How to write better survey questions that get honest answers

When businesses don’t listen to their customers, they end up making guesses and building products in the boardroom. This tends to create a mismatch between customer expectations and product experience, leading to churn.

The truth is, you can reduce churn by doing better research. A Retently study found that 53% of customers leave because of poor onboarding, a weak business-customer relationship and ineffective customer service — three issues you can improve by gathering and acting on customer feedback.¹

Also, customer-centric companies that conduct research and use it to shape product decisions are 60% more profitable than their competitors.²

But here’s the catch: gathering feedback only works if you ask the right questions. Whether you’re running user interviews, consumer panels or on-page surveys, asking vague, closed-ended or poorly worded questions can lead to bad data (and decisions).

In fact, research shows that a single word in your question can influence the answers you get.³ That’s why this article is packed with practical guidance and real survey question examples that illustrate how to write survey questions that uncover honest, useful insights.

Best practices for writing survey questions that drive actionable insights

Whether you’re refining your survey or starting from scratch, it’s easy to fall into tiny traps that skew your data, often without you realizing it. That’s why in this section, you’ll learn how to frame questions to avoid bias, confusion and survey fatigue. And instead, write queries and collect responses you can actually trust. 

Here, we’ll use real-life examples, comparisons and expert tips to make your questions smarter and your data cleaner. 

These are 12 best practices to follow:

1: Don’t ask too many questions

Let’s face it, most people aren’t thrilled about filling out surveys. And the longer they are, the less inclined people are to finish them. Also, short surveys tend to drive higher completion rates and more accurate responses. One easy way to keep things brief is to skip questions you already know the answer to, such as a respondent’s location or job title. 

Keeping your surveys short also helps you zero in on what really matters and write more focused and relevant questions. Before adding any question, always ask yourself: Will this question give me novel and useful insights? If the answer is “No,” feel free to skip that one. 

Then, use other research methods to ask more questions. For instance, you can have: 

• A welcome survey to ask demographic questions that you don’t know the answers to, such as the respondent’s job title or age group
• A Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey to assess their loyalty
• An onboarding survey to identify wins and gaps in this process 
• Task-specific surveys to address feature usability 

💡Pro tip: As a rule of thumb, create surveys that range between five and 20 questions, depending on their length. Close-ended questions tend to be easier to answer and analyze, while open-ended ones require more time and attention from the user and researcher. Craft surveys that mix the two types without abusing text box questions. 

2: Stay away from leading questions 

Your product team has just launched a new feature. You’ve invested months in building a personalized dashboard for users to track their goals more easily. The team and leadership are excited about this launch and are confident that it’ll be a hit.

So, you send out a feedback survey and ask: “How much do you love the new dashboard that makes goal tracking easier than ever?”

That’s the problem with leading questions (i.e., questions that hint at the desired answer). They create an environment where survey respondents can only agree or disagree, but you lose a golden opportunity to hear what they really think. 

Let’s see examples of leading questions and how to improve them: 

❌ Leading question	✅ Better alternative
How helpful did you find our powerful analytics dashboard?	How would you rate your experience using the analytics dashboard?
Don’t you love our new feature?	Overall, how would you rate our new feature?
Isn’t the new smart invoicing functionality better than before?	How does the new smart invoicing functionality compare to the previous version?

Remember: The goal of customer surveys is to create space for users to share real feedback, not confirm your biases. Going for neutral questions allows you to collect honest data.

3: Avoid asking people to predict the future

Most people have no idea what they’ll have for dinner, let alone how they’ll feel about your product in the future. They don’t know if they’ll keep using your software, buying your product or recommending it to others in the next few years. 

So, instead of asking hypothetical questions, ask for current or recent actions that enable you to predict future behavior. For example:

❌ Poor	✅ Better
How likely are you to attend our next event?	Did you attend our last event?
How likely are you to recommend our product in the next six months?	How likely are you to recommend our product to others? Or, have you recommended our product to others?

With this data, you can still make informed predictions. For instance, if a customer has recommended your product in the past, they’ll likely do it again. Or, if a customer has never recommended your product and gives you a low score in an NPS survey, they’re likely not happy with your product and could potentially be one step closer to leaving.

💡Don’t know what to ask? Check out this guide with 100 great survey questions for inspiration.

4: Prioritize closed-ended questions

Open-ended questions often seem like a great way to get richer feedback, but they can also lead to a flood of scattered, hard-to-analyze responses. You’ve probably seen something like this play out on Slack… 

Someone writes in the team channel: We need to have an outstanding meeting this week to discuss the budget. It’s important that most of you can attend. When and where is best for you?

