How can the respondent answer in open

Making the right choices between open-ended and closed survey questions allows you to get only the data that best serves the goal of your customer, employee, or market research survey.

You already know the difference between an open-ended question and a closed question, right?

Open-ended questions are the kind that doesn’t set specific options for response. For example, “What’s your reason for reading this blog post? Type your answer in the box below.”

Closed questions are the kind you can answer with one word or number or by choosing from preset responses. For example, “How often do you visit this website? Once a day, once a week, once a month or once a year?”

The difference matters because when you’re designing a survey to collect feedback from customers or employees, the type of question you use influences the type of answers you get and the insights you can gain.

When, how, and why you’d want to use open-ended questions?

#1: Allow an infinite number of possible answers

The big plus of an open-ended question is that you’re not placing any limits on the response. That means your survey respondents can tell you anything they feel is relevant and anything they want you to know. Closed questions, on the other hand, drastically limit the possible responses.

#2: Collect more detail

Open-ended questions give your respondents the freedom and space to answer in as much detail as they like, too. Extra detail really helps to qualify and clarify their responses, yielding more accurate information and actionable insight for you.

#3: Learn something you didn’t expect

All this freedom to give any answer, of any length and with any level of detail, means that you’ll sometimes discover something completely unique and unexpected among your survey responses. Whether it’s a process innovation that’ll save the company money or a marketing concept with the potential to boost your brand, these unanticipated answers can be extremely valuable.

#4: Get adequate answers to complex issues

Sometimes an open-ended question is the only way to collect the answers you need. In a situation that requires contextualisation, complex description and explanation, a simple Yes/No or multiple-choice answer just won’t cut it. When you’re asking someone to explain a decision or report a problem, for example, open-ended questions tend to work best.

#5: Encourage creative answers and self-expression

Given room to express themselves freely, some respondents will surprise you with their eloquence and creativity. An open-ended question frees respondents to convey their feedback and ideas to you in their own voices. You may also receive survey answers in unexpected formats, such as poetry, or a hyperlink to a blog post your respondent wrote on the topic in question.

#6: Understand how your respondents think

Free-form written answers reveal a great deal about the workings of the respondent’s mind. From the essential logic of their reasoning and the steps in their thinking process to their language choices and frame of reference, there’s a huge amount you can learn from reading their thoughts in their own words.

#7: Ask without knowing

The big problem with closed questions is that to design them into your survey, you’ll need to know roughly what answers you expect. If you’re testing a hypothesis, for example, it’s easy enough to come up with appropriate answer options that will support or refute it. But using open-ended questions lets you explore topics you don’t yet know enough about to form a hypothesis.

How can the respondent answer in open

When to use closed questions? 

So, open-ended questions offer a lot of advantages in the right situations. But not every situation is right for this type of question, and there will be times when you’re better off avoiding open-ended questions entirely. Here’s why.

#1: Keep analysis easy

Comparison, correlation, and statistical analysis are much more difficult when every response is a free-form answer to an open-ended question. If you don’t have the time or the manpower to read every word of every answer, interpret them, and code them consistently for analysis, stick to closed questions unless there’s a good reason to go open-ended.

#2: Don’t torture your respondents

When faced with an open-ended question and a large blank space into which to insert their answer, respondents can feel intimidated or disheartened. Answering an open question takes more time, thought, and effort than ticking a few radio buttons, and your survey respondents know it. Bear in mind that free-form written answers are easy for literate and articulate people, but some respondents may struggle more with this answer format than others.

#3: Get the answers you need

Open-ended questions hand over all control of the response to the respondent. If your question doesn’t make clear exactly what information you’re looking for, your respondents may give only vague answers or misinterpret your question and focus their answer on a side topic you didn’t intend to explore. The ever-present risk of open-ended questions is that the responses may be inadequate or irrelevant to your research needs — or the one sentence that matters may be buried in a long and meandering response.

#4: Balance your question types

If you’ve already hit your respondents with several open-ended questions in a survey, cut them some slack by keeping the survey short and making the remainder of your questions closed-ended. Respondents may enjoy the freedom to tell you exactly what they think, but they don’t want your survey to feel like an essay assignment.

#5: Open answers versus open questions

Sometimes it isn’t the question itself that matters so much as the answer options you provide. If you ask what sounds like a closed question but allow free-form responses, you’ll still get additional information from some of your respondents. For example, a simple Yes/No answer can become “Yes, but…” or “No, and…” when the respondent has more to say on the topic.

Conclusion – Open or Closed Questions: Now what?

First, think. Every time you create a survey question, remember the advantages and disadvantages of making it open-ended. Know when you’ll need quantifiable answers for statistical analysis and when you’ll benefit from giving your respondents greater freedom of self-expression.

Second, act. Send your surveys and analyze your responses. Share reports with everyone who needs them and plan your next steps.

Third, check. Compare your survey opening and completion rates to see if your new approach to open-ended questions has made any difference to your respondents’ behavior. Ask your data analysts if their job’s easier now that you use open and closed questions more appropriately. Evaluate the insight and competitive advantage your organization’s gained.

What problems or successes have you had in choosing between open-ended and closed survey questions? Reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter to share your insight.

If you’d like to sign up for a free trial or know more about how to create effective surveys click here. We’d love to hear from you!

Customer surveys primarily include closed-ended questions. It is more difficult to analyse the results of an open-ended question because of its qualitative nature. Yet, asking open-ended questions can prove to be very useful for getting to know your customers better. So, why and how should this type of questions be used?

