By Freya Johnson June 23, 2025
Surveys are powerful weapons to support business —when utilized appropriately. Yet, even the best of intentions can be ruined by tiny missteps in question design, layout, or administration. From leading words to off-topic questions, these usual errors can cause you to collect confusing, wrong, or entirely unusable results. If you’re not collecting the insights that you require, then it may not be your audience—it may be your survey. Let us see where things go wrong and how to correct them.
Top Common Feedback Survey Mistakes
1. Skipping the "Why" Behind Your Survey
One of the biggest mistakes when designing a customer feedback survey is not being clear on what you’re trying to learn. Without a specific goal in mind, your questions may be too broad or scattered to deliver useful insights.
Begin by determining the precise result you wish to achieve. Are you attempting to enhance your onboarding process? Understand why leads aren’t converting. Or measure satisfaction with support staff? Every objective demands a specific kind of feedback. For instance, a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey can be utilized for service interactions or a product feedback survey to understand user experience. When your objectives are well-defined, your questions become more pointed—and the feedback becomes actionable.
2. Keeping Surveys Too Long
Let’s be honest: no one likes answering a never-ending questionnaire. With short attention spans and hectic lifestyles, your audience is much more likely to finish up a survey that’s brief and targeted. Opt for concision—4 to 5 questions should suffice to gather useful feedback, particularly if your survey is focused on a single purpose. When surveys are brief and pertinent, customers are more likely to provide genuine responses and complete the task.
Also don’t forget that you can always conduct several brief surveys at various stages of the customer journey instead of putting everything into one.
3. Not Telling People How Long the Survey Takes
Picture conducting a survey without understanding whether it will take 2 minutes or 20. Most individuals will not even begin—or worse, they will abandon it halfway. That’s why communicating expectations beforehand is crucial.
Let them know how many questions it has and how long it’ll take. A brief note such as “This survey contains five questions and will take under 2 minutes” on the welcome screen goes a long way. Better yet—include a progress bar so they can see how close they are to the end. It’s a little detail that enhances completion rates in a huge way.
4. Asking Double-Barreled, Confusing Questions
Another survey blunder? Attempting to ask two things at once in one question. These “double-barreled” questions will confuse your survey-takers and damage your results.
Example: “How satisfied are you with our customer service and the representative’s performance?”
This survey attempts to measure two distinct experiences—overall service and a particular agent’s assistance—in one line. If the customer loved dealing with the agent but struggled somewhere else, how would they answer? Break it up instead. Ask one question regarding the service experience and the other about the representative. Clear questions result in clearer, more helpful feedback.
5. Employing Leading Questions Biased Toward Responses
It’s tempting to make this mistake by asking questions that gently nudge your customers toward a particular response. Asking, for instance, “How great was our product?” presuming that the product was great—something that might not have been your customer’s experience.
Instead, remain neutral. Pose something like “How would you rate the product?” or “What did you think of your experience?” Neutral language gets you truthful, unfiltered feedback that you can respond to.
6. Neglecting Your Brand Identity in the Survey
When questionnaires originate from unknown territories or bear a third-party brand, most customers are reluctant to open or answer them. Placing your brand on your survey through your logo, colors, and name generates instant recognition—and trust.
Even subtle elements such as a branded URL and header image can enhance response rates. It promises customers that the questionnaire is indeed coming from your business, and not merely a generic request.
7. Asking Questions That Don't Apply
Asking irrelevant questions can frustrate respondents and lower the quality of your feedback. Imagine asking non-subscribers what they think of your newsletter—it doesn’t just confuse them; it wastes their time.
To fix this, use conditional logic. Let responses to earlier questions determine which ones follow. That way, people only answer what matters to them—and you get cleaner, more useful data.
8. Not Making Surveys Mobile-Friendly
Today’s customers are likely to open your survey on a phone or tablet. If your form isn’t optimized for small screens, you’re probably losing responses before people even begin.
A mobile-friendly survey adapts to screen size, loads quickly and keeps tapping and scrolling to a minimum. The easier it is to complete, the more likely your customers will actually finish it.
9. Being Too Vague with Questions
Vagueness means shallow answers. Ask, “How does your experience go?”, and your customer will have no idea. Were you asking about product quality, delivery, or customer service?
