Here’s the go-to resource for understanding and optimizing your users' onboarding experience. It’s designed to simplify the process of using this specific template to evaluate and refine your onboarding flows, enabling you to gather actionable insights that ensure users feel guided, supported, and aligned with your product’s value from the start.

Here’s what you’ll find:

If you’re new to onboarding experience surveys or looking to elevate your current approach, this awesome guide will equip you with the tools and knowledge to design, deploy, and interpret surveys effectively. Less writing more showing, let’s go!

The onboarding experience survey evaluates how effectively your onboarding process meets the needs and expectations of your users. It provides valuable insights into how intuitive, engaging, and helpful your onboarding flow is while highlighting areas that may need improvement.

These surveys typically ask users to rate their onboarding experience on a scale from 1 (very dissatisfying) to 5 (very satisfying), allowing you to collect both quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback to align your onboarding process with users’ actual needs. Here’s how it looks:

Based on their ratings, users are categorized into three groups:

Understanding these groups allows you to target improvements, celebrate successes, and create an onboarding process that leaves users feeling confident, supported, and ready to engage with your product.

The "best" channel for onboarding experience surveys depends on how and when your users engage with your onboarding process, the timing of feedback collection, and the method that ensures you capture their impressions effectively. Here’s a breakdown of the most effective channels for different scenarios:

Email surveys are perfect for capturing users’ overall impressions of your onboarding experience. They work best when sent a few days after onboarding, allowing users to reflect on the process as a whole, from account creation to exploring key features. This approach ensures detailed feedback about the entire onboarding journey.

In-app surveys are ideal for collecting feedback during specific onboarding steps, such as completing a tutorial, discovering a new feature, or setting up an account. These surveys provide real-time insights by capturing impressions while the experience is still fresh.

Website pop-ups work well for gathering feedback at key moments in the onboarding flow, like completing a form, watching an instructional video, or interacting with help content. These quick surveys help identify specific friction points and opportunities for improvement in real time.

If your onboarding process includes live chat or support interactions, follow-up surveys are excellent for evaluating the quality of these touchpoints. They allow you to assess whether users found the support helpful in resolving specific onboarding challenges.

Mobile app feedback

For users engaging with your product on mobile devices, mobile-friendly surveys within your app or via push notifications are an effective way to collect feedback. These surveys are easy to access and well-suited for users who may prefer interacting through mobile channels. They ensure you capture impressions seamlessly during mobile onboarding experiences.

Choosing the right channel depends on your audience and the feedback you want to collect. By using the appropriate method at the right time, you can gain valuable insights to refine and optimize your onboarding experience.

To gain the most valuable insights from your onboarding experience surveys, it’s essential to target the right segments of your audience. Here’s a guide to the groups that can provide the most impactful feedback—some may be more obvious than others:

New users who recently completed onboarding for fresh perspectives
Surveying users shortly after they’ve completed the onboarding process captures their immediate impressions. Whether they just signed up, finished a tutorial, or explored key features, their feedback is crucial for assessing how intuitive and helpful the onboarding journey was.

Why?
These users provide fresh, unbiased insights into the onboarding experience, highlighting what worked well and what could be improved to make the process smoother.

Users who experienced onboarding challenges for pinpointing friction points
Target users who may have encountered difficulties during onboarding, such as confusion with instructions or delays in setup. Their feedback can uncover specific pain points that hinder a seamless onboarding experience.

Why?
These users can provide actionable feedback that helps identify and resolve bottlenecks, ensuring a more effective and enjoyable process for future users.

Long-term users for evaluating lasting impressions
Your long-term users, who successfully navigated the onboarding process and continued using your product, can offer valuable insights on how their initial onboarding experience influenced their overall engagement.

Why?
These users help you assess whether your onboarding flow set them up for long-term success and can provide ideas for optimizing the experience to create stronger first impressions for new users.

Creating your first onboarding experience survey is easy, but first, you have to decide which channel you’ll be using. We’ve covered that on the previous section: What is the best channel for onboarding experience surveys?

So whether you want to send it through email or place it on your website or mobile app, we’ve got you covered.

Once you decide on which channel you’re going with, feel free to jump to that section:

Step 1. Create an onboarding experience survey

In the main dashboard, click on the Create new survey button.

From there, pick how you would like to start. We recommend starting with an AI-assisted creation or template library for a swift creation. These will get you up to starting your survey in

no time!

