If you want to understand your audience better, then open-ended questions are the way to go. Open-ended questions allow individuals to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences in their own words. In this blog post, we’ll explore what open-ended questions are and how they can unleash the power of qualitative data.
What are Open Ended Survey Questions?
Open-ended survey questions allow people to share their opinions, thoughts and experiences in their own words. Open ended questions are a part of qualitative data. This is different from quantitative data that only use numerical response to gauge experiences. Open ended questions can be used as follows:
- As a compliment to closed-ended survey questions. Open-ended questions seek an opinion-based reasoning for the answers given on the closed-ended scale.
- It can be used in places where people merely want to express themselves on a particular experience or incident. For example, digital diaries, video interviews and face to face feedback etc.
Why use open-ended questions?
- Rich, unfiltered feedback: Respondents share their thoughts in their own words. Get detailed insights into emotions, behaviors, and preferences.
- Discover fresh insights: Since responses aren’t confined to a set of options on a scale, they can reveal new trends or issues you might not have considered.
- Better customer understanding: These questions allow businesses to understand their customers’ motivations, needs and gauge into their persona better.
- Humanize the feedback process: Open-ended questions provide a human touch. Respondents feel heard which can positively impact customer satisfaction metrics.
Benefits of Open-Ended Survey Questions
Here are the 3 best reasons you must include open ended survey questions in your customer feedback forms.
1. The audience can share candid experiences
It is crucial for any business to understand their target market. The main aim is to obtain information about the user’s preferences, behaviours and why they prefer a certain benchmark. Giving the chance to share opinions encourages people to share their testimonials and grievances. This means people can elaborate on why they rated a certain scale with a particular number. Seeking response goes beyond the numbers.
2. Encourage customers for detailed responses
Sometimes, a numerical metric may not denote much beyond a rating or a satisfaction scale. You have to offer an open section where customers can share the rating and explain the reason for the rating. Marketers will gain additional insight and uncover unexpected perspectives. Open-ended questions are an excellent tool for exploring new topics. People can share certain keywords that can help you curate better strategies as an upgrade.
3. Get details on negative feedback
Open-ended responses can help people vent about their negative experience. However, people are also tempted to share their negative or positive experiences on social media platforms, third party review sites or website testimonials on ecommerce sites. CX marketers need to close the feedback loop when they gather negative customer feedback. Solve customer’s pain points and improve CX strategies.
Design Tips to Create Good Open-Ended Questions
Here are some valuable guidelines that you can use when you build a customer survey. The end goal of the survey is also to collect candid feedback or constructive criticism along the touchpoints.
1. Focus on simple language
Focus on clearly asking for a candid response. Avoid using closed questions or leading phrases. This may encourage one-word answers or restrict critical thinking. Seek answers immediately after collecting a response on the numeric scale.
For example “Share your reason for the rating below:”.
The power of qualitative data lies with the opinions of the respondents.
2. Avoid leading questions
A leading question is the one that prompts respondents to answer in a desired manner. Avoid this error since that may cause bias and produce skewed results. Use neutral and non-judgmental wording when asking participants to “describe” or “tell me about” their experiences.
For example “Did you like our detailed services?” would prompt the respondent into a ‘yes or no’ type of an answer. A better way to frame it would be- “How would you rate our services?”- provided with a scale and a space for them to explain their stance on the rating.
3. Seek a range of response
Design the qualitative question in a way that encourages people to respond freely without bias or fear of judgement. Encourage multimedia input such as photos, videos or voice notes using Merren CX platforms. This can help CX professionals get more insights into the customer sentiments.
For example, “Please share the reason for the rating (share product photos here)”.
Current Challenges Of Open Ended Survey Questions:
Time-consuming to analyze:
Processing qualitative data can be labour-intensive and time-consuming. Marketers have to assess individual data to understand various patterns. However, using Merren AI for survey analysis, clients can get a detailed analysis of individual responses.Risk of low response rate:
Some respondents may avoid answering open-ended questions because they require more effort than closed-ended ones.
Tips to Create Better Open-Ended Questions
Keep direct questions:
Direct questions are clear, to the point and mostly jargon free. This means that the question is seeking an answer that will satisfy the purpose of the question. At this point, avoid leading questions and double-baralled questions. Simple language will solicit a greater number of responses for authentic qualitative data.
Offer follow ups as a context:
Open-ended is mostly used when you seek detailed opinions. This can be a follow-up question after a satisfaction rating metric (Net Promoter Score NPS, Customer Satisfaction Score CSAT, Customer Effort Score CES). The metric based questions provide a context for the respondent to share details on their rating.
Use open-ended prompts:
Open-ended prompts can be used to encourage respondents to share more information. Instead of asking “Did you have a good experience with our customer service?” you could ask “Can you tell us about your experience with our customer service?“. This allows the respondent to share details and provide a genuine response.
Offer space for elaborate answers
Short answer boxes may discourage them from providing thorough answers. Provide ample space for opinion based response. This will give you more data on the customer’s perspective, their pain points or their satisfaction metric at journey touchpoints. Alternately, seek multimedia responses in the form of photos, audio or video responses to allow a range of expression from your audience.
Use it sparingly:
Too many qualitative questions can overwhelm a respondent. Answering each one can feel repetitive. Use it to compliment a numeric or a rating scale. This enables people to understand the context behind each of these questions. Short surveys may not always need too many questions. One of each qualitative and quantitative will suffice. Places like in-depth market research can call for more open ended questionnaires.
How to Analyze Open-Ended Question Responses?
Choose a software that can segregate responses based on ratings and opinions. Here is how you can assess qualitative data.
1. Coding and categorization
Categorize and code the responses into significant groupings. Identify prevalent themes, concepts, or subjects that arise from the information. Allocate corresponding labels or codes to every response based on their respective categories. This aids in organizing the data and simplifies comparison and explanation.
2. Create actionable insights
Identify common patterns in the analysis process. Communicating this information is critical via multiple-choice questions or visual aids like charts or graphs. Extremes of emotions can help you understand if consumers are unhappy at a certain touchpoint. For example, the rating for a product could be marked as ‘good’ but respondents might also want to add a critical point to note.
3. Manual reading and reflection
It is imperative to go through each response with careful attention and manually assess qualitative data. Be mindful of any subtle nuances, underlying emotions, or implicit messages that may not be immediately visible. Take note of the tone, language employed, and the overall context of the response. By conducting a thorough reading you can go beyond surface-level observations.
Conclusion
Open-ended questions are a powerful tool for collecting qualitative data. They allow you to tap into the thoughts, experiences of your audience in a way that closed-ended questions cannot . By understanding your audience and encouraging detailed responses, you can gain valuable insights that can help shape your business strategy and decision-making.
Using Merren, you can opt for customized templates to help you build your own survey. Use our vivid charting facilities to segment your qualitative data into actionable insights. Bring insights at a superfast speed today. Try our features and sign up for a 14 day free trial and 10X your response rate.