Customer feedback form: what to ask

Ask one thing.Ask it while they remember.

A good customer feedback form starts with the one thing you want to learn, and asks three to five questions about it. Mix one rating, such as “How satisfied are you with your order?” from 1 to 5, with one open question about why. Send it at the right moment: a few days after a purchase, the day of an appointment, straight after a support request, or while they are on your website. Below are when to ask, a designer that writes your questions, CSAT vs NPS vs CES, the wording mistakes that spoil answers, five templates, and what to do with what comes back.

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3 to 5 questions one rating, one reason nothing leaves your browser

By the Builderify team

01 One rating 02 One reason 03 Reply to it
01 / When to ask

When to send a customer feedback form
is half of what to ask.

Ask soon after one specific moment, about that moment. A question about yesterday’s appointment gets an answer with details in it; “How are we doing?” three months later gets a shrug. There are four moments worth asking at, and each one suits a different question.

After a purchase CSAT

Two to seven days after delivery, once they have used it. For a service, a day or two after you finish.

A link in a short follow-up email, to a page on your site with the form.

After an appointment CSAT

The same day or the next morning, while the visit is fresh.

A link in a short email or text, to a page on your site with the form.

After a support request CES

Right after the request is closed, about that one conversation only.

A link at the end of your closing reply.

On the website CSAT

During the visit: after a few pages, or on the page that matters, not the moment they land.

A small survey in a corner of the page, or a form in the website widget.

The chip is the rating that suits each moment best. Section 03 explains each one.

When not to ask

  • In the middle of a problem, before it is solved.
  • In the same email as the invoice.
  • The moment someone lands on your site, before they have seen anything.
  • After every single order from a regular. Once every few months is plenty.

Decide the one thing first

Before writing a question, finish this sentence: “After this, I will decide whether to…”. Change the booking process, drop a product, retrain someone, add evening hours. If no answer would change what you do, don’t ask it. That is how a form stays at three questions instead of fifteen.

02 / Form designer

Design your customer feedback form
in three choices.

Pick up to three things you want to learn, when you’ll ask and your kind of business. The designer writes three or four questions (two or three on the website itself), with the right format for each, the exact wording, the answer scale and the Builderify block that asks it. It always keeps one rating and one open question. Copy the plain-text version into any form tool. Nothing you choose leaves your browser.

Form designer · starts as a made-up electrician, after a job
What you want to learn (up to three)
When you’ll ask

No rating picked? The designer adds the one that suits the moment. No open question picked? It adds “why” straight after the rating.

3 questions · After a purchase

When to askTwo to seven days after delivery, once they have used it. For a service, a day or two after you finish.

How it reaches themA link in a short follow-up email, to a page on your site with the form.

Thank you for choosing us. Would you answer three quick questions about the work we did? It takes under a minute.

  1. 01

    NPS Required

    How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?

    Answer: 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely)

    In Builderify: Custom Form, a Radio field with the options 0 to 10

  2. 02

    Open text Optional

    What is one thing we could do better?

    Answer: a few words, in their own way

    In Builderify: Custom Form, a Textarea field, not required

  3. 03

    Open text Optional

    Is there anything else you would like to tell us?

    Answer: a few words, in their own way

    In Builderify: Custom Form, a Textarea field, not required

Set up in BuilderifyBuild one Custom Form with these questions (the Customer Feedback template is a quick start), add it to the Bubble as a Custom Form block with an include rule for one page, such as /feedback, and put that page’s link in your message.

Ratings required, words optional. The number is what you track; a forced comment box gets “ok”. Let people stop after the rating.

The same scale every time. Once you start asking 1 to 5, keep it. Changing the scale or the wording breaks the comparison with last quarter.

No name or email unless you’ll reply. If you want to follow up, add an optional email field and say why. More in Privacy.

03 / Question formats

CSAT vs NPS vs CES, polls and open text:
which format fits which question.

Use CSAT for one purchase or visit, CES for a task, NPS for the relationship, a poll for a decision, and open text for the reasons behind all of them. The three scores are not rivals; they answer different questions. For a small business, one CSAT or CES question at the right moment, plus “why”, is usually all you need.

  1. NPS

    Net Promoter Score

    “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”, 0 to 10.

    Loyalty to you as a whole, tracked over months. Ask it of customers who know you, not after one support chat.

    NPS block, Numbers (0-10)

  2. CSAT

    Customer satisfaction

    “How satisfied are you with your order?”, 1 to 5.

    One purchase, visit or appointment, asked straight after it. The easiest number to act on.

    NPS block in 1-5 or emoji style, or a Custom Form radio field

  3. CES

    Customer effort

    “How easy was it to book your appointment?”, 1 to 5.

    A task: checkout, booking, getting a problem solved. A low score points at the step to fix.

    A Custom Form radio field

  4. Poll

    One choice

    “Which should we add next?” with four or five options.

