Post-service survey: 5 questions that show what to improve

A customer who wasn’t happy with something rarely says so at the checkout. They pay, say a polite goodbye and simply don’t come back. You learn about the problem from a critical Google review, or not at all. A short post-service survey reverses that order: the customer tells you first what to improve.

In this guide you will find 5 ready-made questions for a salon, an auto repair shop, a practice and a renovation company, free tools, a way to read the results and three places where it’s easy to trip up: consent to send, GDPR and Google’s review policies.

A survey is not a Google review

These are two different tools, and it’s worth keeping them apart:

A survey doesn’t replace reviews, and reviews don’t replace a survey. I describe how to ask customers for reviews in the guide How to get Google reviews, and how to reply to them in the guide How to reply to Google reviews. Here I deal with what the customer will tell only you.

When and how to ask customers to fill it in

The best moment is when the customer still remembers the visit but has already had a chance to check the result:

• salon and practice: on the day of the visit, a few hours after the customer leaves,
• auto repair shop: the day after the car is picked up, once the customer has driven it a little,
• renovation company: a few days after the work is handed over, together with the invoice or right after it.

You have three routes:

1. A QR code on site. A card by the checkout or in the waiting room, a print on the invoice, a business card handed over at payment. Some cash registers can also print a graphic in the receipt footer; the company that services your register will tell you whether yours can. This is the simplest route, because you don’t send any message.
2. A text message with a short link, sent once, with no reminders.
3. An email, ideally as a note added to the message with the invoice.

For text messages and emails, it’s safer to have the customer’s consent. I explain this below, in the part about GDPR.

A card with a QR code by the checkout:

How did we do? 5 questions, one minute. We read every response and use them to improve our service. The survey is anonymous unless you leave your contact details.

A text message to a customer who has agreed to it:

Hello, this is Ewa from the Kasztan salon. Thank you for your visit today. I have a one-minute request: 5 questions about what we can do better: [link]. I read every response personally.

An email with the invoice from a renovation company:

Hello, please find attached the invoice for the bathroom renovation. Thank you for working with us. I want future renovations to go even more smoothly, so I have a request: please answer 5 short questions: [link]. If anything needs fixing, please tell me directly. I will come and take a look.

5 questions that are enough

Every additional question puts some customers off. Five take about a minute and give you everything you need: one number to track, the reason behind it and a route to a conversation.

Question 1: 0–10 scale, required

How likely are you to recommend us to a family member or friend? (0 = definitely not, 10 = definitely yes)

Question 2: open answer, optional

What influenced your rating the most?

Question 3: single choice

Was everything as we agreed (date, price, scope of work)? Yes / Almost, with minor differences / No

Question 4: single choice

What should we improve first? Booking an appointment / Punctuality / Keeping you informed about progress or delays / Quality of work / Cleaning up after the work / Price for the quality / Nothing, everything was fine

Question 5: single choice with a contact field

Would you like us to contact you about this survey? No, thank you / Yes, my phone or email: …

Adapt the list in question 4 to your industry. In an auto repair shop add “repair time” and “explanation of what was done”, in a practice “time spent in the waiting room”. One answer is one issue: “service and price” in a single item won’t tell you anything.

Question 1 comes from the Net Promoter Score (NPS) method. Thanks to it, you compare one simple number every month.

Free tools: Google Forms and Microsoft Forms

You don’t need to buy anything. Most small companies get by with one of two tools:

• Google Forms is free with a Google account. You create question 1 as the Linear scale type: the scale starts at 0 or 1 and ends at 10 at most, so set the range to 0–10. The results are on the Responses tab in the Summary view, and the Link to Sheets button moves them to a spreadsheet. In the More menu you can turn on email notifications for new responses.
• Microsoft Forms is free with a Microsoft account. It has a ready-made Net Promoter Score question type with a 0–10 scale, and the summary shows the score and the distribution of ratings. In the options for collecting responses you can download a QR code for the survey.

If the survey is to be anonymous, don’t turn on email address collection and give everyone the same link. A separate link for each customer lets you tie a response to a specific person.

How to read the results and what to change

Review the results once a month, not every day. Start by splitting the ratings from question 1 into three groups:

• 9–10: customers who will recommend you on their own,
• 7–8: customers who were satisfied with everything, but not delighted,
• 0–6: customers who felt something was missing.

