The question you ask changes everything.
You can have the perfect QR code.
The perfect placement.
A great incentive.
A customer who genuinely loves the experience.
Then the camera opens and asks:
“Tell us about your experience.”
And suddenly they have no idea what to say.
That’s the problem with most video prompts.
They make the customer do too much work.
Think about what you’re actually asking someone to do.
They’re holding a phone.
A camera is pointed at them.
They might be sitting in a restaurant, standing at an event, opening a package, or walking through a hotel lobby.
There’s no answer to choose from.
No backspace.
No time to spend five minutes thinking about the perfect response.
They have to read your question and start talking.
So the best video prompts don’t sound like survey questions.
They sound like something another person would actually ask.
Instead of:
“Tell us about your experience.”
Ask:
“What surprised you most?”
Instead of:
“How satisfied were you with our service?”
Ask:
“What did our team do that stood out?”
Instead of asking someone to summarize an entire experience, give them one easy place to start.
That’s what this guide is about.
Not a giant list of testimonial questions.
It’s how to write the question that gets someone talking.
If you’re looking for more examples, explore our video testimonial questions designed to get high-quality responses.
Why Is a Video Prompt Different From a Survey Question?
A survey gives people time.
Video puts them on the spot.
Four things are happening at once.
It’s open-ended.
There’s no answer to select. The customer has to decide what they want to say.
They have to say it out loud.
Typing gives you time to rewrite.
Talking doesn’t.
You’re usually asking for more than one sentence.
A five-star rating takes a second.
A story needs somewhere to start.
They may be recording in public.
At a restaurant table.
Inside a store.
At an event.
In a lobby.
People are much more aware of what they’re saying when there are other people around.
That’s why the prompt needs to feel easy before they even start recording.
If someone reads the question and thinks:
“Hmm. What should I say?”
You’ve already made it too hard.
There are five rules we use to avoid that.
The Five Rules for Better Video Prompts
Rule 1: Ask About One Thing
This sounds simple.
It gets broken constantly.
“How was the service, and would you come back?”
That’s two questions.
Now the customer has to decide which one to answer first, remember the second one, and somehow turn both into one natural response.
Don’t make them do that.
Ask:
“What did our team do that stood out?”
Then, if you need another answer, ask another question.
One prompt.
One idea.
One place to start.
Rule 2: Ask About a Moment, Not an Evaluation
This is probably the biggest change you can make.
Ask:
“How would you rate your experience?”
And you’ll probably get:
“Great.”
“Amazing.”
“Five stars.”
Ask:
“What surprised you most today?”
Now they have to think about something that actually happened.
Maybe it was the food.
The person who helped them.
The speed.
The atmosphere.
Something they weren’t expecting.
That gives you a story.
Evaluations tend to produce adjectives.
Moments produce details.
And details are what make customer videos interesting.
Rule 3: Talk Like a Person
Marketing language gets weird when you put it in front of a camera.
Experience.
Customer journey.
Solution.
Offering.
Overall satisfaction.
People don’t normally talk to each other that way.
So don’t write prompts that way.
Read your question out loud.
Would you actually ask someone standing in front of you:
“Please describe your overall satisfaction with our offering.”
Probably not.
You’d ask:
“What did you like most?”
Write the way people talk.
Your customers will answer the same way.
Rule 4: Give Them an Easy First Sentence
Starting is usually the hardest part.
Once someone is talking, they tend to keep going.
So give them somewhere easy to begin.
“What did you order?”
Easy.
“What brought you in today?”
Easy.
“What did you try?”
Easy.
Those questions don’t require someone to come up with a brilliant answer.
They just have to remember something that happened.
And once they start talking, you can get to the story.
Think about the first three seconds.
Your prompt should help someone start talking before they have time to overthink being on camera.
Rule 5: Don’t Tell Them What to Say
There’s a big difference between:
“What did you love about your experience?”
and:
“What stood out about your experience?”