Be specific. Ask, for instance, “How satisfied are you with the checkout experience?” without actually saying it. This level of precision prompts more open-ended responses and makes it easier for your team to determine where to make changes.
10. Avoiding Open-Ended Questions
Closed questions are quick to respond to—but they don’t always reveal the whole picture. Including an open question allows customers to tell you in their own words what they think.
This kind of response usually tells you things you’d never have thought of with preconceived answers. It also demonstrates to your customers that you really care about hearing from them and not merely ticking a box.
How to Spot a Bad Survey Question
Not every defective survey question is an instant offender—but they can emphatically mislead your findings or confuse your readers. Here are the indicators to watch out for:
- 1. Biased or Loaded Language: If your question contains strong adjectives or sounds like it’s guiding the respondent toward a certain response, it’s biased. For instance, asking, “How good was your experience with our highly rated support team?” guides the customer before they’ve even responded. Use objective language that enables truthful responses without bias.
- 2. Vague or Confusing Wording: When a question is unclear, people either make assumptions—or drop it. Questions such as “How do you feel about our service?” are too general or vague. Be explicit and specific, such as “How satisfied were you with the response time of our support team?”
- 3. Asking Too Much at Once: Piling together two or more ideas in a single question is a double-barreled question—which would likely confuse the respondents. For example, “how was the product quality and delivery experience?” asks for a single response for two distinct issues. Split it into two separate questions, so both receive relevant feedback.
- 4. Overloading with Requirements: If your survey asks too much—e.g., long responses, lots of uploads, or too much personal data—people will opt out mid-way. Keep it easy. Ask only what is required and needs to be known in order to achieve your survey’s purpose.
- 5. Using Industry Jargon: Technical jargon or language familiar only to insiders can puzzle those who are not used to it. Even devoted customers might not be aware of your in-house language. Use simple, straightforward language that everyone can understand at a glance.
The Real Cost of Bad Survey Questions
Asking the wrong survey questions doesn’t only result in flimsy data—it can cost your customer relationships, sale strategy and decision-making. Here’s how survey design can impact you:
- 1. Survey Fatigue Sets In: When surveys feel confusing, repetitive, or irrelevant, people lose interest fast. Sometimes, they won’t even start (pre-survey fatigue), and other times, they abandon halfway through (in-survey fatigue). Either way, your feedback collection suffers.
- 2. Response Rates Drop: If questions are unclear or feel too demanding, many respondents simply won’t bother answering. A well-crafted survey respects people’s time—poor ones do the opposite, leading to fewer completions and weaker sample sizes.
- 3. Inaccurate or Misleading Answers: Poorly worded or biased questions will trap respondents into selecting responses that don’t really represent their thinking. That means your data appears comprehensive but shares the wrong message.
- 4. You Miss Out on Actionable Insights: Even if you do get some feedback, if the questions are poor, then the insights are probably biased or inaccurate. This makes it more difficult to determine actual issues or make business decisions with confidence.
Bottom line? Poor questions waste time—for you and your customers. To really get to know your audience, every question needs to be crystal clear, on-point, and in-line with your survey objectives.
Conclusion
It’s not only about asking questions—or getting great feedback—it’s about asking the right questions at the right time. Questionably designed surveys can annoy respondents, manipulate answers, and end up with you possessing data that doesn’t put value. By steering clear of errors such as unclear phrasing, loaded language, or ineffective questions, not only do you enhance the quality of your findings but also demonstrate to customers that their feedback really does count. Take the time to design wiser surveys—and the feedback you receive will be worth its weight in gold.
FAQs
1. Why are my survey response rates so low?
Low response rates are typically the outcome of lengthy, confusing, or irrelevant questions that disengage your audience in a hurry.
2. What is a leading question in a survey?
A leading question subtly steers respondents toward an answer, generating feedback that is biased and unreliable.
3. How do ambiguous questions impact feedback?
Ambiguous questions perplex respondents and result in confusing or useless answers that fail to represent true opinions.
4. Do I include open-ended questions?
Yes, they allow respondents room to provide detailed feedback and tend to uncover information missed by multiple-choice options.
5. Can mobile-ineffective surveys damage results?
Certainly, if your survey is not mobile-optimized, many will leave it unfinished.