Identify Customer Goals

Most products are built around features. But customers do not think in features. They think in goals. They signed up because they want to accomplish something specific, and your product is the tool they chose to get there.

A customer goals survey uncovers what users are trying to achieve, how they define success, and where your product fits into their larger workflow. This data shapes everything from feature prioritization to onboarding design to marketing messaging.

When to deploy a customer goals survey

During onboarding. The best time to ask about goals is when users are first getting started. Their intent is clear, they have not yet been influenced by feature limitations, and the answers directly inform how you should guide their first experience.

At regular intervals for existing users. Goals evolve. A user who signed up to solve one problem may now use your product for something entirely different. Quarterly or biannual goal surveys catch these shifts before your product roadmap falls out of alignment with user needs.

Before a major product strategy decision. If you are deciding which direction to take your product, understanding what your users are trying to achieve provides the clearest signal. Build toward goals your users have, not goals you wish they had.

When retention is declining. Declining retention often means your product no longer aligns with what users need. A goals survey reveals whether the disconnect is in the product, the audience, or both.

Customer goals survey questions

1. What is the primary goal you are trying to achieve with [product]? | Open text | Required
2. How do you measure success for this goal? | Open text | Required
3. What is the biggest obstacle standing between you and this goal? | Open text | Required
4. How well does [product] help you achieve this goal? | Very well / Somewhat / Not well / I use it for something else | Required
5. What other tools or methods do you use alongside [product] to reach this goal? | Open text | Optional
6. If you could change one thing about [product] to better support your goal, what would it be? | Open text | Optional
7. Has your primary goal changed since you first started using [product]? | Yes / No | Optional

Question one and two are the core pair. The goal tells you what to build toward. The success metric tells you how to measure whether you got there. Question three reveals the gap between the user's current state and their desired state, which is where your product should live.

Analyzing customer goals data

Cluster goals into categories. Open-text responses about goals will cluster into a manageable number of categories: 5 to 10 primary goals that cover 80% or more of your user base. These categories become the foundation for user segmentation, onboarding paths, and feature prioritization.

Map goals to product capabilities. For each goal category, assess how well your product supports it today. Some goals will align perfectly with your feature set. Others will reveal gaps. The gaps are your opportunity areas.

Identify the "jobs to be done." Customer goals naturally map to the jobs-to-be-done framework. Each goal is a job the user hired your product to do. Understanding the job in the user's language (not your feature language) produces better product decisions.

Cross-reference goals with satisfaction. Users whose goals align well with your product capabilities will report higher satisfaction. Users with goals that your product partially addresses will be the "somewhat satisfied" middle. This cross-reference tells you which goals to invest in serving better.

Track goal evolution. Question seven reveals how many users have shifted their goals over time. If a large percentage has evolved, your onboarding and messaging may be attracting users for one reason while your product retains them for another. That is valuable positioning insight.

Acting on customer goals data

Redesign onboarding around goals. Instead of a feature tour, ask users about their goal during onboarding and route them to the workflow most relevant to that goal. Users who reach their first success faster have significantly higher retention.

Align your roadmap with goal frequency. The most common user goals should receive the most product investment. If 40% of users share the same primary goal, your roadmap should make that goal easier to achieve quarter over quarter.

Update your messaging. Your marketing should speak to the goals users actually have, not the goals you assumed they would have. Use the exact language from survey responses in your landing pages, onboarding copy, and ad creative.

Build goal-based segments. Group users by primary goal and track each segment's retention, expansion, and satisfaction independently. You may find that one goal segment has 90% retention while another has 50%. That tells you where your product delivers and where it falls short.

Common mistakes

Asking about goals in feature language. "Which features do you want us to build?" is not a goals question. "What are you trying to accomplish?" is. The former constrains answers to your existing product. The latter opens up the full problem space.

Ignoring uncommon goals. Goals mentioned by only 5% of users may still represent a high-value segment. Check whether those users have higher LTV, lower churn, or stronger expansion revenue before dismissing their goals as niche.

Not connecting goals to behavior. Survey responses about goals should be validated against actual usage data. A user who says their goal is "team collaboration" but only uses the product solo has a stated goal that does not match their revealed behavior. Both signals matter.

Treating goals as static. Goals change with market conditions, team growth, and product maturity. A single goals survey is a snapshot. Repeated measurements create a trend line that keeps your product strategy current.

Set up this survey in Formbricks

Formbricks lets you deploy customer goals surveys during onboarding or at scheduled intervals for existing users. The template includes open-text questions for goal discovery, conditional logic for follow-ups, and goal alignment rating scales.

Responses are tied to user profiles, so you can segment by goal type across all your other Formbricks surveys and analytics. When a user tells you their goal during onboarding, that data enriches every future interaction and survey response.

Use Formbricks custom attributes to store each user's primary goal, then target future surveys, feature announcements, and onboarding content based on what they are trying to achieve.