Step 2. Edit the questions to your liking

If you started with the template library or AI survey creator, you’ll get your survey questions already set for you. You can later edit them to your liking, or add new questions by clicking on “Add new question”. Here you can find a complete list of question and action types.

If you’ve started using one of our pre-made templates or the AI survey creator, you’ll see that your survey questions are already set up for you. However, you can always edit these questions to better align with your brand's tone and the feedback you’re looking to gather. To make changes, simply click on “Add new question” or adjust the existing ones.

Below, you’ll find a list of different ways to frame your onboarding experience questions, as well as some tips for customizing follow-up questions.

The primary question is typically: "How would you rate your experience getting started with Survicate?"

However, we encourage you to tailor this question to better fit your brand voice and communication style. Here are some variations that our customers have used to align more closely with their specific business needs:

Crafting Effective Follow-Up Questions

Beyond simply asking about the onboarding experience, it’s essential to follow up based on the responses you receive. This helps you dig deeper into customer perceptions and improve their experience. Below are some of our recommended follow-up questions tailored to different satisfaction levels:

For users who select 🎉 very satisfying (4-5):

These users found the onboarding process seamless and valuable. Build on their positive experience to encourage advocacy:

For users who select 😐 neutral (3):

Neutral feedback signals that while the process wasn’t frustrating, it also didn’t stand out. Use these follow-ups to uncover areas for improvement:

For users who select 😟 very dissatisfying (1-2):

These users faced challenges or frustrations. Addressing their concerns is crucial to prevent drop-offs and improve your process:

Step 3. Configure your survey(optional)

Going into the Configure tab, you can modify settings responsible for identifying the respondents and survey status.

If you want your respondents to be recognized, you have to have a tool selected in the field. There are plenty of tools to choose from including favorites like:

⚠️Important - if you need your responses to be anonymous, go ahead and skip this step.

Step 4. Integrate with your favorite tools (optional)

In the connect tab, you can also integrate your survey with other apps that you use on a daily basis. This is, of course, optional, but we highly recommend that you take advantage of this feature

Essentially, integrations will help you automate processes and workflows. For example, you can create triggers based on survey responses to automate support tickets, task assignments, and personalized follow-up actions. The idea here is to have everything in one place, saving you time, improving efficiency, and ensuring that you act on customer feedback right away.

To give you a better idea of what you can do, here are some popular integrations that our customers use:

Hubspot -

The Surivcate and HubSpot integration allows you to:

⚠️Bonus - with the new HubSpot App Cards feature, you can also:

Find out more about the HubSpot integration here.

Slack -

The Surivcate and Slack integration allows you to:

Find out more about the Slack integration here.

Klaviyo -

The Surivcate and Klaviyo integration allows you to:

Find out more about the Klaviyo integration here.

Survicate natively integrates with 80+ tools. If you didn’t see your favorite integration listed in these examples, don’t worry, here’s a full list.

Step 5. Launch your survey

And the most important step to get your survey out there is to share it. In the Share tab, you can adjust the preview, description, and the name the respondents will see when the survey is opened in your browser.

⚠️Important - To share your survey, you will need to create that email in your email service provider and set up the audience there. From there, you can simply follow one of the options below to finish sending your survey:

All you need to do is copy the code generated once you click on the ‘Get your code’ button and paste it into an HTML editor of your software. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. No coding or technical skills required.

⚠️Important - Don’t forget to choose your email software in ‘Responses identification’ to see the names and emails of your respondents.

Step 6. Analyze your data

How to act on onboarding experience feedback

Once your respondents start completing the survey, analyzing the data becomes key to understanding their experiences and improving your onboarding process. Here’s how you can act on the feedback based on each segment:

🎉Very satisfying (4-5 stars)

These users found your onboarding process exceptional, intuitive, and highly valuable. Their positive experience is a strong indicator of long-term engagement and product loyalty. Here’s how to leverage their feedback:

😐Neutral (3 stars)

These users felt the onboarding experience was average. They weren’t frustrated, but they didn’t feel particularly excited either. This group can provide actionable insights to make your onboarding process smoother and more engaging.

😟Very dissatisfying (1 star)

These users had a frustrating onboarding experience, often due to confusing steps, insufficient guidance, or unmet expectations. Their feedback is a critical tool for identifying major pain points and preventing user drop-off.

Use AI to do the work for you!

