Writing a good survey is harder than it looks. You need questions that are short, neutral and easy to answer on a phone; the right type for each (a star rating, a multiple choice, an open box); and the discipline to stop at five or six. Most people either copy a template that doesn't fit their business, or spend an evening on twenty questions nobody finishes.
The AI survey generator in Hearsay does the first draft for you. You describe what you want to learn in a sentence; it writes the questions, picks the question types, and hands you a draft you can change like any other survey. This post explains what it does, how to get a better draft, and what happens to what you type.
From one sentence to a draft
Say you run a pottery studio and type:
I run weekend pottery workshops. I want feedback after each session, and ideas for what to teach next.
The generator returns a titled draft, for example:
- How was the workshop overall? Rating, five stars.
- How clear were the instructions? Rating, 1–7 scale.
- Was the pace right for you? Multiple choice.
- How comfortable was the studio? Rating, five stars.
- Which workshops would you come back for? Checkboxes.
- Anything else you'd like to tell us? Open text.
It chooses from the same question types you'd use by hand: multiple choice, checkboxes, dropdowns, ratings (stars, a 1–7 scale or 0–10), ranking, matrix grids, date and time, open text, and contact details. It also writes a short reply saying what it drafted, so the conversation can continue.
Edit in plain words
The draft is a starting point, and the fastest way to change it is to keep talking:
- "Should I ask for contact details too? Yes, but optional. We want to invite them to the next one." → it adds an optional contact question at the end.
- "Make question 3 a rating." → it changes the type and keeps the wording.
- "Add a follow-up for unhappy customers." → it adds a question that only appears when the first rating is low, with the branching rule set for you.
- "Shorten it to four questions." → it trims the draft to four.
Every change updates the draft next to the conversation, so you see it before you save. When it's right, the draft opens in the full editor, where you can reorder questions, rewrite any wording, set required fields and adjust branching by hand. Nothing the AI writes is locked.
Tell it about your business once
Drafts are better when the generator knows who you are. Each brand in Hearsay has a short "about this business" note: what you sell, who your customers are, anything you always want to ask. The generator reads it with every brief, so a café gets questions about coffee and waiting times, and a skincare brand gets questions about delivery and how the product feels after a week, without you repeating it each time.
You set it the first time you use the builder, or later on the Brands page. If you run more than one brand on the Business plan, each brand has its own.
What makes a good brief
A brief doesn't need to be long, but three things help:
- Who you're asking. "First-time buyers", "people who came to Saturday's class", "customers who ordered delivery".
- What you want to learn. "Whether they'd come back", "what to add to the menu", "why they didn't finish checkout".
- Anything that must be in it. "An NPS question", "ask for their email, optional", "no more than five questions".
Vague briefs get generic drafts. "A customer survey" gets you a customer survey; "A four-question survey for people who just picked up a takeaway order, asking about wait time and packaging" gets you one you can publish.
What happens to what you type
When you generate a draft, your brief, your business note and the current draft (if you're editing one) are sent to our server, which asks an OpenAI model for a survey in a fixed structure and checks that every question is a type Hearsay supports before showing it to you. The API key never reaches your browser.
Drafts count against your plan: the Free plan includes ten a month and paid plans are unlimited. A failed request isn't counted.
If you try the generator on our AI survey generator page before signing up, your brief is used for that one draft and isn't stored. When you sign up, the draft you made opens as your first survey, ready to edit.
After the draft: the part that gets answers
A well-written survey still needs a reason to answer and a place to be seen. Two more steps turn a draft into responses:
- Add a coupon. Attach a reward and every customer who finishes gets a code on the thank-you screen: one shared code with a limit, or a list of unique codes. It's included on every plan.
- Share it where your customers are. Each channel gets its own link and QR code, so you can put one on the counter, one in your order email and one on Instagram, and see which brings answers in.
Frequently asked
Can I build surveys without the AI? Yes. The generator is the quickest way to a first draft, but the editor does everything by hand.
Does it write in other languages? It usually follows the language of your brief, so write the brief in the language you want the survey in. Review the wording before you publish, as you would with any draft.
Can it edit a survey I built myself? Yes. Open the survey in the AI builder and ask for changes in plain words; it edits the current draft rather than starting over.
Try it
Type one sentence about what you want to learn on our AI survey generator page and see the draft it writes, no account needed. Then sign up to edit it, add a coupon and share it.