A Complete Guide To Open-Ended Questions (with examples)

Are you looking for some open-ended questions examples to get an idea? Well, you're not alone. Open-ended questions are a lucrative way to understand your prospects better.

Creating open-ended questions is an art, and once you have learned it, you can successfully escalate your business, profit, and loyal fan base.

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In this go-to guide, you will learn:

• What is an open-ended question?
• When to use open-ended questions?
• The advantages of asking open-ended questions.
• The disadvantages of open-ended questions.
• Plus, we’ll share some examples of open-ended questions.

What is an open-ended question?

Open-ended questions are questions that elicit a response. For example, "What do you think about our product or service?" Often, open-ended questions start with what, why, and how.

Open-ended questions instruct respondents to answer a question in greater detail. For example, questions like:

• What do they like and dislike? 
• What improvements can we make? 
• What is lacking? 

Questionnaire respondents cannot swiftly answer the question in just a word or two. These questions help the questioner get a vivid description of their product or service, enabling them to assess their strengths and weaknesses. 

When to use open-ended questions?

You can be a marketer, sales executive, customer service executive, business developer, website developer, or user researcher. To satisfy your users and improve your sales and conversion rate, you need this skill and know when to use it.

Open-ended questions play a pivotal role in understanding what an audience wants, identifying their pain points, and investigating their level of satisfaction.

And they are indispensable for the growth of business and revenue. Here are some examples of open-ended questions.

• How would you describe your experience with us?
• How satisfied are you with our service team members?
• What do you like the most about our product or service?
• Which product feature do you use often and why?
• Do you have anything else to say?

These questions will help your customers or audience express their feelings and emotions in detail. With that, you can comprehend their needs and satisfy them in a short time.

The advantages of asking open-ended questions

1. Open up gates for businesses

Asking the right question opens up gates for businesses. To ensure whether your product or service can aid or make your prospects' experience better, first, you need to be familiar with your audience's wants.

Asking open-ended questions enables your prospect to illustrate their needs in detail. You can find ways to improve your business by listening to their voice, tone, and context. 

2. They help you and your prospects

The most significant benefit of an open-ended question is that it helps you and your prospect.

It helps you think from the customer's perspective. The struggles and challenges they're facing right now. Based on that, you can present your solution.

By asking hypothetical questions, it makes your prospect think deeply. Sometimes the customer can be vague about what they want, so these questions can explicitly spot it, which helps them.

3. Allow a brand to connect better with their audience

Asking open-ended questions about your prospect's interest and recent projects connects well with your customer and helps build trust and rapport.

People love to talk about themselves and their work. It makes them feel comfortable explaining how they think and connect with like-minded people. In turn, this builds long-lasting relationships.

4. Surprise elements

Another crucial benefit of open-ended questions is the surprises. If you use open-ended questions for surveys or customer feedback, their answers can be unexpected or jaw-dropping.

Sometimes, their answer would be different from what you were thinking about are your strength or weakness by sharing honest feedback.

The disadvantages of open-ended questions

1. Disrupts the response rate

If a survey has too many open-ended questions, your customer can feel frustrated, lose interest, and not complete the survey. Keep questions limited and only choose vital questions.

2. Difficult to prepare a report

Everyone has different perspectives and problems, and their answers can differ quite slightly. So, it gets hard to organise data in charts or tables by asking open-ended questions.

Analysing and converting responses into reports also becomes a challenging job. Open-ended questions are all about obtaining qualitative information.

Ten open-ended question examples that can give valuable insights into your business

Here are ten questions that most businesses use to learn about their customers and improve the user experience:

1. How can we help you?

When a person enters your site or contacts your customer service team, asking this question lets you understand what they want and how you can quickly help them.

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2. How did you find us? 

This question lets you determine how a user has found out about your business. Based on that, you can maximise your marketing efforts and know which marketing channels are working.

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3. How was our customer service support?

Your audience answering this question gives you a detailed insight into your customer service, I.e., what they like and dislike? Then, look for areas to improve.

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4. What made you shop with us today?

This question will help you discover what made your customers make a purchase. It could be discounts, branding, customer reviews, or free shipping. Knowing this will help brands learn about why customers are choosing their brand.

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5. What made you choose us?

This question will help you discover what made your customers make a purchase. It could be discounts, branding, customer reviews, or free shipping. Knowing this will help brands learn about why customers are choosing their brand.

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6. What do you like the most about our store?

You can't always be sure about everything. This open-ended question will tell you the fun factors or crucial elements your customers love.

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7. How can we improve?

Sometimes direct questions work the best and allow your prospects to share their opinions to improve business.  

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8. What factors usually influence your purchase?

Some might prefer a personalised experience, while for others, low prices or the quality of products might be the key decision-maker. This question helps you identify and analyse what drives your customer to make a purchase.

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9. What is stopping you from doing business with us?

It is crucial to know why a customer has abandoned their cart. This question directly asks your audience what prevents them from making the purchase, such as price, shipping cost, or something else.

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10. What can we do to help?

It may still be hard to find what your customer wants during a discovery call, even after an extended conversion. You can directly ask them and know by asking this direct question.

How can Campaignware help?

With the help of Campaignware, you can easily set up a survey or feedback form to research and qualify leads. 

Campaignware has 40+ pre-built quizzes, surveys, and more to help you understand your audience better. For example, our Emoji survey template lets you collect customer feedback via emojis.

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The process is simple. Choose a template, add your brand elements, select questions you want to ask your audience, and share it on your website.

Summing up 

Open-ended questions let people express feelings and emotions. They enable you to empathise with your audience and improve business. 

Just ask the right question at the right time. Asking an open-ended question is a learnable skill that you can attain with practice. Learn, experiment, analyse your questions, and repeat.

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