups.
Easy to analyze responses using AI: Even with lots of open-ended answers, AI-powered tools like survey response analysis make it simple to summarize, highlight themes, and spot signals without manual workload.
This approach changes the game—try generating a survey and experience it firsthand.
How to write prompts for GPT to generate great SaaS customer survey questions about time to value
Prompting AI tools like ChatGPT or the Specific survey generator unlocks rapid, expert-level question creation. Start with something general to get a list, but always include context about your goals, your audience, and your SaaS product for best results.
Start with:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for SaaS customer survey about time to value.
If you add more context, you’ll get better results. For example, explain what type of SaaS you are, what recent changes you made, your customer’s profile, and your metric focus:
We are an analytics SaaS platform targeting mid-sized marketing agencies. We want to identify friction points that slow down onboarding and uncover what makes initial value “click.” Suggest 10 open-ended survey questions to reveal this.
Next, organize your ideas with:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, once you’ve got your categories (like onboarding, support, feature discovery), you can prompt:
Generate 10 questions for categories onboarding and feature discovery.
This helps you drill deep and keep your survey focused—no matter the complexity or scope.
What is a conversational survey—and why does AI survey generation matter?
A conversational survey doesn’t feel like a form—it’s a flowing, chat-like dialogue between your customer and AI. The difference compared to traditional surveys? It’s more human, context-aware, faster to complete and much easier to optimize. Here’s a quick snapshot:
Manual survey | AI-generated conversational survey |
|---|---|
Rigid, static questions | Dynamically adapts based on responses |
Flat, form-like experience | Feels like a chat, familiar UX |
Hard to analyze open text | AI summarizes themes automatically |
Takes hours to build & update | Built in under a minute with AI survey generator |
Why use AI for SaaS customer surveys? AI survey examples are not just faster to launch—they’re smarter, responding in real time with context-aware follow-ups. They help you get deeper insights from every single respondent, boosting survey completion rates and data quality. Research shows that pre-notifying B2B SaaS customers before sending a survey can bump up response rates by as much as 25%. Segmentation—targeting the right users—makes the answers even more useful. [3]
If you want step-by-step advice, check out our guide on how to create a SaaS customer survey about time to value, or edit your survey with AI for quick refinements. Specific streamlines the process, creating best-in-class conversational surveys that are smooth and engaging—no matter your technical skillset.
See this time to value survey example now
Unlock actionable insights from your users—see how easy it is to generate smarter, more engaging SaaS customer surveys about time to value with automated follow-ups and instant AI analysis. Start now and benefit from richer feedback in less time.