What purpose do open-ended questions serve in a customer survey?

1 – Open-ended questions are less biased

Open-ended questions allow to collect qualitative answers from customers that are, for the most part, full of information. By asking this type of question, you are giving your customers the opportunity to answer whatever they like, without limiting or influencing them with predefined answers.

Your customers can answer freely. It is not always possible to answer a closed-ended question; sometimes none of the available choices reflect your viewpoint. People don’t always fit in the boxes!

How can the respondent answer in open

However, don’t be surprised: most of your customers will only spend a few seconds on an open-ended question. This will actually make it easier to interpret their comments though, so it is not a problem.

In terms of customer knowledge, open-ended questions present another advantage. The answers to closed-ended questions are ones chosen by you. But have you thought of everything? You risk finding what you are looking for, but not what your customers actually think.

Asking open-ended questions is a way of opening up to new ideas, to unanticipated answers. These questions are often very instructive.

2 – Open-ended questions are ideal for understanding perceptions

A near-spontaneous answer is particularly useful when evaluating and measuring brand or product awareness, and more broadly, how they are perceived by customers. Take the following example:

How can the respondent answer in open

3- Improved interactions via surveys

Open-ended questions make customers feel valued. By asking an open-ended question, you are giving a voice to the respondent, thus letting them know that their personal opinion is important and that their answers will not simply be fed into automatically generated statistics.

How can the respondent answer in open

An open-ended question also allows to break the monotony of a series of these questions. An open-ended question arouses the respondent’s interest, surprises them and dispels their automatic reflexes. In other words, an open-ended question helps make your customer survey more dynamic.

As you can see, there are numerous and undeniable advantages to using open-ended questions.

What difficulties can arise with these questions?

So why, in spite of everything, are open-ended questions often missing from customer surveys, or do they represent such a small minority? A number of disadvantages can be identified if the processing method for these questions has not been sufficiently anticipated. Let’s take a closer look.

Firstly, it is difficult to use answers to these questions in statistics. The answers, qualitative by very definition, do not lend themselves easily to a quantitative analysis. Yet, it can never be said enough – the analysis of customer survey results is a critical step.

If you don’t use verbatim analysis software, you will have to read all the answers manually, and try to sort them by category, for statistical purposes. Which, in all honesty, is particularly time consuming.

But the processing of open-ended question answers is not the only drawback:

  • Answers collected from open-ended questions are not always very interesting or useable. Take great care when formulating your questions to avoid leading respondents off-topic.
  • Most respondents will simple skip open-ended questions. The response rate for open-ended questions is always far inferior to closed-ended questions. Make sure that your deployment is sufficiently widespread, in order to achieve strong sampling.
  • Some respondents are not used to expressing themselves in writing, and their answers are not always very clear, readable or easy to understand. Adding an example to the question can help guide respondents without influencing them.
How can the respondent answer in open

How to use this kind of questions in surveys?

It is important to be aware of the positive and negative aspects of open-ended questions, in order to successfully incorporate them into your customer surveys.

Open-ended questions allow to find out things you would never have known by only asking closed-ended questions. It is therefore recommended, when necessary, to use open-ended questions.

Use open-ended questions when they bring added value

Don’t overdo this sort of questions. Analysing open-ended question answers is difficult, and time-consuming if you don’thave any tool. We strongly recommend against designing a survey with an equal number of open-ended and closed-ended questions. If you are using text analysis software, we recommend adding an open-ended question every 3 questions. If you plan on analysing the answers yourself, only include one open-ended question for every 5.

It is sometimes possible to acquire sufficiently qualified answers via closed-ended questions. There is no need to ask an open-ended question if you can use a closed-ended one instead. Ask yourself if an open-ended question will add any real value compared to a “closed” answer. Think about it from a customer knowledge perspective.

How can the respondent answer in open
How can the respondent answer in open

For smart surveys, open-ended questions can only be deployed under certain conditions. If, in the case of an NPS question, the assigned score is low, an open-ended question will help you understand the reason.

Encourage your respondents to provide concise answers to your open-ended questions

Don’t hesitate to ask your respondents for short answers. You could specify the number of answers for example: “Name 5 smartphone brands”. Or add an adverbial phrase in the question, such as: “in a few words”, “in one sentence”, etc. Short answers are quicker to analyse. They are also often clearer, because they are more direct. Below is an example that perfectly illustrates these last two points.

Use verbatims analysis tools

This has been mentioned previously in the article. Software of this kind allows to detect the terms most frequently mentioned by respondents, or to identify the negative or positive polarities in the verbatim responses. This allows you to gain a deeper understanding of answers to open-ended questions and to save a lot of time that would otherwise be spent on analysis.

How can the respondent answer in open

Example of polarity analysis of verbatim with Skeepers

Skeepers CX offers a verbatim analysis module on our Enterprise Feedback Management platform. For an even more detailed analysis, you can also call upon one of our specialist partners such as Proxem, Viavoo or Erdil. Contact us and we will work out the best solution to achieve your objectives together.

In conclusion, here are a few occasions/situations in which open-ended questions are efficient:

– Following a closed-ended question, to complete and expand on an answer

– When the potential choice of answers is so large that asking a closed-ended question would be impossible. For example: What do you do at the weekend?

– When you want to know the words used by your customers, and to discover how they talk about your brand, products etc. These same words can then be reused by customer service.

How can the respondent answer in open