The question opens the door to multiple answers:

• Carla: Wednesday works for me, I’ll be at the office
• Louise: I can’t do Wednesday morning in person, but I can join from my phone
• Julian: How about Thursday? I’m fine with in-person or remotely
• Eric: How about Friday morning?

It would be a different story if this message was shared instead: We need to have a mandatory budget meeting this week, ideally in person. Which date and time works best for you?:

• Option A: Wednesday, 10:00 am (in office)
• Option B: Wednesday, 2:00 pm (in office)
• Option C: Friday, 9:30 am (remote)

This is the magic of close-ended questions that use single choice, multiple choice or rating scales: they deliver clear answers quickly, making it far easier to spot patterns and make decisions.

“Multiple choice questions are easy for customers to answer and straightforward for you to analyze. These are handy when you want to narrow the range of responses. Then, to understand customer sentiments more deeply, we use rating scale questions,” shares Zoho Survey’s product team. 

To gain deeper insights on closed-ended queries, you can always move into open-ended questions or conduct other research methods.

For example, open-ended questions are useful when a user rates a feature poorly and you want to know why. Another example could be when someone says they wouldn’t recommend your product and you need to dig further to understand the reason. These qualitative data insights humanize and expand on hard data, providing you with a full picture view.

5: Don’t double-barrel your questions

Double-barreled questions ask about two things at once. These types of questions are confusing and could result in ambiguous responses. When a respondent can’t understand a question, they’re likely to pick a random option or skip it, hurting your data accuracy.

Other things that make survey questions confusing include using double negatives and complex double-clause sentences. For example:“Don’t you think it’s unlikely that you wouldn’t need any additional support from our team?” That’s a lot of mental gymnastics for a simple yes/no answer. To write great surveys, keep the writing simple and clear and write separate questions per topic. Here are some more examples:

❌ Poor	✅ Better
What do you use the analytics feature for? Do you combine it with the spreadsheet integration?	Can you share an example of how you typically use the analytics feature?
How would you rate our integrations and the web surveys functionality?	1. How would you rate our integrations? 2. How would you rate the web surveys functionality?
You’ve never used an invoicing tool, have you?	Have you ever used an invoicing tool?

6: Use balanced scales

Questions with rating or Likert scales allow respondents to evaluate something by choosing an option in a predefined scale. These are great for collecting quantitative data in user surveys. They’re easy for participants to answer and quick for you to analyze. 

But to get reliable results, your scales need to be balanced, which means offering an equal number of positive and negative options. Otherwise, you risk nudging respondents toward more favorable answers, even if that’s not how they really feel. For example:

❌ Unbalanced scale	✅ Balanced
How would you rate the ease of use of the new feature? Bad Neutral Good Great Excellent	How would you rate the ease of use of the new feature?  Bad Fair Neutral Good Excellent

Take this study as an example: Norwegian hospitals switched from using a balanced scale to a more positive and unbalanced one in the Universal Patient Centeredness Questionnaire. This caused the overall patient experience score to drop by about eight points on a zero to 100 scale, showing that unbalanced scales can alter your data accuracy. 

7: Ensure answer choices are mutually exclusive and exhaustive

When building multiple-choice questions, your answer options should be mutually exclusive (no overlap between choices) and exhaustive (covering all reasonable possibilities). This helps avoid confusion, eliminates bias and ensures that your survey data is more reliable.

If options overlap, respondents may not know which one to select. If important options are missing, they may feel forced to pick an answer that doesn’t fit — or abandon the question entirely. If you’re unsure whether you’ve captured every possibility, always include an “Other (please specify)” option to let respondents add their own answers.

For example, let’s say you’re building a churn survey to determine why users are cancelling their subscription. The question is: “Select the main reason why you’re leaving us:”.

❌ Poor multiple-choice response options	✅ Better multiple-choice response options
The price is too highI believe it’s expensive for the current feature offerThe platform is complex to navigateI no longer need itI’m changing to a less expensive toolI couldn’t understand the featuresI’m using a new solution	The price is too highThe feature offer falls shortNot enough integrationsI no longer need itThe platform is complex to navigateNo seniority rewardsI’m building a proprietary solution in-houseOther (please specify)

💡Need ideas on what to ask in your next product survey? Explore 15 product survey questions to get better customer insights.

8: Offer opt-out choices

Your goal is to gather meaningful customer data to inform product decisions, improve the user experience or validate a concept. For that to happen, respondents need to actually complete your survey.

Unless you’re offering an incentive to customers for completing the form, they’ve no obligation to fill it out. Therefore, it’s important to give people the option to skip sensitive or irrelevant questions and to clearly communicate that their privacy is protected. Doing so builds trust, reduces drop-offs, and helps you preserve the integrity of your data as respondents don’t need to lie or choose a random option just to move forward.

