Likert Scale: Questions, Definition, Free-to-Use Template

Are you looking for the very best way to get the most out of your customer surveys? If you want to know how to gain insight into your customers' behaviors and sentiments about your service or product, you need to know about Likert Scale questions.

What Is a Likert Scale?

Likert scale is a rating scale developed by an American psychologist, Rensis Likert. 

It helps discover precisely how your customers feel about your website customer experience, product or service satisfaction, and customer service experience.

A Likert scales the survey use vary. The answer options range from one extreme to another. Typically, they are: strongly agree and strongly disagree, and everything in-between.

Check out this customer experience survey template to see how Likert scale is used in practise:

The biggest advantage of a Likert scale survey is that it allows you to collect customer feedback without asking open-ended questions that are much more difficult to process. It makes it easy for respondents to leave feedback and for you to analyze the survey results. 

The 5- or 7- point rating system is the most popular as it gives your customers a wide enough range of answers to choose from. It lets them communicate their sentiments effortlessly and accurately. (Having said that, shorter 3-point Likert scale surveys are also in use.)

The advantage of an odd number of responses is that there will always be a middle-ground (neutral) answer for the customer to select. It's advantageous as you make it possible for respondents not to have a stance, which may increase the response rate. 

On the flip side, the neutral answers won't be very actionable. 

An even number of answers is sometimes used to make customers form an opinion. You need to remember, though, that such even-numbered Likert scale questions may elicit responses that are not entirely reliable. 

To learn more about making surveys reliable and mistakes to avoid when you create a survey, read: How to Create a Survey? 13 Steps for Success‍

There are four core types of Likert scale questions:

• Agreement
• Importance
• Likelihood
• Satisfaction

Often, you'll see Likert scale questions used to find out how customers feel about a series of statements. But you can also use them to obtain a single piece of customer feedback.

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Likert Scale Questions Examples

An Agreement Question:

Choose the option that most closely identifies with how you feel about the following statement:

It was easy to find the products I needed on ___.com:

Strongly agree – agree – slightly agree – not sure – slightly disagree – disagree – strongly disagree‍

The question above is a classical customer effort score (CES) survey question.  If you need to measure the effort required to perform an action within your product or service, feel free to use the Customer Effort Score (CES) Survey template by Survicate: 

An Importance Question:

Rank the points below on how important they are to you:

• Speed of Shipping: very important – important – neutral – unimportant – not at all important
• Price of Shipping: very important – important – neutral – unimportant – not at all important

A Likelihood Question:

How likely are you to refer our service to a friend or family member?

Very likely – likely – uncertain – unlikely – very unlikely

A Satisfaction Question:

How satisfied with our service have you been thus far?

Very satisfied – satisfied – somewhat satisfied – undecided – somewhat unsatisfied – unsatisfied – very unsatisfied

To find more customer satisfaction questions, check the Customer Satisfaction Survey Template below:

The Benefits of Using Likert Scale Questions

Get Deeper Insights‍

The major advantage of Likert scale questions over other types of questions is that they allow people to tell you where they stand in that grey area. Respondents are given a whole selection of answers to choose from. This way, you can obtain valid answers without asking for too much effort. By using Likert scale questions, you increase the survey response rate. ‍

They Are Quantifiable‍

Likert scale questions allow people to express their individual opinion without allowing them free rein with a text box.

Answers to Likert scale questions are much easier to analyze than the ones to open-ended questions. The latter are ultra useful when designing new products or services, or looking for marketing insights. But, to analyze them quickly, you need survey tools with filtering options.

TIP: ‍

You can choose to analyze the data you gather from your Likert scale questions using a median/mode, which will often prove the most useful. 

A bar or pie chart will be best if you need to use the data at a glance. 

Use tools like Survicate to receive regularly automated survey reports to your email box.‍

They Give Neutral Ground or Force to Side‍

Depending on the data you need from the question, you can control whether you provide your customer or user with a neutral answer or force them to pick a side.

An odd number of points or responses will let the respondents sit on the fence. Whereas, an even number will force them to come down on one side of the fence or the other.

Depending on your goals, you can either go for data that isn't skewed or risk concrete feedback that allows for an error margin.

Feel free to draw more inspiration from our Survey Template library or sign up to Survicate and get the feel of the entire platform.