The first question already tells the customer how they’re supposed to feel.
The second lets them tell you.
That matters.
If every customer says:
“It was amazing.”
“The service was amazing.”
“The food was amazing.”
Eventually, the videos stop feeling like customer stories.
They start feeling scripted.
Give people room to be specific.
Give them room to surprise you.
The positive answers you get will be much more believable because you didn’t put the answer in their mouth.
If You’re Asking Multiple Questions, Start Easy
Sometimes one question is enough.
Sometimes you want more.
Maybe you want to know what brought someone in, what stood out, and what they would tell someone else.
Don’t start with the hardest question.
Warm them up.
A simple flow looks like this:
1. Start With Something Easy
“What brought you in today?”
Or:
“What did you order?”
They don’t have to think.
They just answer.
Now they’ve heard themselves talking on camera.
The awkward first few seconds are over.
2. Ask the Question You Actually Care About
Now go deeper.
“What surprised you most?”
“What made this different?”
“What almost stopped you from buying?”
This is where you get the answer you actually came for.
3. Finish With Something You Can Use
End with a question that naturally produces a recommendation or takeaway.
“What would you tell someone who was thinking about trying us?”
That’s often where the line you want for your website, social content, or campaign shows up.
The order is simple:
Easy → specific → quotable.
And keep the entire experience short.
The customer didn’t scan your QR code because they wanted to participate in a 15-minute interview.
Get what you need and let them get back to their day.
Eight Video Prompts We Would Rewrite
Sometimes it’s easier to see the difference.
Here are eight common prompts and how we’d make them easier to answer.
| Instead of this | Try this |
|---|---|
| How would you rate your experience? | What surprised you most today? |
| Tell us about your experience. | What made you decide to come back? |
| Would you recommend us to a friend? | What would you tell a friend who was thinking about trying us? |
| What did you think of the product? | What happened the first time you used it? |
| Any feedback for us? | What almost stopped you from buying? |
| How was our service, and would you use us again? | What did our team do that you didn’t expect? |
| Describe your overall satisfaction with the event. | What’s the one thing you’ll remember from today? |
| Please share your thoughts on our new menu and atmosphere. | What did you order, and what stood out about it? |
Look at what changed.
The questions got shorter.
The language got more natural.
And instead of asking someone to evaluate an entire experience, most of the prompts give them a specific memory to pull from.
That’s the goal.
Don’t make someone figure out what to say. Give them somewhere to start.
How Do You Know When Your Prompt Isn’t Working?
You don’t need a complicated analytics dashboard to figure this out.
Start with two things:
How many videos are you capturing?
And:
Are the answers actually useful?
Those two things can tell you a lot.
You Aren’t Capturing Many Videos
Look at the entire ask.
Is the question too long?
Does it look like work?
Are you asking for too much?
Is the customer being asked at the right moment?
Is the QR code somewhere they’ll actually notice it?
Does your team know to point it out?
Is there a reason or incentive to participate?
The prompt matters, but it doesn’t operate by itself.
The moment, placement, signage, incentive, and question all work together.
The Videos Are Coming In, but the Answers Are Too Short
Your question may be asking for an evaluation instead of a memory.
If you ask:
“How was your experience?”
“Great” is a perfectly reasonable answer.
The customer answered your question.
The question just wasn’t very good.
Try asking:
“What’s one thing that stood out?”
Now they have something specific to talk about.
People Keep Missing the Point
Your wording may be too broad.
“Tell us about your experience.”
Which part?
The product?
The employee?
The restaurant?
The checkout process?
The event?
Give them a lane.
The more specific the starting point, the easier it is to get an answer you can actually use.
Every Video Sounds the Same
Look at whether your question is leading them.
If you ask:
“What did you love?”
You’ve already decided the answer.
Try:
“What stood out?”
You’re still likely to get positive answers from happy customers.
But now they decide what was worth talking about.
That difference makes the content feel much more real.