Analyzing onboarding feedback manually can be time-consuming. Luckily, our AI-powered tools make understanding and acting on your data much easier. Here’s how our Insights Hub and Research Assistant can help you optimize your onboarding experience:

Insights Hub

Insights Hub is your go-to for automatically categorizing feedback into topics, making it simple to identify what’s working and what’s not in your onboarding process. When connected, it organizes responses into clear categories and provides direct feedback within each topic for immediate action..

Topics you’ll most often find:

Insights Hub is mainly used to:

For a full guide on how to use it, check this out. But not to leave you empty-handed, here are some ways you can apply it for your onboarding experience surveys:

Research Assistant

And of course on top of that, you get our research assistant. It…assists you with your…research 😀. Find answers to all your questions quickly and effectively just by asking it.

The research assistant takes your feedback and can answer your questions based on:

For a full guide on how to use it, check this out. For now, here’s the top reasons why you should try it out for your onboarding experience surveys:

Sample questions to ask your Research Assistant about onboarding surveys:

Send your Promoters to your review site

Use the momentum and ask your Promoters for a positive review. Using the ‘Thank you’ question type, you can redirect your Promoters straight to your favorite review site.

Use follow-up questions (logic)

A highly effective way to gather detailed insights from onboarding experience surveys is by using follow-up questions tailored to the respondent's previous answers. This approach helps you uncover specific areas of improvement or aspects of the onboarding process that stand out.

For example, if a respondent indicates that their onboarding experience was smooth, you can ask which part of the process they found most helpful. Alternatively, if someone reports difficulties, you can ask what specific steps were confusing or what additional resources would have made the process easier. Our survey logic feature makes this customization possible. With survey logic, you can create dynamic question paths that adapt based on respondents’ answers. This ensures your survey remains relevant and engaging while helping you collect focused feedback on the onboarding journey.

To review or adjust the logic in your survey, simply click on the desired question and navigate to the Logic tab:

If you’d like to use this feature for your newly added questions, it’s quite easy to set up.

How to add logic

Step 1.

Once you’ve added your question and added a Single answer selection or a Dropdown list, as well as the other survey questions, head over to the Logic tab of the question and click on + Add new logic.

Step 2.

Here, you'll see the If answer condition, letting you decide when to apply logic.

You can choose to apply logic if the response is or is not equal to one of the answer choices or when it has any value.

This means you’ve got a lot of possibilities to work with. Here’s a breakdown:

If you select Answer 1 or Answer 2, this logic will work for the respondents who select Answer 1 or Answer 2.

If you select Answer 1 or Answer 2, this logic will work for the respondents who select anything other than Answer 1 and Answer 2, such as Answer 3.

Step 1. Choose how you would like to create your survey

In the main dashboard, click on the Create new survey button.

And from there you are met with a new screen. There are four options to choose from:

For the purpose of this guide, we’ll be focusing on ‘Use a template’.

Step 2. Edit the questions to your liking

If you started with the template library or AI survey creator, you’ll get your survey questions already set for you. You can later edit them to your liking, or add new questions by clicking on “Add new question”. Here you can find a complete list of question and action types.

If you’ve started using one of our pre-made templates or the AI survey creator, you’ll see that your survey questions are already set up for you. However, you can always edit these questions to better align with your brand's tone and the feedback you’re looking to gather. To make changes, simply click on “Add new question” or adjust the existing ones. Below, you’ll find a list of different ways to frame your onboarding experience questions, as well as some tips for customizing follow-up questions.

The primary onboarding experience question is typically: "How would you rate your experience getting started with Survicate?"

However, we encourage you to tailor this question to better fit your brand voice and communication style. Here are some variations that our customers have used to align more closely with their specific business needs:

Crafting Effective Follow-Up Questions

Beyond simply asking about the onboarding experience, it’s essential to follow up based on the responses you receive. This helps you dig deeper into customer perceptions and improve their experience. Below are some of our recommended follow-up questions tailored to different satisfaction levels:

For users who select 🎉 very satisfying (4-5):

These users found the onboarding process seamless and valuable. Build on their positive experience to encourage advocacy:

For users who select 😐 neutral (3):

Neutral feedback signals that while the process wasn’t frustrating, it also didn’t stand out. Use these follow-ups to uncover areas for improvement:

For users who select 😟 very dissatisfying (1-2):

These users faced challenges or frustrations. Addressing their concerns is crucial to prevent drop-offs and improve your process:

Step 3. Target your survey (optional)

Going into the Target tab, this will give you a chance to target your website surveys to specific times, a certain group of visitors, and beyond.

