How do you know a customer is unhappy before they cancel? You ask, right after the moment that mattered. A customer satisfaction survey measures how satisfied someone is with a specific interaction, product, or service, so you can act on a dip before that customer churns. These 32 templates give you a tested way to capture that read at every touchpoint.
The score most teams track is the customer satisfaction score (CSAT), the share of respondents who rate their experience in the top range of the scale. On SurveyMonkey, you can add the satisfaction question, then track the result over time in a dashboard, filtered by segment, channel, or touchpoint. Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES) are built-in question types too, so loyalty and effort can sit in the same survey when one number is not enough. For the formula and benchmarks behind the metric, see our customer satisfaction guide.
Surveys in this category complete at a 91.0% average rate across about eight questions. The short band of 1-10 questions finishes at 91.8%; cross 21 and completion drops to 84.1%, which is why a satisfaction survey works best when it stays tight.
Sentiment analysis tags each open-ended follow-up as positive, negative, or neutral, and a Salesforce integration can hand a low score straight to the account team to close the loop. SurveyMonkey Genius, an AI tool that scores your draft, predicts the completion rate and recommends fixes before launch.
How to create a customer satisfaction survey
Choose a template on this page, or start from the Net Promoter Score survey template.
Add the satisfaction question and set the scale, then keep it as the first item respondents see.
Add one open-ended "why" follow-up so each rating comes with a reason.
Run SurveyMonkey Genius to check the predicted completion rate and simplify any question it flags.
Send it in the channel where the interaction happened, by email, web link, or an embedded form, with reminders on.
Launch and track the trend. Filter the dashboard by segment or channel, and route low scores to the right team.
When to use customer satisfaction surveys
After a purchase or transaction: Ask whether the buying experience met expectations while the interaction is still fresh.
After a support interaction: Send a post-ticket or post-chat survey and catch a low score before it turns into a cancellation.
During onboarding: Check that new customers are finding value early, when there is still time to course-correct.
After a feature launch: See how a product change landed with the customers who used it first.
On a relationship cadence: Run a quarterly or annual pulse for B2B accounts to track satisfaction across the whole relationship, not one moment.
Who runs customer satisfaction surveys
Customer experience leaders: They own satisfaction across the journey and use scores to prioritize which friction point to fix first.
Customer success managers: They watch satisfaction per account, act on low scores, and report the trend to leadership.
Customer service team leads: They measure per-interaction CSAT after a ticket or chat and turn it into coaching for reps.
Product managers: They run a satisfaction check after a release to confirm the change helped.
Tips for creating a customer satisfaction survey
Ask within the day: CSAT captures a moment, so trigger the survey within 24 hours of the touchpoint before memory fades.
Keep it to the score plus one: Short surveys of 1-10 questions complete at 91.8% against 84.1% past 21, so add one "why" follow-up and stop.
Do not confuse CSAT with loyalty: CSAT measures a single interaction while NPS measures the relationship, so mixing them leads to the wrong read.
Track over time, not against one benchmark: Filter the dashboard by channel and segment, since your own trend is more actionable than a universal average.
Frequently asked questions about customer satisfaction surveys
Which metric should I use: CSAT, NPS, or CES?
Match the metric to the decision. CSAT rates one specific interaction, like a support case or a purchase, so ask it right after the moment. Net Promoter Score runs on a 0-10 "how likely to recommend" scale and reads the whole relationship. CES measures how much effort a task took. All three are built-in question types, so you can run them side by side in one survey.
What is a good CSAT score?
The honest answer: it depends on your sector and channel. Support interactions usually score lower than post-purchase surveys, so a single industry average makes a weak target. Track your own customer satisfaction score (CSAT) over time and compare by channel, agent, or product line. The dashboard filters those cuts for you, which tells you where satisfaction is strongest and where it slips.
How do I get more customers to finish my customer satisfaction survey?
Keep it short and send it in context. Surveys of 1-10 questions complete at 91.8% versus 84.1% past 21, so ask the satisfaction question first and limit follow-ups to one. Send it in the channel the interaction happened in, and use reminders for non-openers. SurveyMonkey Genius predicts completion before launch, and AI response-quality filtering removes rushed answers so your reported score stays clean.
What question types work best for a customer satisfaction survey?
The rating scale carries the survey: a satisfaction scale for CSAT or a 0-10 scale for NPS. Follow it with one open-ended question for the "why," and use multiple choice for structured follow-ups, like which part of the experience drove the rating. Skip yes/no satisfaction questions, since they lose the gradient you need to track movement. A Likert scale fits when you want to read satisfaction across several dimensions at once.
How do I act on a low customer satisfaction score?
Close the loop fast. Route the low score to the account owner through the Salesforce integration so a person follows up while the issue is recent. Read the open-ended comment alongside the number; sentiment analysis groups those comments so a pattern across accounts is easy to spot. Filtering the dashboard by segment shows whether one channel or product is dragging the score, which tells you where to fix the root cause.
