# Onboarding survey

An onboarding survey is a short set of questions shown to new users at or just after sign-up, asking about their role, goal and team, so the product can route each person to the setup and first steps that fit them.

## What questions should an onboarding survey ask?

Ask only questions whose answer changes what the user sees next. If two answers lead to the same screen, the question is costing you sign-ups for nothing.

Good onboarding survey questions, and what each one changes:

| Question | What the answer changes |
|---|---|
| What's your role? | Default view, templates, which features show first |
| What do you want to do first? | The first task you guide them to |
| How many people will use it with you? | Whether to prompt team invites early or later |
| What are you using today? | Which import path to offer |
| How big is your company? | Which plan, setup path and sales follow-up to offer |

Keep it to three to five questions, multiple choice, on one screen, with a skip option. "How did you hear about us?" helps marketing but changes nothing in onboarding: ask it later or not at all.

## What is the difference between an onboarding survey and an onboarding questionnaire?

The terms overlap, but in practice an onboarding questionnaire is longer and used in high-touch B2B onboarding, usually before the kickoff call. It collects what the vendor's team needs to plan setup: technical environment, systems to integrate, data volume, stakeholders, security requirements and deadlines.

The survey personalizes the product for one user. The questionnaire prepares people for an account. Many B2B products use both: a questionnaire for the account's admin, and a short in-product survey for each user who joins later.

## How do you use onboarding survey answers?

Route on them immediately, then check whether the routing helped.

Say an analytics product asks role and first goal. A user picks "Marketing" and "Track a campaign." Instead of starting with the developer setup, they land on a campaign dashboard template with link tracking set up first. A user who picks "Engineering" and "Instrument our app" gets the SDK steps.

Then compare each answer group on the first key action. If people who chose "Track a campaign" don't reach a working dashboard more often than everyone else, the branch isn't earning its question. Two more checks: watch for answers that drift from behavior (people pick the goal they aspire to, not the one they act on), and drop any question most people skip.

## Can you skip the survey and just ask what the user wants?

A survey is a fixed menu. The user's real goal often isn't on it, and the answer only routes them; they still do every step themselves. An open question ("What are you trying to get done?") in the user's own words carries more, if something can act on it.

That's how an in-product agent onboards. With Foldspace, the user answers the open question by asking the Product Agent for what they want, it does the first steps in the product, and Conversational Analytics [shows the intent behind each request](https://docs.foldspace.ai/whats-new/conversational-analytics/), so you learn what new users came for from what they ask.

## Learn more

- [Product Agent](/platform/product-agent)