Cafe customer satisfaction survey: 3 questions
Search for customer satisfaction survey questions and you will mostly find lists of twenty or thirty. In a cafe, nobody answers twenty questions after paying. The survey that gets answered is short, arrives at the right moment, and has an answer you can act on.
This post gives you three questions for your cafe, the best moment to send them, and what to do with the answers.
How many questions should a cafe survey have?
Three. The more questions there are, the easier it is to abandon the survey. Three questions measure what you need and ask the customer for under a minute.
| # | Question | Answer type | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | How satisfied were you with today’s visit? | Score (for example 1 to 5) | One number for the overall picture. |
| 2 | If the score is low: what went wrong? If it is high: what did you like most? | Short written answer | The reason behind the number. |
| 3 | Would you recommend us to a friend? | Score (for example 0 to 10) | Whether they would send someone else to you. |
The third question is known as NPS, but you do not need to know the name; what matters is whether the customer would send someone else to you.
The second question is not one fixed question: it changes with the score. Instead of asking everyone the same thing, you ask the unhappy customer why, and the happy one what they liked. That is a conditional flow, where the next question depends on the answer.
When should you send it?
Right after payment. The customer still remembers what they drank, how long they waited at the till and what the table was like. A survey that arrives two days later asks them to remember.
The second rule: tie the survey to a member. With a paper form left on the table you cannot tell who wrote it and you cannot reply to a low score. If the survey is tied to a member, you can reach that person. Recognising the member at the till depends on how your loyalty programme talks to your till; for the questions to ask your provider, see is your POS’s built-in loyalty module enough?
Let the survey message’s job be to ask the questions. What permission you need to send the message is a separate question for your own counsel.
What to do in the first 24 hours of a low score
A survey is worth what you do after the answer. These are our suggestions, and it pays to apply all of them. Four simple rules:
- A score of 3 or below: write to the customer yourself within 24 hours. Ask what happened, apologise, offer to put it right on the next visit.
- A 4 or a 5: a short thank-you is enough. The written answer about what they liked is feedback you can pass on to your team.
- A repeated complaint: if three different customers wrote the same thing, it is not one person’s bad day, it is a process problem. Make it the first item in your weekly meeting.
- The third question: look at this question’s average once a month. The direction over time matters more than any single answer.
When feedback leads to a change or a fix, tell the customer.
Setting it up in Bonobo
According to the Smart Surveys page, question types include multiple choice, open-ended, scale, NPS and emoji; the next question changes with the answer, and the participant is rewarded with points, a coupon or a gift. Those are the building blocks of the three-question flow above. The timing and the follow-up steps are suggestions in this post, not features described on that page. The standard Satisfaction Survey consists of ready-made NPS questions and is not customisable; it is for a quick pulse. You can see which plans include which on the pricing page.
To read survey answers next to your loyalty data, you can start with the article on the four customer groups, and for branch-by-branch comparison with the one on designing loyalty across locations.
For a thank-you message to send after a survey, see beauty salon campaign ideas.
Frequently asked questions
How many customer satisfaction survey questions should there be? Three for a cafe. If someone wants a longer survey, split the second question with a conditional flow.
When should I send the survey? Right after payment, sent to the member personally.
What should I do with a low score? Write to the customer yourself within 24 hours, ask what happened, apologise.
What if nobody answers? Cut the number of questions and send the survey right after payment, while the customer is still in the cafe.
If you want to adapt these three questions to your menu and your flow, write to us.
Three questions, 24 hours and the other suggestions are the author’s own; only the description of the Smart Surveys features comes from a source.
The figures and rules in this post come from the linked sources; last checked 16 October 2026.