Satisfaction survey vs activation metric: measuring health right

Satisfaction survey vs activation metric: measuring health right

Two ways to know if your community is healthy. One asks, one watches.

Satisfaction survey (members rate you):
☐ Use quarterly, for direction and sentiment.
☐ Strength: surfaces feelings and 'why' you can't see in data.
☐ Weakness: only your most-engaged respond, so it's biased happy; and stated intent rarely matches behavior.

Activation metric (a tracked behavior, e.g. % who post in first 7 days):
☐ Use continuously, as your live dashboard.
☐ Strength: objective, leading indicator, catches problems before churn shows.
☐ Weakness: tells you what, not why.

The tradeoff: surveys explain, metrics predict. Surveys lag and lie politely; metrics are honest but mute.

The SOP: pick ONE activation metric as your north star (first-post within 7 days is a strong default), watch it weekly, then run a survey only when the metric moves and you need the why.

Save this for your next launch.