It’s important that you target each survey to the visitors who are more likely to contribute meaningfully. Targeting has a lot of benefits, these include:

Step 4. Integrate with your favorite tools (optional)

In the connect tab, you can also integrate your survey with other apps that you use on a daily basis. This is, of course, optional, but we highly recommend that you take advantage of this feature.

Essentially, integrations will help you automate processes and workflows. For example, you can create triggers based on survey responses to automate support tickets, task assignments, and personalized follow-up actions. The idea here is to have everything in one place, saving you time, improving efficiency, and ensuring that you act on customer feedback right away.

To give you a better idea of what you can do, here are some popular integrations that our customers use:

Hubspot -

The Surivcate and HubSpot integration allows you to:

⚠️Bonus - with the new HubSpot App Cards feature, you can also:

Find out more about the HubSpot integration here.

Slack -

The Surivcate and Slack integration allows you to:

Find out more about the Slack integration here.

Klaviyo -

The Surivcate and Klaviyo integration allows you to:

Find out more about the Klaviyo integration here.

Survicate natively integrates with 80+ tools. If you didn’t see your favorite integration listed in these examples, don’t worry, here’s a full list.

Step 5. Launch your survey

And the most important step to get your survey out there is to launch it. In the Launch tab, if you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to install the Survicate code on your site. You’ve got a couple of options to choose from:

Great, you’re to go now. Start your survey and gather customer insights right from your website or in-product. You can start it right awa or set a custom date to start your survey.

Step 6. Analyze your data

Once you’ve collected some feedback, you’re ready to analyze it. Here’s a section dedicated to analyzing your data.

Step 1. Choose how you would like to create your survey

In the main dashboard, click on the Create new survey button.

And from there you are met with a new screen. There are four options to choose from:

For the purpose of this guide, we’ll be focusing on ‘Use a template’.

Step 2. Edit the questions to your liking

If you started with the template library or AI survey creator, you’ll get your survey questions already set for you. You can later edit them to your liking, or add new questions by clicking on “Add new question”. Here you can find a complete list of question and action types.

If you’ve started using one of our pre-made templates or the AI survey creator, you’ll see that your survey questions are already set up for you. However, you can always edit these questions to better align with your brand's tone and the feedback you’re looking to gather. To make changes, simply click on “Add new question” or adjust the existing ones. Below, you’ll find a list of different ways to frame your onboarding experience questions, as well as some tips for customizing follow-up questions.

The primary onboarding experience question is typically: "How would you rate your experience getting started with Survicate?"

However, we encourage you to tailor this question to better fit your brand voice and communication style. Here are some variations that our customers have used to align more closely with their specific business needs:

Crafting Effective Follow-Up Questions

Beyond simply asking about the onboarding experience, it’s essential to follow up based on the responses you receive. This helps you dig deeper into customer perceptions and improve their experience. Below are some of our recommended follow-up questions tailored to different satisfaction levels:

For users who select 🎉 very satisfying (4-5):

These users found the onboarding process seamless and valuable. Build on their positive experience to encourage advocacy:

For users who select 😐 neutral (3):

Neutral feedback signals that while the process wasn’t frustrating, it also didn’t stand out. Use these follow-ups to uncover areas for improvement:

For users who select 😟 very dissatisfying (1-2):

These users faced challenges or frustrations. Addressing their concerns is crucial to prevent drop-offs and improve your process:

Step 3. Target your survey (optional)

Going into the Target tab, this will give you a chance to target your website surveys to specific times, a certain group of visitors, and beyond.

It’s important that you target each survey to the visitors who are more likely to contribute meaningfully. Targeting has a lot of benefits, these include:

Step 4. Integrate with your favorite tools (optional)

In the connect tab, you can also integrate your survey with other apps that you use on a daily basis. This is, of course, optional, but we highly recommend that you take advantage of this feature.

Essentially, integrations will help you automate processes and workflows. For example, you can create triggers based on survey responses to automate support tickets, task assignments, and personalized follow-up actions. The idea here is to have everything in one place, saving you time, improving efficiency, and ensuring that you act on customer feedback right away.

