Customer expectations
What matters to customers when they choose and the criteria they compare on. A basis for positioning that does not come from the team’s imagination.
Who it is for and when to run it
Use this when the team argues about positioning and everyone is sure the customer cares most about their favourite argument. Marketing says price, product says quality, support says response time. Seven questions turn the argument into numbers.
Run it before an ad campaign or a price change, not after. Send it to current customers and to people who evaluated you and went elsewhere; the second group is more candid about criteria. It’s short enough to fit in an email link or a community post.
What the template is made of
Every block in the order it sits in the builder. Branching decides which of them a given person actually sees.
- What matters to you when choosing? Drag from most to least important Ranking
Drag-and-drop ranking of seven criteria: price, quality, speed, support, brand reputation, warranty, ease of use. It gives order but not distance.
- Distribute 100 points across the selection criteria Constant sum (100 points)
Split 100 points across five criteria (constant sum). This adds weight: price at 60 with everything else at 10 is a different story from “price ranked first”.
- Which matters more to you in each pair? Pairwise comparison
Pairwise comparison: low price against premium quality, fast delivery against great support. It checks whether the order holds when the choice is hard.
- What do you prefer? Semantic differential
A 5-point semantic differential from “Cheaper” to “Pricier but better”. One slider shows willingness to pay more.
- Where do you usually hear about new products? Dropdown
A dropdown of discovery channels: search, social media, friends, ads, professional communities, media. It tells you where to take the message you write afterwards.
- Which region are you from? Region
The respondent’s region. This is a Pro question type; on Free swap it for a dropdown of the cities you care about.
- What annoys you about most competitors? Long answer
An open question on what annoys them about competitors. This is where your ad copy comes from: the customer’s words, not the team’s.
How to adapt the template
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Replace the criteria in the ranking and in the 100 points with your own. Keep the names identical in both, or you can’t compare them.
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Keep four items in the pairwise question: that’s six pairs. Each extra item adds pairs faster than you’d expect.
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Relabel the semantic differential for your own trade-off: “Faster / More reliable”, “Do it yourself / Done for you”.
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If you don’t need the regional breakdown, delete the region question and the survey becomes fully free.
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Add an opening question such as “Are you a customer?” with “yes”, “evaluated but left” and “still choosing”, so you can separate the groups later.
How to read the results
Compare the three criteria questions with each other. If price ranks first, takes the lion’s share of points and beats quality in pairs, the finding is solid. If they disagree, say price ranks first but loses the “Low price / Premium quality” pair, price is a threshold people must clear, and something else makes the decision.
For the 100 points, look at the average share of each criterion and at the spread. A criterion averaging 30 with a huge spread usually means two customer segments, not “moderate importance”.
Group the competitor answers by theme and lift the exact phrases into your copy. That’s the most practical output of the whole survey.
Common mistakes
- Asking “how important is price, 1 to 5”. Everything scores 4 or 5 and you learn nothing. The template forces trade-offs on purpose.
- Surveying only happy customers. They already bought, so their criteria match your strengths by definition.
- Using different criteria in the ranking and the 100 points, which kills the comparison.
- Repositioning the brand on twenty answers. Confirm the finding in a second wave or an ad test first.
Questions about the «Customer expectations» template
How do you measure customer expectations with a survey?
Ask customers to choose between criteria rather than rate each one: rank them, split 100 points, pick from pairs. When everything is “important”, trade-offs reveal the real priority. Add one open question about what frustrates them with competitors.
Why split 100 points instead of using a rating scale?
On a rating scale people can give everything top marks, and the answer says nothing. A fixed 100 points forces a trade: more for price means less for quality. You see both the order of criteria and the gap between them.
How long should a customer expectations survey be?
This template has seven questions, a sensible limit for a cold audience. Three of them deliberately ask about priorities in different ways to test whether the result holds. For a very short version keep the 100 points and the open question.
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Do not start from an empty canvas
Open the catalog, take the closest template and rewrite the questions for your job. Five minutes instead of an hour.