This article will guide you on how to create a user survey about onboarding experience. With Specific, you can generate and launch a survey for your users in seconds—no hassle, all insight.
Steps to create a survey for users about onboarding experience
If you want to save time, just generate a survey with Specific. You only need two steps:
Tell what survey you want.
Done.
You really don’t have to read any further—AI will generate the whole survey with up-to-date expert knowledge. It’ll even ask respondents smart follow-up questions to dig deeper, all by itself, resulting in more useful insights for you. For more custom needs, just use the AI survey generator—it’s the easiest way to compose a highly effective, conversational survey.
Why run a user survey about onboarding experience?
Let’s be honest: if you’re not running onboarding experience surveys with your users, you’re missing out on direct ways to boost product retention and improve satisfaction. Here’s what the data says:
Companies with structured onboarding surveys see a 50% increase in customer retention compared to those without them [1].
86% of users say they’re more likely to be loyal to businesses that invest in useful onboarding content and feedback loops [2].
63% of users consider the onboarding experience when purchasing a product or service [3].
By skipping these user feedback touchpoints, you risk losing valuable insights on pain points, unmet needs, or the "aha!" moments that drive engagement. The importance of user recognition surveys and good onboarding feedback isn’t just best practice—it’s essential for optimizing activation, satisfaction, and long-term business growth.
What makes a good survey about onboarding experience?
The best onboarding experience surveys are simple, clear, and genuinely focused on your users. Here’s what we always recommend:
Ask clear, unbiased questions. Avoid leading phrasing or assumptions.
Keep a conversational tone. Make respondents feel comfortable sharing honest feedback—it leads to better responses.
Use variety in question types. Mix open-ended asks with multiple choice for balanced insights.
Bad Practices | Good Practices |
|---|---|
Vague or confusing wording | Clear, simple, direct questions |
All multiple choice, no explanation needed | Open-ended follow-up to dig deeper |
Making assumptions ("What did you love about...") | Neutral phrasing ("What was your onboarding experience like?") |
The mark of a well-designed survey is both a high quantity and high quality of responses. If people are dropping off or leaving shallow answers, revisit your phrasing and format—it always pays off.
Types of survey questions with examples for user onboarding experience
Your onboarding survey should use a blend of question types to capture every angle.
Open-ended questions work best for unfiltered, in-depth insights. Use them to explore feelings, motivations, or unique experiences. For instance:
What’s one thing that surprised you (good or bad) during onboarding?
If you could change one step in our onboarding, what would it be?
Single-select multiple-choice questions are great for quantifiable data and quick comparisons across users. Use these earlier to orient the respondent:
How easy was it to understand your first steps in our product?
Very easy
Somewhat easy
Neutral
Difficult
Very difficult
NPS (Net Promoter Score) question tells you how likely users are to recommend your onboarding and helps benchmark against competitors. To see a ready-to-use example (and generate an NPS survey right away), check our NPS survey builder for onboarding experience users:
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our onboarding process to a friend or colleague?
Follow-up questions to uncover "the why" are essential. When a user leaves a brief or ambiguous response, follow-ups help you get the context you actually need. For example:
What made that part of onboarding difficult for you?
Can you tell me more about where you got stuck?
Want more question inspiration and practical tips? Check our guide to the best questions for user onboarding experience surveys.
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys turn traditional forms into a natural, chat-like experience. Instead of dumping a static set of boxes, you’re engaging users in a dynamic digital interview that adapts based on their answers—a win for both response rate and insight quality.
With manual survey tools, writers often struggle to craft engaging questions and miss opportunities for follow-up. AI survey generators (like Specific) flatten that learning curve: you chat your intent, the AI builds (and refines) your survey, and it even delivers the onboarding feedback as a natural conversation. Here’s how it stacks up:
Manual Surveys | AI-generated Surveys |
|---|---|
Hand-write all questions | Describe what you want—AI builds it |
Static questions, no follow-ups | Dynamically probes for deeper answers in real time |
Boring interface, high dropout rate | Chat-like, engaging, mobile-optimized |
Manual data analysis | AI summarizes and categorizes responses for you |
Why use AI for user surveys? AI survey generators unlock new levels of speed, flexibility, and consistency. You get expert-worthy questions, smart adaptive probing, and “ready to analyze” results in one go—all without wrangling survey logic by hand. If you want to see an AI survey example or learn more about creating surveys in minutes, check out our step-by-step guide on how to create a user onboarding experience survey.
Specific leads the pack with best-in-class conversational survey UX, making the user feedback journey as smooth and pleasant as possible—both for you as the creator and for every respondent.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are the secret sauce of effective conversational surveys about onboarding experience. If you don't ask them, you risk responses like these:
User: "It was confusing."
AI follow-up: "Can you tell me specifically which step or information felt confusing?"
With Specific’s AI, you get expert-grade follow-ups in real time—the kind of probing a skilled interviewer would do, but automated and scalable. These follow-ups quickly clarify intent, gather more details, and uncover reasons or emotions behind the initial answer. This feature alone saves tons of manual chasing, whether you’d otherwise need to send emails or run calls to clarify user input. Learn how Specific’s automatic follow-up feature works here.
How many followups to ask? In general, asking 2–3 short, relevant follow-ups per open-ended question is enough to get the full context—while keeping the experience smooth. You can also let users skip follow-ups if they’ve already given a complete answer. Specific lets you control this per survey, with easy settings.
This makes it a conversational survey—one where both parties actually understand each other, and the insights are rich, not surface-level.
Analysis with AI is just as simple. Even though you collect lots of rich, unstructured text, you can let AI group, summarize, and surface key themes instantly. See how to analyze onboarding survey data with Specific’s AI tools for hands-on advice.
Automated follow-up questions are a new standard. Try generating a survey and see the difference for yourself—the depth of feedback is unlike anything you’ll get from standard forms.
See this onboarding experience survey example now
Start gathering powerful, in-depth user insights with a conversational onboarding experience survey powered by AI. It’s fast, precise, and surfaces the feedback that really matters—without any of the usual survey pain.