This article will guide you through how to create a SaaS customer survey about Customer Effort Score (CES). Specific can help you easily build your survey in seconds using our AI-powered survey generator.
Steps to create a survey for SaaS customers about Customer Effort Score (CES)
If you want to save time, just generate a survey with Specific. Here’s exactly how simple it is:
Tell what survey you want.
Done.
You honestly don’t even need to read further—AI survey generators handle everything with expert-level accuracy. The survey is composed in seconds, and the AI will even ask your respondents smart, contextual follow-up questions to surface deeper insights. Curious to build completely custom or advanced surveys? You can also start from scratch with the AI survey generator and go from there.
Why running a SaaS customer CES survey matters
Too often, teams assume they know how easy (or not) it is for customers to use their product. The reality? You’ll miss critical signals without intentional feedback. Here’s why surveys measuring Customer Effort Score are so important:
Customer loyalty lives or dies by effort: A Harvard Business Review study found 94% of customers who reported low effort said they would likely purchase again. If you’re not running these surveys, you’re missing a massive opportunity to retain revenue and grow organically. [1]
Better customer satisfaction: CES feedback shows you exactly where friction happens. According to Mailchimp, understanding customer effort can drastically improve experiences, which can mean the difference between a raving fan and a churn risk. [2]
On top of retention, these surveys help you unlock benefits like:
Reduced customer service costs and more efficient support. Customers want problems solved with minimal hassle, and surveys provide a data-backed way to remove pain points. [3]
Self-service improvements. With data from a CES survey, you can pinpoint where your self-help docs or onboarding need work. [3]
Competitive edge in retention. Customers aren’t likely to switch if your product feels effortless—even if a competitor offers a similar feature set. [4]
If you rely on assumptions instead of running a structured survey, you risk building features nobody wants, burning out support, or creating a frustrating experience that your competitors love. For even more on the importance of SaaS customer recognition survey and benefits of SaaS customer feedback, take a look at the best questions and why they work.
What makes a good survey for Customer Effort Score (CES)?
A good CES survey isn’t just about asking “Was it easy or not?” It’s about how you ask, and what happens next. Let’s break down the ingredients of a great SaaS customer CES survey:
Clear, unbiased questions. If your survey uses jargon or leading phrases, answers become unreliable. Stick to simple, direct language.
Conversational tone. A natural, friendly tone makes respondents drop their guard. You want them to be honest—not trying to please you.
Respect respondent’s time. Lengthy or disorganized surveys drive drop-off. Short and punchy usually wins.
The true measure? You want both high quantity and high quality of responses. A huge number of rushed or incomplete answers is as useless as five long, but biased ones.
Bad Practices | Good Practices |
|---|---|
Too many questions | Focused, relevant questions only |
Leading/biased wording | Neutral, open prompts |
No follow-ups | Smart, contextual follow-up questions |
Technical jargon | Conversational, accessible language |
Also, the best surveys don’t just ask for a score. They dig into the “why,” capturing actionable feedback and even suggestions—without putting words in anyone’s mouth.
Question types and examples for SaaS customer survey about CES
You don’t have to settle for one type of question. Mix them to get both breadth and depth. There’s more on this in our detailed guide on the best questions for SaaS customer surveys, but here’s a sampling:
Open-ended questions give context and color, letting people explain in their own words. Use them to uncover “how” and “why”—especially when you’re seeking unexpected insights. For example:
“What was the most challenging part of your recent experience with our product?”
“Describe a time when using our product felt surprisingly easy or frustrating.”
Single-select multiple-choice questions are ideal for quantifying feedback or segmenting user types. For example:
“How easy was it to complete your desired action in our platform today?”
Very easy
Somewhat easy
Neutral
Difficult
Very difficult
NPS (Net Promoter Score) question is helpful when you want a gold-standard engagement metric and can be set up in seconds with AI—just generate an NPS survey for CES here. For example:
“How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend or colleague, specifically based on how easy it was to use?” (0-10 scale)
Followup questions to uncover "the why": Whether someone gives you a score or a qualitative answer, you don’t want to guess what they mean. Set your survey to ask tailored follow-ups in real time—this uncovers hidden context, patterns, or root causes. For example:
“Can you tell me more about what made it difficult?”
“Was there a specific feature or step that caused frustration?”
Follow-ups are especially powerful for understanding customer effort: they help you get details that are otherwise lost in vague responses. Want more inspiration? Explore more CES survey questions and tips.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey isn’t just a digital form—it’s a chat that dynamically adapts to your respondent’s answers. Instead of presenting a stack of questions with no context, the AI agent responds in real time, probes deeper when needed, and delivers a personalized experience. Traditional surveys can feel cold, mechanical, and are often abandoned. With AI, every survey feels more like a human interview, with natural back-and-forth that keeps people engaged.
Manual Survey Creation | AI Survey Generation |
|---|---|
Time-consuming to prepare | Ready in seconds |
Static, unchanging questions | AI adds real-time follow-ups |
Low engagement | Conversational and natural |
Hard to analyze open text | AI auto-summarizes insights |
Why use AI for SaaS customer surveys? You save a ton of time, eliminate manual errors, and gather richer insights—fast. Shortcuts like interactive editors (AI survey editor) power up your workflow, while smart follow-ups amplify the value of every response.
AI survey example, conversational survey, AI-powered CES survey builder: If you want a practical walkthrough of how survey building works, read our article on how to create a survey. You’ll see how Specific keeps the experience smooth, conversational, and fast—for you and your respondents.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are the secret ingredient for real insight. Instead of letting ambiguous or brief answers slip by, AI can ask the right “why” at the perfect moment—maximizing context while it’s still fresh. For more on this, check out our article on automated follow-up questions.
Specific’s AI handles follow-ups on the fly, in real time, as if you had a research expert for every respondent. This really matters for SaaS customer surveys:
It saves huge amounts of time compared to manual follow-ups (like chasing someone down by email).
The survey feels more like a natural conversation, which makes people more open and detailed in their responses.
What happens if you skip follow-up questions? Here’s a typical scenario:
SaaS Customer: “Using the dashboard was frustrating.”
AI follow-up: “Was there a specific action or feature in the dashboard that felt difficult to use?”
Without that follow-up, you’d have no idea if the problem was the UI, a bug, or a missing link.
How many followups to ask? Two or three thoughtful probes are usually enough before moving to the next topic. You can let respondents skip to the next question once you’ve got what you need—Specific lets you set this up super easily.
This makes it a conversational survey: Instead of a dry list, your survey becomes a two-way exchange—capturing richer, more honest insights.
AI survey response analysis, open-text feedback, automatic insights: You’re not stuck sifting through endless replies by hand, either. AI-powered analysis (see the AI survey response analysis feature) makes it easy to extract key trends and summaries from lots of free-text answers. Want to go deeper? Here’s a guide to analyzing survey responses with AI.
Automated follow-up questions are a new concept—try generating a survey and experience the difference for yourself!
See this Customer Effort Score (CES) survey example now
Ready to uncover what really drives effort in your product? Create your own survey in seconds and experience a smarter, more conversational approach that puts actionable feedback at your fingertips.