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.
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What did you come here hoping to accomplish?
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The questions
- 1What did you come here hoping to accomplish?Long textFrames the whole session around their job-to-be-done, not your feature tour.
- 2Did you manage to do that in your first session?Single selectYes / Partly / No — your raw activation read, straight from the user.
- 3Where, if anywhere, did you get stuck or confused?Long textThe single most valuable question — it names the exact step to fix.
- 4How much effort did getting started take?Opinion scaleFirst-session effort predicts whether they come back at all.
- 5Was there a moment it clicked — where you saw the value?Long textPinpoints your real activation event so you can pull more users to it faster.
- 6What almost stopped you from continuing?Long textSurfaces the near-misses you never see in funnel analytics.
- 7How likely are you to come back this week?Opinion scaleStated 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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