    A decision you are about to make. Counts, not reasons.

    Polls block

  5. Open

    Open text

    “What is one thing we could do better?”

    The reasons behind every number. Keep one, make it optional.

    NPS feedback question, or a Custom Form textarea

CSAT vs NPS vs CES, side by side

NPS was introduced by Fred Reichheld in the Harvard Business Review in December 2003.HBR Bain’s definition: promoters answer 9 or 10, passives 7 or 8, detractors 0 to 6, and the score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors.Bain IBM describes CSAT as the share of positive answers (4 or 5 out of 5) and CES as how easy it is for a customer to use a product or service.IBM The case for measuring effort comes from Dixon, Freeman and Toman’s 2010 HBR article, which argued against going “above and beyond” for its own sake.HBR

A caution on small numbers: with 20 answers, one person moving from a 6 to a 9 moves your NPS by 10 points. Read the comments before the score until you have a few hundred answers.

CSAT, NPS and CES compared
CSAT NPS CES
Asks How satisfied are you with…? How likely are you to recommend us…? How easy was it to…?
Scale Usually 1 to 5 0 to 10 Usually 1 to 5 or 1 to 7
Score % answering 4 or 5 % of 9–10 minus % of 0–6, from −100 to 100 Average, or % finding it easy; methods vary
Measures One purchase, visit or reply Loyalty to the business overall The effort of one task
Ask it Right after the moment Every few months, to customers who know you After support, checkout or booking
Watch out Says nothing about whether they’ll come back Swings a lot with few answers; a 7 counts for nothing Only useful when there is a task to judge

Polls and open text don’t produce a score, and that’s fine. A poll settles “which of these four?”; an open question tells you why the numbers moved. If you want answers that sort people into groups rather than rate you, that is a quiz: see the guide to a lead scoring quiz.

04 / Wording

Six wording mistakes
that spoil the answers.

Ask one thing per question, in plain words, without hinting at the answer. Read each question aloud before it goes out: if it needs a breath in the middle or has an “and” in it, split it.

  • 01 Leading How much did you enjoy our friendly service? How would you rate our service? The question tells them the answer you want, so you get it.
  • 02 Double-barrelled How fast and friendly was our team? Ask about speed and friendliness separately, or pick one. A 3 could mean fast but rude, or friendly but slow.
  • 03 Unbalanced scale Excellent / Very good / Good / Fair Very unsatisfied, unsatisfied, neutral, satisfied, very satisfied. Three of four options are positive, so the result looks better than it is.
  • 04 Too long Taking into account all your interactions with us over the past year, including… Overall, how satisfied are you with us this year? Long questions get skimmed and answered at random.
  • 05 Asking what you know Your order number, email and date of purchase Leave them out, or fill them in for the customer. Every field you add costs answers. You already have this.
  • 06 Required essays A required “Please explain your score” box Make open questions optional. Forced text gets “ok” and “n/a”, or an abandoned form.
05 / Templates

Customer feedback form templates
for five situations.

Pick the situation, copy the questions, and change the nouns to yours. Each comes with the line that introduces it, so the customer knows how long it takes before they start.

Need something else? The form designer above writes these from your own choices.

After a service visit

When: The same day or the next morning, while the visit is fresh.

Thank you for your time today. Would you answer three quick questions about our visit? It takes under a minute.

  1. 01

    CSATRequired

    Overall, how satisfied are you with our visit?

    Answer: 1 (very unsatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied)

  2. 02

    Open textOptional

    What is one thing we could do better?

    Answer: a few words, in their own way

  3. 03

    Open textOptional

    Is there anything else you would like to tell us?

    Answer: a few words, in their own way

06 / After the answers

What to do with customer feedback
once it arrives.

Reply to the unhappy ones, fix what comes up twice, and tell customers what changed. Feedback nobody acts on teaches customers that the form is decoration, and the next one gets fewer answers.

One rule for reviews

Don’t use the score to decide who gets asked for a Google review. Google’s policy says businesses may not “selectively solicit positive reviews from customers”Google, so a form that sends the 9s and 10s to Google and the rest to a private box breaks it. Ask everyone for a review the same way, at a separate moment: the guide on how to get more Google reviews has the wording.

  1. 1

    Reply to every low score within a day or two

    Only where they left a way to reach them. Thank them, say what you understood, and say what you’ll do. Don’t argue with the score, and don’t ask them to change it. A quick, human reply to a 3 often does more than anything else on this page.

  2. 2

    Sort the comments once a week

    Read every one and tag it with a word or two: “price”, “wait”, “booking”, “staff”. Count the tags. One complaint is a story; the same complaint five times is a job for this month.

  3. 3

    Tell people what changed

    A line in your next email or a note on the site: “You said booking was fiddly on a phone, so we fixed it.” It is the cheapest way to get more answers next time.