The NPS score is the percentage of 9–10 ratings minus the percentage of 0–6 ratings. Example: out of 40 responses, 26 are 9–10 ratings (65%), 10 are 7–8 ratings and 4 are 0–6 ratings (10%). Score: 65 − 10 = 55. Don’t compare it with “industry” figures from the internet. Compare yourself with the previous month or quarter.

The number alone tells you whether things are getting better, but not what to improve. That’s what the other questions are for:

1. Count the answers to question 4. The category that comes up most often is your first topic.
2. Read the comments from question 2 and give each one a label, for example “waiting”, “lack of information”, “price”. After a few weeks you will see what keeps recurring.
3. Check question 3. Frequent “No” answers may point to a problem with the arrangements before the work (quote, date, scope), not with the work itself.
4. Choose one change a month, for example a text message about a delay when the previous appointment runs over, or a photo of the completed repair before the car is picked up.
5. Check the effect the following month: has that category dropped in question 4?

Treat 0–6 ratings with a request for contact like a complaint and call back within one or two business days. A conversation and a concrete offer give you a chance to resolve the matter before the customer describes it publicly. With several dozen surveys a month, it’s worth automating what you do by hand today: a low rating goes straight to you, and the monthly summary calculates itself.

Asking for a Google review: everyone, not only after a good rating

The tempting idea goes like this: whoever gives a 9 or 10 gets a link to a Google review, and whoever gives less ends up at a complaint form. That breaks Google’s rules. In the Google Maps content policy, Google prohibits businesses from discouraging negative reviews and selectively soliciting positive ones. Offering incentives such as money, discounts or free services in exchange for a review is also prohibited.

How to combine a survey with reviews in line with the rules:

• show the review link to everyone who submits the survey, regardless of the rating, in the message displayed after the form is submitted,
• or ask all customers for a review separately, as I describe in the guide on getting reviews,
• no rewards: a discount for a survey that ends with a Google link can easily be seen as a reward for a review.

Message after the survey is submitted (the same for everyone):

Thank you for your answers; we read every one of them. If you would also like to tell other customers about your visit, you can leave a Google review: [link]. It’s voluntary, and every honest review, critical ones included, is valuable to us.

You can prepare the review link and QR code in my free tool.

GDPR and consent: what to add to the survey

This is not legal advice: I describe the situation as of 8 November 2026. Pay attention to three things.

1. Invitation by text message or email. In a non-final judgment of 17 July 2024 (II SA/Wa 2287/23), the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Warsaw (Wojewódzki Sąd Administracyjny w Warszawie) held that a request to take part in a survey is direct marketing that requires the recipient’s consent. The case still concerned the old regulations. Today, sending commercial information by email and text message without prior consent is prohibited by Art. 398 of the Prawo komunikacji elektronicznej (Poland’s Electronic Communications Law). So it’s safer to ask for consent at booking or at payment, with a separate, unchecked box:

[ ] I agree to receive one text message with a short survey after my visit.

If the customer doesn’t agree, you still have the QR code on site.

2. Contact details in the survey. When a customer leaves a phone number or email in question 5, you are collecting personal data and must immediately give them the information required by Art. 13 of the GDPR: who the controller is, for what purpose and on what legal basis the data is processed, for how long, who will receive it and what rights the customer has. A short notice under the field and a link to the privacy policy are enough:

The data controller is [company name, address, email]. We will use your phone number or email only to contact you about this survey, on the basis of your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can withdraw at any time. We will delete the data once the matter is closed. The recipient of the data is the provider of the survey tool. You have the right to access, rectify and erase your data and to restrict its processing, as well as the right to lodge a complaint with the President of UODO (Urząd Ochrony Danych Osobowych, Poland’s data protection authority). Details: [link to the privacy policy].

Create a form that collects contact details on a business account. Google Workspace is covered by a data processing agreement (the Cloud Data Processing Addendum), under which Google acts as the processor. Give access to the responses only to the people who call customers back.

3. Marketing consent only separately. A survey is not the place to collect consent to promotions “while you’re at it”. If you want to ask about a newsletter, do it with a separate, unchecked box, separately for email and text messages, and don’t make sending the survey dependent on it. You will find sample boxes in the guide Newsletter and SMS consent.

Summary

Five questions, a QR code by the checkout and an hour once a month to read the answers are enough to know what to improve before the customer writes about it on Google. Show the review link to everyone, not only to satisfied customers, and collect consent to the survey and consent to marketing separately.

If you would like the survey invitation to go out automatically the day after an order is closed, only to customers who have given consent, I will set it up as part of the SMS API service. Write to me, I reply within 24 hours.