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Post-incident survey template

Measure what an outage cost your customers, and how much trust is left

Four quick questions once the incident report is out: how much the outage affected their work, how well you kept them informed, whether they read the report and how much they trust the service now. Add one open question and Usertick reads every written answer for you.

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What this post-incident survey tells you

A post-incident survey asks customers how an outage affected them and how you handled it, once the incident report is published. This template is four taps and about 30 seconds: the impact on their work, a rating for how well you kept them informed, whether they read the report, and how much they trust the service now.

It is written for an email from Usertick to the contacts on the affected accounts, sent or scheduled once the report is out. The first question shows as a button in the email, so customers answer on the survey's hosted page. Share the same survey's link at the end of the incident report or on your status page to hear from readers too.

Results shows the average impact and the trust score with a column per step, the communication rating with the share who rated it 4 or higher, and the share who read the report. Select Yes on the report question to compare readers with everyone else. When you add an open question, Usertick reads each answer and gives it a type and an urgency.

In an emailAs a linkOn your websiteAs a conversation
Questions
4
Time to answer
Under a minute
Written for
An email to affected customers once the incident report is published
Plans
Every plan, the free plan included

See it on every channel

The same template on your website, behind a link, in an email and as a conversation.

In an email

Send it from Usertick to a contact list, and a button in the email opens the survey on its own page. Usertick sends 50 emails a month on the free plan, or connect your own sender.

The 4 questions, one by one

What each question asks, why it is there, what it shows you and what to change.

Question 1 of 4 · Big scale

How much did the incident affect your work?

Why ask it
Impact varies widely: some customers never noticed, others lost a day of work. The 1 to 10 scale separates the two groups for every later question.
What you learn
The average and a column per step from 1 to 10. Select the high columns to see how informed those customers felt and how much they trust you now.
Make it yours
Send it only to accounts that used the service during the outage, so the impact score isn't diluted by people who never noticed.
Question 2 of 4 · Stars

How well did we keep you informed during the incident?

Why ask it
During an outage, updates are the one thing you control. Customers judge them on their own, apart from the outage itself.
What you learn
The average rating, a bar per star and the share who rated it 4 or higher. Compare it across incidents to see whether a new status page or update routine helped.
Make it yours
Name the channels you used, such as your status page or email, in the label, so customers rate the updates they actually got.
Question 3 of 4 · Yes / No

Did you read our incident report?

Why ask it
An incident report only rebuilds trust if customers read it. The answer shows whether the report reached them and whether reading it changed how they feel.
What you learn
The share that said yes, compared with the period before. Select Yes and then No to compare the trust score of readers and non-readers.
Make it yours
Link the report in the survey email, so customers who want to read it before answering can.
Question 4 of 4 · Big scale

How much do you trust our service now?

Why ask it
Trust after an outage shapes the next renewal conversation. Ending on it gives a score you can track from one incident to the next.
What you learn
The average and a column per step from Much less than before to As much as before. Accounts at the low end are the ones to call this week.
Make it yours
A survey sent through Usertick email ties each answer to the recipient's contact, so customer success can follow up on each low score by name.

What the answers show

Results turns each question into numbers you can follow week by week.

How well did we keep you informed during the incident?

The average rating and the share who gave 4 or 5 stars, against the period before.

Use this template in four steps

From the template to the first answers.

  1. 1

    Open the template

    Sign up free and pick After an incident in the template gallery. It opens in a matching style, ready to change.

  2. 2

    Make the questions yours

    Reword any question, change the options, and add logic or more questions.

  3. 3

    Choose where it runs

    Show it on your website, send it by email, share its link and QR code, or switch it to a conversation.

  4. 4

    Publish and read the answers

    Answers arrive in Results and the inbox as people send them, each written one read and filed by Usertick.

Tips for this survey

Small choices that keep people answering and the answers useful.

  1. 01

    Send it after the report

    Wait until the incident report is published and link it in the email. Asking during the outage measures frustration and misses how you handled it.

  2. 02

    Ask the affected accounts only

    Import the contacts on accounts that used the service during the incident, so the scores describe the people who felt it.

  3. 03

    Add one open question

    The template is all taps. Add an optional text question about what you could have done better, and Usertick reads each answer and marks the urgent ones.

  4. 04

    Alert on low trust

    On every plan, a workflow alert posts to Slack or Microsoft Teams when the average trust score drops below a line over a time window, so leaders see it the same day.

Customer supportSaaS surveysEmail surveysStatus page and incidents questions

More support templates and questions

Templates like this one, and single questions from the library to add to it.

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OnboardingOnboarding feedbackLearn how the first steps in your product felt, what new users came to do and where they got stuck. Trigger it when someone finishes setup or on their third day.
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Questions from the library

Browse the question library
  1. Do you know where to check whether we are down?Yes / No · Status page and incidents
  2. How easy was it to find out what was happening during the last incident?Customer effort · Status page and incidents
  3. How should we tell you about an incident?Multiple choice · Status page and incidents
  4. Do you build your own dashboards?Yes / No · Dashboards and reporting
  5. How easy is it to build a report from scratch?Customer effort · Dashboards and reporting
  6. Who do you share reports with?Multiple choice · Dashboards and reporting

Frequently asked questions

After the incident report is published, while the outage is still recent. Send it or schedule it from Usertick, and link the report in the email.

The contacts on accounts that were affected. Import them as a CSV and send it, and leave out accounts that weren't using the service at the time.

Four taps, as here, keep it near 30 seconds, which suits customers who already lost time to the outage.

Choose the low scores in Results, then give each of those responses an owner in the inbox, so someone from customer success contacts the account.

Yes. Turn off Skip people who already received this survey before you send it again, and compare the communication rating with the incident before.

Yes. Every template comes with every plan, the free plan included, and the free plan covers 150 responses a month across your surveys.

Yes. The template becomes your own survey, so reword any question, add or remove questions, and change the options and the logic. The gallery stays as it is.

Yes, from Starter. The template is written in US English. Add languages by hand or with AI translation, and each person sees the survey in their browser's language.

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