For example, add this to your sensitive questions:

“Thanks for taking part in this survey. At [Company Name], we take your privacy very seriously. All responses are confidential and anonymized before analysis. We will never share your data with external parties or use it for anything beyond this research. If you have questions about how your data is used, feel free to contact [Contact Name or Team]. Or, click below if you wish to skip this question.”

💡Pro tip: List all of your survey questions on a document. Highlight the ones that are truly necessary for the current research. Make those mandatory and leave the rest as optional. 

9: Use simple language

Keep in mind that the average worker uses 11 apps in a day. If each of these companies launches a survey as part of market research every other month, then your customers are constantly being asked to answer a questionnaire. 

To avoid survey fatigue and ease the burden for your target audience, refrain from asking about complex topics or using ambiguous language. Instead, write survey questions that are short and easy to read, as if you were talking to a 15-year-old. Some ideas include: 

• Sticking to a 9th-11th grade reading level. Use the Hemingway Editor App or a Google extension like Readable to assess this.
• Avoid jargon and super-long sentences
• Keep the questions clear and focused (look at tip number 5)

Remember: The easier your questions are to answer, customers can understand the question, the easier it’ll be for them to give honest answers.

10: Respect your respondents and their time

General surveys should be up to 10 minutes long to maximize the response rate. If you’re conducting deep research or are rewarding customers, you can exceed this parameter. 

We’ve mentioned some of these tips above but it’s worth mentioning again as respecting your respondents and their time also means: 

• Being upfront about the length and goals of the survey. For instance, if you’re conducting a concept testing survey, be upfront with consumers about it.
• Keeping it as short as possible without sacrificing answer quality
• Mixing closed and open-ended survey questions, but sticking to short, multiple-choice or rating scale questions where possible
• Avoiding jargon and only asking difficult questions if it’s absolutely necessary
• Using inclusive language to make customers feel welcomed
• Protecting their privacy and ensuring confidentiality

Another way to show respect for your respondents is when asking about sensitive topics. These include personal demographic questions such as their age, gender, monthly income or sexual orientation. Or, any other questions that they may feel embarrassed to answer, such as alcohol or drug consumption or family background. In these cases:

• Determine whether or not you truly need to ask those questions
• Remind respondents that the answers will remain confidential and anonymized 
• Build trust before asking sensitive questions
• Offer ranged answers to avoid putting customers in an uncomfortable position of sharing the exact truth. For example, “Q: How much do you earn?” “A: $1,000–$3,000/month; $3,001–$5,000/month; $5,001–$7,000/month; More than $7,000/month.”
• Add context to make respondents feel less threatened or targeted. For example, instead of asking, “How many drinks do you have when you go out?” Say: “People in their 30s often drink alcohol when they go out to dinner. How many drinks do you have on average when you go out?” 

Note that all of these tips vary depending on the context. For instance, online surveys are usually much more straightforward, while in user interviews, you have more room to go deeper and ask more personal questions. 

11: Use consistent scales throughout the survey 

This may seem irrelevant, but it makes a big difference. That’s because users start to identify and follow patterns when answering a survey, especially in rating scale questions. Meaning, if you’ve asked the respondent to rate different things from one to five, they expect all rating scales to be the same. 

So, choose a consistent rating scale and stick to it. For example: 

❌ Bad practice	✅ Good practice
1. Rate the invoice feature on a scale of one to 10. 2. Rate the overall system on a scale of one to 5. 3. Rate the customer service from poor to excellent.	1. Rate the invoice feature on a scale of one to five. 2. Rate the overall system on a scale of one to five. 3. Rate the customer service from one to five.

Bonus: Survey question tips from Attest’s research team

As an advanced research platform that helps businesses understand their customers better through surveys and data analysis, we know a thing or two about building great surveys. So, we asked our research team to share their proven customer survey techniques and tips that drive honest answers. This is what they said:

12. Structure your survey using the funnel technique

The funnel technique is about structuring surveys to go from broad and easy-to-answer questions to more complex, time-intensive ones as respondents progress. This technique also invites you to end the survey with necessary, broad demographic questions so customers leave on a high note.

We’ve seen this technique work well for two main reasons: 

1️⃣ It mirrors natural conversation flow. It would make no sense to ask someone a highly personal or sensitive question before you’ve asked for their name or background. 

2️⃣ It builds trust. As mentioned above, before asking complex or sensitive questions, you need the respondents to feel they can trust you, which you can achieve over time.

13. Use “ringer” questions (sparingly)

Ringer or warm-up questions are brief and engaging questions that help grab your customers’ attention. These keep things interesting without derailing the survey. For example: 

• Do you consider yourself more of an introvert or extrovert? 
• Are you a cat or dog person? 
• Pineapple on pizza: Yes or no?

