Finding the right user interview template for onboarding can transform how quickly new users succeed with your product. Onboarding interviews are a make-or-break moment for understanding what helps users stick—and what holds them back.
Poorly timed or generic onboarding questions miss critical insights. Here, you'll find the best questions for onboarding interviews and how to deploy them effectively using conversational surveys that don't interrupt the user journey.
Essential questions for your onboarding user interview template
The best onboarding interviews focus on understanding user goals, expectations, and potential friction points from the very start. Each question you ask should serve a purpose—pinpointing what users want, where they might struggle, and how you can smooth their path forward. Let’s break this down by what you’re trying to learn:
Understanding user goals
- What are you hoping to accomplish with [Product] in your first week?
- What prompted you to sign up today?
- What does success look like for you with [Product]?
Why ask these? Goals set the tone—when you know what drives a user, you can shape onboarding to meet their expectations, increasing retention by up to 50% for those who experience a structured process. [1]
Identifying experience level
- Have you used tools like [Product] before?
- On a scale from 1–5, how comfortable are you with [relevant technology or task]?
- How much guidance do you typically prefer when trying a new product?
You’ll avoid patronizing power users or leaving beginners lost, fine-tuning your onboarding experience from the start.
Uncovering immediate needs
- Is there a specific problem you’re trying to solve right now?
- Which feature did you want to try first?
- What’s the biggest challenge you face today that led you here?
These questions cut through the noise, surfacing urgent opportunities to help—showing users you understand their context.
Detecting potential blockers
- Was anything confusing or unexpected during your first few minutes?
- Did you run into any obstacles as you got started?
- Is there anything missing that almost made you stop onboarding?
Spotting friction points quickly lets you fix issues before users churn, and 69% of people with an exceptional onboarding experience remain loyal for three or more years. [2]
The magic happens when you follow up. After an initial answer, always dig deeper—ask “why?” or prompt specifics. This is where automatic AI follow-up questions come in, probing for details human interviewers might miss, but at scale and in real time.
Why conversational surveys beat traditional onboarding interviews
Scheduling live interviews during onboarding doesn't scale—most teams can't catch every new user at the exact right moment. Static onboarding forms, meanwhile, miss the nuanced feedback about what users really need, and can feel like just another chore.
Response quality: Conversational surveys yield richer, more specific insights. In one study with over 600 respondents, AI chatbots conducting onboarding interviews produced answers that were more informative, relevant, and clear compared to those collected via standard forms. [3]
Timing flexibility: Users can respond on their schedule, during the most relevant moments in their first session—no frustrating time delays, no scheduling friction.
Automatic analysis: AI-powered onboarding interviews analyze responses in real time, surfacing patterns you’d otherwise miss. This is particularly powerful with AI survey response analysis, letting you “chat” with your onboarding data to quickly grasp common pain points or emerging needs.
Traditional interview | Conversational survey |
|---|---|
Manual scheduling; limited reach | Scales to every onboarding user instantly |
Notes and unstructured feedback | Structured data; context-rich responses |
Slow, manual review | Automatic AI analysis; instant insights |
Companies using predictive, AI-powered onboarding analytics see 40% higher retention compared to those relying on reactive methods. [4] Unlocking these advantages means shifting your onboarding interviews into the product itself—where you can target the perfect moment and analyze at scale.
Deploy onboarding interviews with smart in-product targeting
When it comes to onboarding feedback, timing is everything. If you miss that critical window when users form first impressions, you’ll miss out on what really matters.
With event-based targeting in your in-product conversational survey, you trigger questions at exactly the right moment using session data—not guesswork.
Target by onboarding progress: Show onboarding interview questions after a user completes a key setup step (e.g., profile creation or first project).
Target by time in product: Wait for the user to explore the product for 5–10 minutes, then invite feedback, ensuring their comments are based on genuine experience.
Target by feature usage: Trigger the survey immediately after the user tries a core feature, making the conversation contextually relevant.
In-product survey widgets feel like a natural extension of the software—no clunky modals or external pop-ups. With event-based triggers, your questions arrive precisely when the user’s experience is freshest in mind, leading to 70% of customers being more likely to stay with a brand that supports them this way. [5]
Here’s how timing impacts feedback quality:
Timing | Example | Feedback quality |
|---|---|---|
Good timing | Survey appears after user finishes first setup step | Detailed, actionable insights |
Bad timing | Survey appears at login screen before user explores product | Vague, irrelevant answers |
For a deeper walkthrough, see how in-product conversational surveys make this seamless.
Create your onboarding interview template with AI
Building a comprehensive onboarding interview manually can take hours—and sometimes you don’t know what you’re missing. With an AI survey generator, you can instantly create interview templates backed by best practices and fresh research insights, customized for your audience or product.
Try these example prompts for different onboarding scenarios—the AI will generate a full conversational survey you can then tweak in the AI survey editor as needed:
SaaS product onboarding for technical users
You have a new cloud infrastructure tool aimed at DevOps engineers. You want to learn about their goals, prior experiences with similar platforms, and obstacles in the setup process.
“Create an onboarding interview to understand what DevOps users want to achieve in their first week, what tools they’ve used before, and any challenges in deploying their first environment.”
Consumer app onboarding focusing on user goals
Your consumer health app needs to uncover why a new user signed up, what their health goals are, and what’s confusing about using the app the first time.
“Draft an onboarding survey for new users to find out what motivated them to join, their main health goal, and anything that confused them in their first session.”
B2B platform onboarding for team adoption
You’re rolling out a collaborative workspace to companies, eager to catch obstacles in team-wide adoption.
“Generate an onboarding user interview for admins of a B2B workspace platform to learn about their adoption goals, prior software used, key team pain points, and anything that could block company-wide rollout.”
Educational product onboarding for first-time users
Your digital learning tool needs to clarify how comfortable teachers are with ed-tech, what features they hope to use first, and any sources of confusion or frustration.
“Build a conversational onboarding survey for educators to discover their experience level with ed-tech, what features they’re excited to try, and the most confusing part of onboarding.”
Each prompt ensures you’re capturing the kind of onboarding insights that drive actionable improvements—not just generic feedback.
Start collecting onboarding insights today
Don’t wait until users slip away before learning what could have made them stay. The first session is your chance to understand real user needs, motivations, and roadblocks—and conversational surveys reveal the “why” behind every action.
It’s the right time to create your own survey and start improving onboarding for today’s users before you lose another.