  4. 4

    Ask the happy ones for a testimonial

    A customer who wrote a warm comment has already done half the work. Ask, separately, whether you may quote them, and how they want to be named: the guide on how to get testimonials from clients has the questions and the permission wording, and adding testimonials to your website covers where they go. Never quote a feedback comment without that yes.

07 / Privacy

Feedback forms and privacy:
ask only what you need.

A feedback form needs answers, not identities. Under UK and EU data protection law, personal data should be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for your purpose, as the ICO puts it.ICO For most feedback that means no name, no phone number, and an email only if you will reply.

01

Anonymous by default

People are franker when they aren’t named. If you need to know which order or visit it was about, link from that order’s email rather than asking them to type it in.

02

An optional email, with a reason

“Leave your email if you’d like us to get back to you.” Then use it for that reply only, and keep the answers no longer than you need them.

03

Marketing is a separate yes

An email given for a reply is not permission to send your newsletter. Add a separate, unticked box if you want that, and read whether you can email customers without consent first.

This is general information, not legal advice. Rules differ by country.

08 / In Builderify

How to collect customer feedback
on your own website.

Builderify asks feedback questions with three blocks, all from one script tag on your site. The NPS block asks a rating and a reason in a small popup, the Polls block asks one multiple-choice question, and a Custom Form in the website widget Bubble holds a longer form. Each block takes include and exclude rules, so it appears only on the pages you choose.

A rating and a reason

NPS block

  • Four styles: Numbers 0–10, reported as NPS; Numbers 1–5, three emoji or five emoji, reported as CSAT, the share of happy answers.
  • A feedback question after the score, and optionally a different one for unhappy, neutral and happy answers.
  • The score is saved the moment it is picked; the comment and an email are optional, with a Skip.
  • Opens in a corner or the centre, a set number of days (0 to 30) after someone’s first visit, and not again for 30, 60 or 90 days after they answer.
  • Results: the score, a week-by-week chart, promoters, passives and detractors with each comment, filters and a CSV export.

One question, a few options

Polls block

  • One question with 2 to 10 options, shown as a stack or a grid.
  • Single or multiple choice.
  • Results always public, public after voting, or private.
  • One vote per browser session or per IP address.
  • Opens as a popup, on a delay, at a scroll depth, on exit intent, after a number of page views or on a click.

The full form

Custom Form block

  • Field types: Text, Email, Phone, Textarea, Select, Checkbox, Radio and Consent. Start empty or from a template, such as Customer Feedback.
  • Each submission is kept with the form, with the page and the date: search it, filter by date, export to CSV.
  • Each one shows in the activity feed, and account owners get an email unless they switch it off.
  • Joins a lead list only if the form has a Consent box they ticked and the block has a list set, so feedback signs nobody up by itself.

Unhappy answers find you. Every NPS or satisfaction answer is logged in the activity feed, and an unhappy one (0 to 6, or the low end of a short scale) is emailed to account owners unless they turn that off, which makes step 1 of closing the loop hard to miss. The NPS and Polls blocks are in the popup builder’s family of overlays, with the same rules, schedule and triggers.

Sending the link after a purchase or visit? Put customers who agreed to hear from you on a list, and a sequence in Sequences can send the feedback link a set number of days after each one joins. Every account gets 250 free credits a month, and page loads with the widget on them are counted. There is no monthly fee; packs start at $9 and purchased credits never expire. The whole rate card is on the pricing page.

Questions

Customer feedback forms, before you ask.

Decide the one thing you want to learn, then ask three to five questions about it. Start with one rating, such as how satisfied they are from 1 to 5, follow it with one open question about why, and add a question only if its answer would change what you do. Make the rating required and the open questions optional.

CSAT asks how satisfied someone is with one purchase, visit or reply, usually from 1 to 5, and is reported as the share who answer 4 or 5. NPS asks how likely they are to recommend you, from 0 to 10, and is the percentage of 9s and 10s minus the percentage of 0s to 6s. CSAT suits a single moment; NPS tracks loyalty over months. CES, a third score, asks how easy a task was.

Three to five after a purchase, an appointment or a support request, and two or three for a survey shown on your website while people browse. Every extra question costs answers, so cut anything you already know, such as the order number, and anything you would not act on.

Show a short survey on the pages that matter, after someone has had time to look around. In Builderify, the NPS block asks a 0 to 10, 1 to 5 or emoji rating and a follow-up question in a small popup, the Polls block asks one multiple-choice question, and a Custom Form in the Bubble holds a longer form. Each block can be limited to the pages you choose.

Usually, yes. People answer more frankly when they are not named, and data protection rules ask you to collect only what you need. Add an optional email field only if you will reply, say so next to it, and do not add those addresses to your newsletter without a separate yes.

Sources

All six were read on 29 October 2026. The timing, question wording and templates on this page are common practice, not the result of a study. The Builderify details come from the Bubble, Popups and Leads pages and the rate card on this site. Every business, answer and score on this page is made up, and nothing here is legal advice.

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