Survey template

Onboarding feedback survey

Most onboarding surveys ask 'how was setup?' and get a polite 'fine' from the people who didn't quit. This template targets the friction in the first session — the step where new users hesitate, get confused, or give up — so you can fix activation instead of guessing.

Best for: PMs, growth, and onboarding teams improving activation and first-session success.

The questions

1. What did you come here hoping to accomplish?

   Long text

   Frames the whole session around their job-to-be-done, not your feature tour.

2. Did you manage to do that in your first session?

   Single select

   Yes / Partly / No — your raw activation read, straight from the user.

3. Where, if anywhere, did you get stuck or confused?

   Long text

   The single most valuable question — it names the exact step to fix.

4. How much effort did getting started take?

   Opinion scale

   First-session effort predicts whether they come back at all.

5. Was there a moment it clicked — where you saw the value?

   Long text

   Pinpoints your real activation event so you can pull more users to it faster.

6. What almost stopped you from continuing?

   Long text

   Surfaces the near-misses you never see in funnel analytics.

7. How likely are you to come back this week?

   Opinion scale

   Stated intent right after onboarding correlates with week-1 retention.

How to run it well

• Trigger it at the end of the first session, not days later — by day three people have forgotten the exact step that tripped them.
• Cross-reference the 'where did you get stuck' answers against your funnel drop-off; the verbatim explains the number the chart can't.
• Survey the people who stalled too, not just the ones who finished — the no-shows hold your biggest activation wins.
• Hunt for the 'it clicked' moment across responses; that's your activation event, and the rest of onboarding should drive toward it.
• Treat repeated confusion at one step as a product bug, not a docs problem — rewrite the step before you write a help article about it.

FAQ

When should the onboarding survey fire?

At the end of the first meaningful session, while the friction is fresh. A delayed survey only reaches people who came back, which silently filters out exactly the stalled users you most need to hear from.

How do I find my activation moment from this?

Read the 'where it clicked' answers as a group. The action people name repeatedly — first project created, first invite sent, first report run — is your activation event. Then redesign onboarding to reach it sooner.

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