Here are some of the best questions for a user survey about onboarding experience, along with practical tips to help you create your own. You can build a conversational onboarding survey in seconds using Specific’s AI-powered survey generator.
Best open-ended questions for user survey about onboarding experience
Open-ended questions help us get to the “why” behind user thoughts and feelings—the kind of nuanced insight that’s hard to quantify but crucial for understanding real onboarding experiences. These are best used when you’re seeking rich, candid answers or want to uncover issues you hadn’t considered. Just keep in mind that open-ended questions can also lead to higher nonresponse rates compared to closed ones—Pew Research Center reports an average nonresponse rate of 18% for open-ended questions, with some even higher [1]. Here are ten of our favorite options for user onboarding surveys:
Can you describe your initial experience when signing up and starting to use our product?
Were there any parts of the onboarding process that felt confusing or frustrating?
What was the most helpful resource or feature during onboarding?
Is there something you expected to see during onboarding that was missing?
How did you feel after completing the onboarding steps?
What surprised you (good or bad) about our onboarding experience?
If you could change one thing about our onboarding, what would it be and why?
What would you tell a friend about getting started with this product?
Did you encounter any blockers or issues when getting started? Please describe.
Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your onboarding journey?
These questions dig deeper—guiding users to tell stories, not just pick answers. You’ll gain insight into bottlenecks and unexpected moments in the user journey.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for user survey about onboarding experience
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want to quantify how users feel or how common certain issues are, and they’re especially great for starting a survey. According to research, surveys that begin with a simple multiple-choice question average an 89% completion rate, while those starting with open-ended questions see a lower rate of 83% [2]. These questions also reduce cognitive load on respondents—a much easier way to start a conversation, and you can dig deeper with follow-up questions as needed.
Question: How clear did you find our onboarding instructions?
Very clear
Somewhat clear
Not clear at all
Question: How long did it take you to complete the onboarding process?
Less than 5 minutes
5–15 minutes
More than 15 minutes
Other
Question: After onboarding, how confident did you feel using the core features?
Very confident
Somewhat confident
Not confident
When to followup with "why?" We ask "why?" when a user picks an unexpected or suboptimal answer. For example, if someone answers “Not confident” to feeling ready after onboarding, immediately asking “Can you share what made you feel that way?” helps us pinpoint friction points faster and with more context.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? If you can’t list every possible scenario or want to catch outliers, always include “Other” with a chance for users to explain. Follow-up questions on "Other" responses often unlock hidden issues or new ideas for improvement.
NPS question for user onboarding experience: when does it make sense?
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question distills user sentiment into a simple metric: “How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend or colleague after your onboarding experience?” It’s an industry favorite for benchmarking satisfaction and loyalty. For onboarding, a targeted NPS helps us quickly spot whether the start of a user’s journey is driving advocacy or frustration. You can generate an NPS onboarding survey in one click—all the logic and follow-up is done for you.
The power of follow-up questions
We know from experience (and data) that the real gold in user feedback lives in the conversations that come after an initial answer. That’s why automated follow-ups make surveys so much more effective. Specific’s survey AI actively listens to each reply and probes for clarity, using follow-ups that an expert researcher would ask—dynamically and in real time.
Benefits of follow-ups include:
Uncovering the "why" behind scores, not just the scores themselves
Saving time vs. chasing clarification by email or phone
Making feedback richer and more actionable
Let’s see a quick example:
User: “I got lost at the verification step.”
AI follow-up: “Can you tell me more about what was unclear during verification? Was it the instructions, the layout, or something else?”
How many followups to ask? In most user studies, 2–3 smart followups are ideal. Specific’s settings let you stop when you’ve got what you need—no endless questions, just enough to clarify and dig deeper.
This makes it a conversational survey: When a survey asks smart followups in real time, it feels less like a form and more like a thoughtful chat—that’s what makes conversational surveys so powerful and engaging.
AI-powered analysis, easy insights: Even if you collect hundreds of open-ended responses and followups, you don’t have to manually read them all. AI-powered response analysis makes it simple—summarizing, surfacing key themes, and letting you chat with your data.
Automated, real-time followups are a whole new paradigm in user research. If you haven’t tried generating a survey with Specific yet, start one and see how much richer your insights get compared to conventional forms.
How to compose a great prompt for ChatGPT or another GPT
If you want to design your own onboarding experience survey using ChatGPT or other LLMs, prompts matter. Start simple, then add context to get better, more customized results.
Try this basic prompt first:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for user survey about onboarding experience.
For better results, add background—describe your product, audience, and your goals. For example:
Our SaaS product offers project management tools for startups. We want to improve the new user onboarding experience by understanding where people get stuck, what they love, and what we can improve. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for user survey about onboarding experience.
Organize the results for clarity:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Once you see which categories are most relevant (e.g., Clarity, Motivation, Content Gaps), follow up with:
Generate 10 questions for categories Clarity and Content Gaps.
Iterate on these prompts to arrive at questions tailored to your users and objectives.
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys blend the best parts of live interviews (curiosity, context) and digital scale. Instead of handing out forms, you engage users in a dynamic, AI-driven chat that evolves based on their answers. This isn’t just another chatbot—it’s real, expert-like conversation that can clarify, dig deeper, or even pivot based on what the user says.
Let’s quickly compare manual vs. AI-generated surveys:
Manual Survey | AI-Generated Conversational Survey |
|---|---|
Static, linear, limited probing | Dynamic, adaptive, asks followups in real time |
Manual setup and editing | Easy to edit with AI-powered editor |
Time-consuming to analyze open responses | Automatic AI analysis for every answer |
Higher drop-off rates | Higher response and completion rates [2] |
Why use AI for user surveys? AI survey generators like Specific make it fast and painless to go from prompt to survey—suggesting smart questions, handling follow-ups, and analyzing results instantly. You save time, get better data, and users actually enjoy the process, even on mobile. If you want a full walkthrough, see the guide on how to create a user onboarding survey step by step.
Specific is built to deliver a best-in-class conversational survey experience—simple to generate, truly conversational, and easy to analyze. We make gathering onboarding feedback effortless for you and deeply engaging for your users. If you want to experiment with prompts or see real AI survey examples, it’s all at your fingertips.
See this onboarding experience survey example now
Instantly experience the impact of a true conversational survey for onboarding—gather richer insights, engage users, and streamline your feedback process now. Don’t settle for forms when you can see how AI takes surveys to the next level.