You’re Getting Good Videos, but Not About the Thing You Need
This one is easy to miss.
The prompt may be working perfectly.
You may just be asking the wrong question.
If you need customer videos about service but everyone keeps talking about the food, don’t try to force the existing prompt to do both jobs.
Ask about the service.
“What did our team do that stood out?”
The quality of the answer starts with the quality of the question.
Change One Thing at a Time
This matters.
If your videos aren’t giving you what you need, don’t change the QR code, incentive, signage, placement, and prompt all at once.
You won’t know what worked.
Start with the prompt.
Write down how many videos you’re currently capturing and pay attention to the quality of the answers.
Then change the question.
Leave everything else alone for a little while.
Are more videos coming in?
Are customers talking longer?
Are the answers more specific?
Are you getting more videos you actually want to use?
That tells you much more than changing everything at once.
And if the prompt wasn’t the problem, move to the next part of the experience.
The goal is to learn what gets your customers talking.
Where Vidlo Fits
With Vidlo, the prompt is what your customer sees when they open the recording experience.
You create your campaign, add the question you want customers to answer, and share it through a QR code or link.
The customer opens it from their own phone and records.
No app.
No account.
Their video comes back into your Vidlo dashboard, where your team can review what customers are actually saying.
Then pay attention to two things:
How many videos are you capturing?
And:
Are you getting answers you can actually use?
If the videos are coming in but the answers aren’t strong, look at the question.
If customers keep giving you one-sentence answers, make it more specific.
If everyone says the same thing, make it less leading.
If people are answering something completely different from what you wanted, simplify the wording.
Your customer videos will tell you pretty quickly whether the question is working.
And sometimes they’ll tell you something you weren’t looking for at all.
That’s part of the value.
A good prompt doesn’t just give customers something to say.
It gives you a better way to listen.
Learn more about how Vidlo works, explore more video testimonial questions, or read our complete QR code video feedback guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is a Video Prompt?
A video prompt is the question a customer sees when they open a recording experience.
It tells them what to talk about and gives them somewhere to start.
Because the customer is answering out loud instead of selecting an option or typing a response, the best prompts are short, conversational, and specific.
How Long Should a Video Prompt Be?
Short enough to read once and understand.
One sentence is usually enough.
If someone has to read the question twice before they know what you’re asking, simplify it.
The goal is to get them talking, not make them study the prompt.
How Many Questions Should I Ask?
Start with one.
One strong question is better than five average ones.
If you need multiple answers, keep the flow short and think about the order:
Easy → specific → quotable.
Get them talking first. Ask the question you really care about second. Finish with something that gives them a natural way to sum up the experience.
Why Are Customers Giving Such Short Answers?
Look at the question first.
“How was your experience?”
can be answered with:
“Great.”
That isn’t the customer’s fault.
They answered the question.
Ask for a moment or detail instead:
“What surprised you most?”
“What stood out?”
“What would you tell someone who was thinking about trying it?”
Specific questions give people more to talk about.
Should I Tell Customers What to Say?
No.
Give them direction, not an answer.
There’s a difference between:
“What did you love?”
and:
“What stood out?”
One tells the customer how they should feel.
The other gives them room to tell you what actually happened.
That’s where better customer stories come from.
What Is the Difference Between the Prompt and the Signage?
They have two different jobs.
The signage gets someone to scan.
It might highlight the reason to participate, the incentive, or how quick the process is.
The prompt gets them talking.
Once the recording experience opens, the prompt tells the customer what to talk about.
You need both.
A great sign can get someone through the door.
A great prompt gives them something worth saying once they’re there.
Your customers don’t need a script.
They need a good question.
Ask about one thing.
Make it specific.
Give them an easy place to start.
Then listen to what comes back.
Because the difference between:
“It was great.”
and a customer story you can actually use can come down to one sentence.
The question you asked.
Create your first campaign and start capturing what your customers actually have to say.
Schedule a demo or launch your campaign today.
