Onboarding interview questions for the first week
When to use this
When activation is lower than signups suggest it should be. The people who signed up and vanished will not answer a survey; they will sometimes answer a short interview link sent the same week.
The questions
- What made you sign up? The expectation you have to meet.
- What did you try to do first? The real first job, which is rarely the one in your onboarding flow.
- Where did you pause, or go somewhere else? Ask for the moment, not the feeling.
- What did you expect to happen there? The gap between expectation and screen.
- Did you get what you came for? A plain yes or no, then why.
- What did you do next, after that session? Came back, tried something else, forgot.
- What would "this is working" have looked like in the first ten minutes? Their definition of activation.
- Was there anything you didn't understand? People rarely volunteer this; ask directly.
- Anything I should have asked?
What not to ask
- "Was the onboarding easy?" Everyone says yes.
- "Which feature would you like next?" Too early; you do not know if they understood the first one.
Run this interview
Ten Interviews can run these for you in the same week people sign up. Send one link; each new user gets a ten-minute interview with an AI that follows up; you get transcripts and the themes across them. The first three are free.