3 Reasons Why Open-Ended Feedback Is Important

Yes! Your customer review analysis was a success. You’ve asked the right questions, gathered the data, and analyzed it manually or with a certain coding software (Caplena ). Now you know what you have got to do to improve the business or the customer experience. And it’s all thanks to the open-ended feedback from your customers….. Oh wait, you didn’t do it yet? Well, why not? Today, we will take a look at three reasons why open-ended feedback is vital for you and your business, and why you SHOULD collect open-ended feedback.

Why Open-Ended Feedback is Important

1. Open-Ended Feedback Leads to Quality Responses

2. Open-Ended Feedback Reduces Inaccurate Information

3. Open-Ended Feedback Improves your business

1. Open-Ended Feedback Leads to Quality Responses

Let the people talk! Collecting open-ended feedback from your customers offers quality responses as it enables customers to focus on the question and share their opinion in an honest manner without having to conform to pre-selected answers which may not offer the best response. We propose asking only 2 questions in any survey to get honest and more thought-provoking insights. Hold up… why only 2 questions? Let’s look at a recent study conducted by SurveyMonkey. The online survey tool has found that asking fewer questions could be the difference between respondents spending over 1 minute on a question or less than 20 seconds. Thus, having a survey with very few questions may lead to better-quality responses as you gain deeper, more accurate customer insight! 💫

Image taken from Surveymonkey.

2. Open-Ended Feedback Reduces Inaccurate Information

One of the biggest issues with multiple-choice questionnaires is that you, as a surveyor, assume the ideas of the respondent and that this assumption might omit an important answer. So, even when conducted in the correct conditions, confining your survey respondents to pre-selected answers may lead to inaccurate feedback. Respondents may attempt to fill in an answer which is slightly related to their ideas and thoughts but it may miss a crucial element of their response and may not pinpoint their true feelings. As well as receiving inaccurate information from this type of feedback, you may also lose the opportunity to hear new ideas or suggestions to improve your product or service as the respondent’s voice is lost in the limited choices. Open-ended feedback reduces inaccurate information and enables the respondent to say what they want to say (Whether you like it or not!) 🤷‍♀️

3. Open-Ended Feedback Improves your Business

Without knowing what your customers think of your product or service, you create a business blind spot for yourself. Business blind spots are dangerous as without understanding what your customers’ wants and needs are, you cannot provide the best experience to your customer, and if you cannot provide the best experience to your customer, your customer will become someone else’s. To avoid this scenario you need to listen to your customer and the best way to do this is to ask them openly: How was your customer experience? How can we improve your experience? What ideas do you think we should consider? By asking your respondents broad, open questions you allow them to spill the beans on what they like about your business, what annoys them, and in some cases, solutions to current problems! 🤝

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Conclusion

In summary, open-ended feedback leads to quality responses, reduces inaccurate information, and improves your business overall. We understand that collecting this information is not the hard part and that the real issue is finding time to analyze the collected open-ended feedback. You could do this manually which may take some time if you have more than 100 survey responses. You could also try Caplena, the market-leading text analysis tool!