These may seem irrelevant at first, but especially in longer surveys, these types of questions re-engage the respondent. However, only use them occasionally as too many can derail the study, confuse the respondent or extend the survey.

14. Guide respondents through the survey

Many customers like to know why you’re asking certain questions and what’s expected of them. Use text cards (i.e., UI patterns that show text within a box) to guide users through the survey and explain the steps involved. This is particularly helpful if you’re changing topics. 

For example, add a text card at the beginning that reads:

“Thanks for taking part in this survey. Your answers will be used to make product improvements where possible. You’ll be expected to answer fifteen questions divided into three different categories: feature offering, customer support and usage habits. All your answers will remain confidential and will be anonymized and aggregated for analysis.”

You can add additional, shorter cards as the survey progresses. For instance: 

“Congrats! You’ve completed the feature offering category. Click ‘Next’ to access five customer support questions.” 

15. Randomize your answer order

Ever heard of “order bias”? Research shows people tend to pick either the first or last option on a list because they either:

• Read it first and agree off the bat
• Read it last and remember it better

To minimize bias in survey research and gather your customers’ true opinions, rotate the answer choices randomly for each respondent. This can be done automatically with some surveying tools and doesn’t require additional effort. 

Here’s how it would look for customers asked to answer this question: “Which of these statements is true?”

❌ Not randomized answers

✅ Randomized answers

Customer 1:  a. I can invoice new clients easily b. I find it hard to invoice new clients  c. I’ve never used the invoice feature d. It’s easy to invoice registered clients  e. It’s hard to invoice registered clients  f. It’s hard to invoice new and registered clients g. It’s easy to invoice new and registered clients Customer 2:  a. I can invoice new clients easily b. I find it hard to invoice new clients  c. I’ve never used the invoice feature d. It’s easy to invoice registered clients  e. It’s hard to invoice registered clients  f. It’s hard to invoice new and registered clientsI g. t’s easy to invoice new and registered clients

Customer 1:  a. I can invoice new clients easily b. I find it hard to invoice new clients  c. I’ve never used the invoice feature d. It’s easy to invoice registered clients e. It’s hard to invoice registered clients  f. It’s hard to invoice new and registered clients g. It’s easy to invoice new and registered clients Customer 2:  a. It’s hard to invoice new and registered clients b. I can invoice new clients easily c. It’s easy to invoice new and registered clients d. It’s easy to invoice registered clients e. I’ve never used the invoice feature f. I find it hard to invoice new clients  g. It’s hard to invoice registered clients

Note: Make sure not to randomize rating and Likert scale questions, as it could drive confusion.

16. Test and refine your survey

Like everything in product design, you can’t forget to test and iterate. Start with a trial run of your survey to identify confusing or problematic questions. You’ll be able to determine if people drop off after a certain question or if you get too many all-over-the-place answers. Use the feedback gathered in this pilot run to make adjustments before full deployment. 

💡Pro tip: Try sharing this article with your preferred LLM (large language model) or generative AI tool and ask it to rate your survey against these tips. Analyze the response and make relevant adjustments. Make sure to use your own words; you don’t want the questions to sound too robotic. 

Ready to build better surveys?

Writing better survey questions is about using the right words and structure to enable your audience to give honest, actionable answers. As a recap, avoid leading language, use balanced scales, structure surveys using the funnel technique and guide users with text cards. 

Since even a single word can make a big impact on your data quality, nailing down your surveys can be tricky, but you don’t have to go through it alone. With a survey tool like Attest, you get hands-on support from an in-house research team that can help you identify red flags and fine-tune your surveys before they go live.

You also gain access to a wide range of research-backed templates for brand tracking or product testing so you never have to start from scratch. Lastly, once your survey is live, Attest gives you instant feedback on what’s working and what’s not, helping you catch issues before they compromise your results.

Sources:

1. The Three Leading Causes of Customer Churn. Retently. (2024). Found on: https://www.retently.com/blog/three-leading-causes-churn/

2. Wealth Management Digitalization changes client advisory more than ever before. Deloitte. (2017). Found on: https://www.deloittedigital.com/content/dam/digital/mt/documents/Personalisation_Digital.pdf 

3. Little Things Matter: A Sampler of How Differences in Questionnaire FormatCan Affect Survey Responses. (1993). Tom W. Smith. Found on: https://gss.norc.org/content/dam/gss/get-documentation/pdf/reports/methodological-reports/MR078%20Little%20Things%20Matter%20A%20Sample%20of%20How%20Differences%20in%20Questionnaire%20Format%20Can%20Affect%20Survey%20Responses.pdf