To give you a better idea of what you can do, here are some popular integrations that our customers use:

Hubspot -

The Surivcate and HubSpot integration allows you to:

⚠️Bonus - with the new HubSpot App Cards feature, you can also:

Find out more about the HubSpot integration here.

Slack -

The Surivcate and Slack integration allows you to:

Find out more about the Slack integration here.

Klaviyo -

The Surivcate and Klaviyo integration allows you to:

Find out more about the Klaviyo integration here.

Survicate natively integrates with 80+ tools. If you didn’t see your favorite integration listed in these examples, don’t worry, here’s a full list.

Step 5. Launch your survey

And the most important step to get your survey out there is to launch it. In the Launch tab, if you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to install and configure our SDK. Here are the options you can choose from:

Great, you’re to go now. Start your survey and gather customer insights right from your website or in-product. You can start it right awa or set a custom date to start your survey.

Step 6. Reap the benefits (and analyze)

Once you’ve collected some feedback, you’re ready to analyze it. Here’s a section dedicated to analyzing your data.

Curious how others are using their surveys within their strategy? Here’s a collection of amazing customer success stories to spark some ideas and inspire you.

Agandor

Creating a seamless onboarding experience is crucial for Agendor, a CRM platform for sales professionals. To optimize the onboarding process, Agendor uses our onboarding experience surveys to gather feedback at critical moments.

Key Achievements:

By integrating our surveys within their app, Agendor captures real-time insights during onboarding. Feedback revealed blockers like difficulties with mobile app synchronization, leading to improved tutorials and better feature visibility. Survicate’s targeting ensures Agendor connects with users at the right time, creating a data-driven, user-friendly onboarding experience.

Here’s the full story

Hitta

Providing a smooth onboarding experience is essential for Hitta, a leading Swedish search engine and directory. By leveraging our onboarding experience surveys, Hitta gathers valuable insights to refine the customer journey and enhance user satisfaction.

Key Achievements:

Hitta integrates our surveys into its onboarding flow, including a welcome call 30 days after an order to ensure a seamless experience. Moreover, surveys conducted at strategic intervals (45 and 180 days) help identify friction points and provide data-driven recommendations for improving onboarding.

Ultimately our CRM integration enables Hitta to proactively address detractors’ concerns, driving further enhancements and reinforcing their commitment to customer satisfaction.

Here’s the full story

1. Can I trigger an onboarding survey at a specific point in the user journey?
Yes, you can use event-based targeting to trigger an onboarding survey when a specific event occurs, such as completing a sign-up, finishing a tutorial, or reaching a key milestone. You can try this using website surveys, more on that here.

1. How do I analyze responses from onboarding surveys?
You can use Insights Hub to automatically identify patterns and themes in feedback. Look for common responses around pain points or areas where users might get stuck during onboarding to refine your onboarding process. Here's that section, in case you missed it.

2. What metrics should I focus on in onboarding surveys?
When analyzing onboarding experience surveys in the analysis tab, focus on the response rate to understand engagement with the survey and the overall satisfaction score to gauge how users perceive the onboarding process. Pay attention to the completion rate to identify potential friction points and analyze qualitative feedback to uncover recurring themes or issues. If the survey includes a Net Promoter Score (NPS®) question, use it to measure the likelihood of users recommending your product after onboarding.

1. How can I improve response rates for onboarding surveys?

1. How can onboarding surveys help reduce churn?
By identifying friction points during onboarding, you can address issues before they lead to dissatisfaction. This means you get a chance to proactively improve the onboarding experience based on survey insights, which can lead to higher user retention and reduced churn.

2. What’s the ideal timing to send a follow-up survey post-onboarding?
Send a follow-up survey 7-14 days after users complete the onboarding process to evaluate their long-term impressions and identify any lingering challenges.

1. How do I re-engage users who didn’t complete their onboarding process?
Segment your audience to identify users who dropped off at specific steps. Send them a personalized email or in-app message, including a link to the onboarding survey, to understand why they didn’t complete the process and offer assistance.

2. Can I gather feedback from users who successfully completed onboarding?
Yes, you can send a satisfaction survey to users who completed onboarding to learn what worked well and what could be improved. Highlight their success to encourage participation. This a great practice!

1. What integrations can enhance my onboarding survey analysis?

More on that in this section.

Help Center articles:

User Onboarding Design: How to Get it Right with Surveys?

Net Promoter, NPS, and the NPS - related emoticons are registered U.S. trademarks, and Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.