Here are some of the best questions for a power user survey about workflow efficiency, with tips for designing them to get rich, actionable insights. You can quickly build your own AI-powered survey in seconds using Specific’s survey generator.
10 best open-ended questions for workflow efficiency surveys
Open-ended questions are the workhorses for uncovering real stories and pain points. They let power users share experiences in their own words, revealing what actually drives (or blocks) efficiency. These questions work best when you want insights that go beyond numbers—when you need qualitative feedback or want to surface ideas you hadn’t considered.
Benefits: Open questions invite detail, suggest future improvements, and can uncover hidden needs or creative workarounds that multiple-choice options miss. Combine them with great follow-up questions for even stronger insights.
What steps in your workflow do you find most efficient? Why?
Can you describe any recurring bottlenecks or slowdowns you experience when using our product?
What, if anything, disrupts your momentum when you’re working on key tasks?
Tell us about a recent challenge you faced while trying to complete your work faster.
How does our product help you save time? Are there aspects that still feel manual or repetitive?
If you could automate any task in your workflow, what would it be and why?
Are there features or integrations you wish existed to make your process smoother?
What do you do outside our platform to fill gaps in your workflow?
Have you discovered any “hacks” or shortcuts that make you more productive? Please share!
What’s the single change we could make to help you achieve your goals faster?
Integrating these questions guides the conversation to highlight both wins and inefficiencies—crucial for creating better workflow tools. Considering 66% of knowledge workers see major productivity boosts with automation, focusing on how workflows can be streamlined is where the magic happens. [1]
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for workflow efficiency
Single-select multiple-choice questions are best when you need to quantify opinions, spot trends, or set up deeper conversations. They take the mental load off users, letting them choose an option instead of writing a full response. This makes for quick, low-friction answers—and can serve as a springboard for smart, targeted follow-ups.
Question: Which part of your workflow currently feels the most time-consuming?
Data entry or organization
Sharing or collaborating with teammates
Tracking progress or status
Finding information/resources
Other
Question: How often do you use workflow automation tools?
Every day
A few times a week
A few times a month
Rarely or never
Question: Do you feel that our current workflow features meet your needs?
Yes, completely
Partially
No, there are gaps
When to follow up with “why?” We always recommend triggering a “why?” when you need to dig beneath the surface. If a user selects “Partially” or “No” to the workflow features question, a targeted “Why?” or “Which needs are unmet?” can open up specific pain points or requests—which is priceless feedback for product teams.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? If the workflow is complex or unique to many users, “Other” invites unexpected insights that aren’t captured in predefined options. Always follow up with a request for elaboration—these responses often signal emerging trends or niche power user hacks.
Should you use an NPS-style question for workflow efficiency?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a proven way to quantify loyalty and satisfaction, even for workflow-centric tools. For power users, it measures: “How likely are you to recommend our workflow/product to a colleague?” Pairing NPS with an open-ended “why?” surfaces underlying reasons behind promotion or detractor behavior.
Power users’ NPS insights are especially valuable—they’re the people who integrate your tool deeply, so their critiques and praise speak volumes. Curious how this works? You can generate an NPS workflow survey for power users via Specific in seconds.
AI-powered surveys consistently outperform traditional surveys on key engagement metrics—AI forms see completion rates of 70–80%, and lower abandonment rates (15–25%), whereas old-school forms struggle at 45–50% with up to 55% abandonment. [2]
The power of follow-up questions
Conversations are richer when you don’t stop at the first answer. That’s why automated follow-up questions change the survey game—they clarify, probe, and explore without extra manual work. Specific leverages AI follow-up technology to generate custom, context-aware follow-ups in real time. It’s like having an expert interviewer on every response, surfacing risks, motivations, or previously unseen ideas as they emerge.
This approach saves hours you’d otherwise spend chasing down clarifications via email. Most importantly, AI follow-ups adapt—the conversation continues naturally, not with canned scripts. Here’s how dialogue clarity can break down without follow-ups:
Power user: “Sometimes it just feels clunky to get my reports done.”
AI follow-up: “Can you tell me which part of the report creation feels clunky or takes too long?”
Instead of guessing what “clunky” means, the AI asks for specifics, unlocking actionable feedback for design or workflow improvements.
How many follow-ups to ask? Generally, 2–3 targeted follow-ups get you the details you need without overwhelming users. Give users the option to skip if satisfied—Specific includes built-in settings for this, so you gather just enough context without slowing down your survey.
This makes it a conversational survey: Every exchange feels like a dialogue, not a test—boosting engagement and surfacing honest responses
Easy AI analysis of open responses: Even giant piles of qualitative data are easy to analyze thanks to AI survey response analysis—no tedious manual coding required.
AI-powered follow-ups are a new standard: try generating a workflow efficiency survey with follow-ups to see how much deeper the insights can go.
How to prompt ChatGPT (or GPT-4) for great workflow survey questions
The magic of AI survey tools is in how you prompt them. Here’s one way to guide ChatGPT or a similar model to create excellent workflow efficiency survey questions for power users:
Start with a direct prompt for open-ended questions:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Power User survey about Workflow Efficiency.
For better results, add your context—about your product, persona, goal, and type of insights you want. Here’s what that can look like:
My product is a team collaboration tool aimed at fast-growing startups. I want to identify workflow inefficiencies, feature gaps, and automations that will supercharge our power users. Suggest 10 powerful open-ended questions to guide discovery.
Next, structure the results with categories:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
To go even deeper, pick categories most relevant to your research and prompt AI again:
Generate 10 questions for categories such as Workflow Bottlenecks, Automation Pain Points, and Time-Saving Features.
This layered approach helps you iteratively refine until you get the perfect survey questions for your specific audience. If you’d rather skip the manual prompting, Specific’s AI survey generator does this for you.
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys are AI-powered forms that feel like a chat, not an interrogation—responsive, adaptive, and easy to complete. The key difference from traditional surveys: questions evolve in real time based on previous replies, and follow-ups clarify details without more back-and-forth or clunky forms. These differences drive much higher survey engagement and richer, more precise answers.
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Conversational Survey |
|---|---|
Draft every question by hand | AI creates survey structure based on your goals |
No smart follow-ups | Context-aware, dynamic follow-ups |
Analysis is tedious and manual | AI summarizes and analyzes text instantly |
Lower completion rates and higher drop-off | 70–80% survey completion, lower abandonment [2] |
Why use AI for power user surveys? AI-driven surveys let you iterate quickly, uncover deeper stories, and scale feedback collection without bottlenecks—a must for teams focused on workflow efficiency. Power users are sophisticated and busy; giving them a frictionless, conversational survey gets you better data, faster. Specific’s conversational survey experience is designed for high impact—both for survey creators and respondents. Curious how to set up your first survey? Read our full guide on how to create a workflow efficiency survey for power users.
If you want to see a live AI survey example or learn more about how to build effective surveys with AI, Specific’s approach stands out for fast setup, rich insights, and a best-in-class conversational flow.
See this workflow efficiency survey example now
See what power users really think—generate your workflow efficiency conversational survey today, and unlock faster, richer feedback with AI-powered insights that drive smart decisions.