Getting user product experience feedback right means asking the best questions for NPS, CES, and beyond.
We'll explore proven questions that capture how users really feel about your product, plus advanced techniques—like branching logic, AI-powered follow-ups, and multilingual setup—that unlock deeper insights and drive action.
The NPS question: your product experience baseline
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become the gold standard for measuring product experience feedback. NPS measures the likelihood that a customer will recommend your product, making it especially powerful for product teams tracking satisfaction and organic growth.
The exact NPS question is simple:
How likely are you to recommend [product] to a friend or colleague?
Respondents answer on a 0-10 scale:
Promoters (9-10): Loyal enthusiasts who help you grow through word-of-mouth.
Passives (7-8): Satisfied but unenthusiastic; open to better alternatives.
Detractors (0-6): Unhappy and at risk of spreading negative feedback.
The real insight comes from follow-ups. NPS alone only shows you the “what.” To uncover the “why,” you need thoughtful follow-up questions after the score. Smart branching logic lets you ask different follow-ups to promoters, passives, or detractors, revealing what drives loyalty or friction. Automatic AI follow-up questions can scale this process, helping you learn more without manual effort. Studies show that powered follow-ups and analysis lead to more actionable NPS feedback and greater improvement over time [1].
CES questions: measuring effort and friction
Customer Effort Score (CES) zooms in on a crucial aspect of product experience: how easy (or hard) it is for a user to do what they came to do. CES is the single best quantitative way to understand friction in your product’s workflows.
Typical CES question:
How easy was it to [complete specific action]?
Answers land on a 1–7 scale, from “Very difficult” to “Very easy.” High CES means a low-effort, user-friendly experience; low CES means users hit snags that can lead to churn.
When to use CES instead of (or alongside) NPS? Use CES:
Right after onboarding flows to catch new user friction
Following support interactions to measure effort in getting help
When you launch or revamp a feature to spot adoption blockers
Some research even finds that CES can predict future loyalty better than satisfaction metrics in complex digital products [2]. As with NPS, it pays to ask follow-up questions aimed at friction points—what was hard? Where did the flow break?
Open-ended questions that unlock user insights
NPS and CES provide hard numbers, but open-ended questions bring out the context and the story. The best teams balance quant metrics with qualitative prompts. Here are my picks for the best open-ended product feedback questions:
What’s the main benefit you get from using [product]? Reveals value proposition in the user’s words.
What’s one thing we could do to improve your experience? Prioritizes actionable improvements.
What almost stopped you from signing up? Surfaces critical conversion blockers.
How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]? Measures attachment vs. “nice to have.”
What’s missing from [product] that would make it perfect for you? Identifies unexplored user needs.
AI follow-ups transform basic answers into insights. An AI survey builder can automatically spot interesting responses and probe deeper: “Can you tell me more?” or “What do you mean by X?” With conversational survey tools like Specific's AI survey generator, you can instantly set up these layered prompts for richer, more actionable data [3]. To generate your own survey with these types of questions, you might prompt the builder like this:
I want a conversational product feedback survey with NPS, CES, and open-ended questions. Use best-in-class follow-up logic for more detail based on initial answers.
Smart branching: different questions for promoters, passives, and detractors
Promoters, passives, and detractors don’t want to answer the same questions—and they shouldn’t have to. Once a respondent picks a score, tailored follow-ups maximize both response rate and insight value. Here’s how smart NPS branching looks:
Group | Follow-up Question |
|---|---|
Promoters (9-10) | What do you love most about [product]? |
Passives (7-8) | What would make you more likely to recommend us? |
Detractors (0-6) | What’s the main reason for your score? |
Relevance drives response quality. The right follow-up at the right moment shows you value each person’s opinion. Automated logic ensures every user gets a tailored question, boosting completion rates and surfacing actionable insight from each segment. Setting up this logic couldn’t be easier with a tool like the AI survey editor—just describe the branching you want in plain language, and AI builds out the flow for you [4].
Multilingual surveys: capturing feedback in users' native languages
Language can be the difference between insightful product feedback and blank, vague responses. Users express nuance—and frustration—best in their own words, in their own language. That’s why multilingual survey capability drives better global feedback.
Automatic language detection in AI-powered survey tools removes friction for users: the survey appears in each user’s app language, no manual selection or translation needed. Key tips for truly multilingual survey success:
Enable automatic language switching in the survey setup
Keep questions simple and translation-friendly; avoid slang
Test every language with native speakers, especially open-ended prompts
Account for cultural context—expect different answer styles and politeness norms
Conversational surveys are naturally equipped to handle multilingual back-and-forths. AI-powered analysis easily delivers English insights from any language, helping global teams understand trends and pain points across regions—no matter what language users speak.
Turn feedback into action with conversational surveys
The best user product experience feedback blends NPS, CES, and open-ended questions—delivered as a natural, chat-based survey. The real magic is in the follow-ups: smart, AI-driven probing turns dull surveys into real conversations. That’s where Specific stands out, delivering engaging conversational surveys and powerful analysis for both product teams and their users.
Every follow-up makes the survey a conversation, transforming user feedback into a true conversational survey.
Analyze the answers instantly with AI survey response analysis, then act—don’t just collect feedback. Create your own survey today to capture meaningful product insights that drive real improvements.