Overview
Open-ended surveys represent a generative market research technique that gathers customer ideas through accessible marketing channels. The method involves asking fixed questions without constraining responses—respondents provide free-text answers at their preferred length and detail level.
Key Details
Primary Questions Addressed:
- Who is our customer?
- What are their pains?
- What are the jobs to be done?
Applicability Tags: B2C, B2B, Qualitative, Customer, Generative market research
Time and Resource Requirements
- Setup: 1-2 hours for basic execution
- Distribution: Varies by channel; response rates typically 1-20% for existing customers
- Analysis: 4-8 hours depending on survey length, respondent count, and response quality
Methodology
Preparation Steps:
- Develop screening questions to identify target segments
- Include leading questions to identify "professional survey respondents"
- Craft non-leading, non-hypothetical questions
- Request anecdotes for concrete insights
- Conduct comprehension tests on survey questions
Distribution Channels: Social media, email, website pop-ups, regular mail, telephone, SMS
Analysis Approach: Read responses, transcribe salient points on sticky notes, identify patterns through sorting exercises. For suggestion-focused surveys, compile suggestions in a repository for later review.
Critical Cautions
The document emphasizes that open-ended survey data is qualitative and generative—"be careful to interpret any input as simply ideas, not as a vote from the customer." A significant risk involves misusing qualitative data to draw firm conclusions inappropriately.
Potential Biases:
- Selection bias: fixating on agreeable comments while dismissing others
- Sampling bias: sample may not represent general population
Integration with GLIDR
Within the GLIDR platform, users establish learning objectives through research, develop survey questions via customer conversations, record the survey results as General Evidence, and analyze project impact during the analyze phase.
Adapted from The Real Startup Book, edited by Tristan Kromer and published by Kromatic, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.