This article will guide you in how to create a SaaS customer survey about churn reasons. With Specific, you can build an expert-level survey in seconds—just generate and launch.
Steps to create a survey for SaaS Customers about churn reasons
If you want to save time, just generate a survey with Specific in seconds. Here’s how:
Tell what survey you want.
Done.
You don’t even need to read further—AI handles the heavy lifting, creating a survey backed by expert knowledge and even handling follow-up questions that surface richer insights automatically. You can dive deeper into any kind of surveys using the AI survey builder, too.
Why running churn surveys really matters
If you're not running regular churn surveys for your SaaS customers, you're missing out on powerful insights and opportunities to improve customer retention. Let's look at the stakes:
The average churn rate for SaaS companies over $10M ARR is 8.5%, but for smaller players, it can exceed 20%—that’s a massive revenue leak most teams underestimate. [1]
Every 5% reduction in churn can boost your profits by 25% to 95%. It’s hard to find any other lever that moves the bottom line so dramatically. [1]
The importance of recognizing and acting on customer feedback can’t be overstated. By asking users directly about churn reasons, you gather clear direction on:
Why customers are leaving (is it price, missing features, bad onboarding...or just expired credit cards?)
Real-world pain points you might never see on dashboards
Signals for product and support improvements
Failure to take feedback seriously leads to blind spots. You'll miss easy wins—updating onboarding flows, refining your roadmap, plugging leaky billing flows—that directly affect both retention rates and revenue. It’s why the benefits of SaaS customer feedback go well beyond anecdotal evidence and become a strategic growth tool.
What makes a great churn reasons survey
The success of a churn survey comes down to the clarity and quality of its questions and the conversational tone used to engage respondents. Here’s what matters most:
Clear, unbiased questions: Avoid jargon, don’t lead people, and make each question easy to understand. Vague or loaded questions result in noise rather than actionable findings.
Conversational tone: When the survey feels like a real conversation, more customers open up honestly about their reasons for leaving. It’s the heart of meaningful feedback.
You’ll know your survey is good when you see both high quantity and high quality of responses—plenty of customers answer, and their feedback offers sharp insights. Let’s boil it down:
Bad practices | Good practices |
|---|---|
Ambiguous, multi-part questions | Straightforward, focused questions |
No room for explanation | Follow-ups that ask “why?” or encourage stories |
Robotic language | Conversational, approachable prompts |
Best question types and examples for a SaaS customer churn survey
The magic lies in mixing structured and open-ended questions. Here’s how they work for churn insight:
Open-ended questions. These invite depth and “aha” moments by letting customers explain in their own words. Use them to uncover subtle patterns and unknown pain points, especially during exit interviews or after cancellation.
What was your main reason for canceling your subscription?
If anything could have kept you as a customer, what would it be?
Single-select multiple-choice questions. These structure the feedback so you can spot trends at a glance. Ideal for scaling analysis and comparing feedback over time.
Which of the following best describes your reason for leaving?
Too expensive
Missing features I needed
Customer support issues
Found a better alternative
NPS (Net Promoter Score) question. Helps benchmark loyalty and recovery potential. The best part—combine it with targeted follow-ups for detractors, passives, or promoters to zero in on actionable feedback. Generate your own NPS survey for churn with this NPS for SaaS churn survey builder.
How likely are you to recommend our service to a friend or colleague? (0-10)
Followup questions to uncover "the why". Instead of just recording “left because of feature gap,” follow up with specific probes like “Which feature was missing?” or “How did this affect your workflow?” This reveals the root cause, enabling targeted fixes.
SaaS customer: "It didn’t integrate with our CRM."
AI follow-up: "Which CRM do you use, and how important was this integration to your workflow?"
If you want to see more question examples—plus expert tips for phraseology—check out the best questions for saas customer churn surveys.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey mimics the back-and-forth of a real chat, asking relevant follow-ups and encouraging honest, detailed answers. Unlike dated web forms or clunky email templates, these AI-powered surveys flow naturally, learning from each response in real time. With AI survey generators like Specific, you get:
Manual Surveys | AI-generated Surveys |
|---|---|
Boring, static forms | Conversational, dynamic chats |
No contextual follow-ups | Custom follow-ups for each respondent |
Slow creation process | Ready-to-launch in seconds |
Why use AI for saas customer surveys? Conversation is the fastest way to get to the truth. AI survey examples consistently show higher engagement and richer context. You also offload tedious setup, and ensure every survey leverages research best practices (even if you’re not an expert yourself). Learn how to create and analyze surveys with AI for a full workflow overview.
Specific’s conversational surveys lead the pack here. The experience is smooth for both creators and respondents, making it easy for customers to participate—and for you to spot patterns, pain points, and retention opportunities fast.
The power of follow-up questions
Sophisticated churn surveys don’t stop at the first answer. Smart follow-up questions are how you turn “data” into actual insight. Specific uses AI-generated follow-ups—in real time—to chase the “why” behind each response and gather the details that matter.
SaaS customer: "The software was too expensive."
AI follow-up: "What monthly price would feel fair for your team size and use case?"
How many followups to ask? Generally, 2–3 focused follow-ups are enough to clarify intent without fatiguing respondents. With Specific, you can control the survey’s probe depth, letting the AI stop asking once enough context is gathered—zero manual chasing required.
This makes it a conversational survey: Automated follow-ups keep the conversation flowing and relevant, instead of flat or superficial like with static forms.
AI survey response analysis, Insight extraction: Even with a flood of open-text replies and follow-ups, Specific’s AI makes analysis a breeze—summarizing themes and surfacing actionable insights. See more in our AI survey analysis guide.
Automated, contextual follow-ups are a new paradigm—try generating a survey to experience the uplift versus static questionnaires yourself.
See this churn reasons survey example now
Create your own survey and turn churn into your SaaS secret weapon. Real-time follow-ups, deep insights, and AI-powered analysis are just seconds away.