"Let's collect customer feedback" is a goal, not a plan. The plan starts when you decide what to ask, whom to ask, and when to ask it. Different questions measure different things — and a good question asked at the wrong moment gives you misleading answers.
Here's the map. Six types of feedback cover almost everything a business needs to know:
Now let's go through them one by one — what each type measures, what the survey actually looks like, and the right moment to send it.
1. NPS — "Would you recommend us?"
NPS stands for Net Promoter Score. It measures loyalty — how your customers feel about you overall, not about one specific order or chat. The survey is a single question with a 0–10 scale:
When to send it: twice a year or quarterly, to all your customers. Don't send it right after a support chat or a price change — you'd be measuring that one event, not the relationship. We explain NPS in detail in a separate article in this collection.
2. CSAT — "How satisfied were you with this?"
CSAT is short for customer satisfaction. Unlike NPS, it's about one specific moment: an order, a delivery, a conversation. One tap, no typing:
When to send it: right after the experience, while the memory is fresh — ideally within minutes. The value of CSAT comes from speed and volume, so keep it to a single question.
3. CES — "How easy was it?"
CES means Customer Effort Score. It measures how hard the customer had to work to get what they needed. Why does that matter? Because customers rarely leave a company for not being amazing — they leave because it was hard work to deal with.
When to send it: after a support request, or after a customer used your self-service options (help articles, FAQ) to solve something on their own.
4. Product feedback — "What would you improve?"
This is the only type where an open question — a free text box — is the star. You're not collecting a score here. You're hunting for ideas, missing features, and problems you didn't know about:
When to send it: when you release something new, when you see customers using the product differently, or simply as an always-available survey inside your product.
5. Post-support feedback — "Did we solve it?"
One simple question sent automatically every time a support conversation closes:
When to send it: the moment the ticket or chat is closed. And here's the key: the goal is not a nice average score. The goal is to catch the one customer who answers "No, my problem is still there" — while there is still time to fix it. (In the automation article in this collection, we show how to turn that answer into an instant alert for your team.)
6. Exit feedback — "Why are you leaving?"
Shown at the moment a customer cancels. Painful to read, and the most honest feedback you will ever collect:
When to show it: directly in the cancellation flow. Keep it to one question with an optional comment box — a customer who is leaving won't fill in ten fields.
Where to start (not with all six)
Launching everything at once is the fastest way to drown. A starting set that works for most businesses:
CSAT after your key transactions — gives you an instant signal when something breaks
NPS twice a year — gives you the long-term trend
Exit feedback always on — you can't fix what you never hear
Add CES and product feedback later, once acting on the first three has become routine. Every survey shown above exists as a ready-made template in Survio — the setup is the easy part. The habit of responding to what you learn is where feedback programs win or lose.