Contributors
@andreea-macoveiciuc-content-expert
Business Benefits
Get the best value from your customer interviews and client meetings.
Transform closed-ended questions into open-ended questions.
- Do you have any questions? to What questions can I answer for you now?
- Does that make sense? to I know I just shared a lot of information with you in this past sequence. I’m going to pause now and allow you to react. What is your reaction to what I just shared?
Ask the person to elaborate if you cannot transform the closed-ended question.
For example, Did you find value in this process? If so, please explain further. If not, tell us how we can improve.
Design the open-ended questions to identify a specific problem and the solution behind it.
For example:
- What is stopping you from completing your purchase today?
- What task are you looking to accomplish on our website today?
- How can we improve our website to ensure you can complete your task?
Ask open-ended questions related to your business and strategy objectives.
- Only ask neutral, objective questions.
- Use them to find hidden opportunities to innovate.
- Use them to design A/B tests and experiments, sites and landing pages, or actual products.
Ask short open-ended questions taking the 5Ws and H structure (Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?).
- Sort and prioritize your questions.
- Cultivate a sense of curiosity and openness. Give up pre-existing desires and expectations and be receptive to new possibilities, accepting what is a fact. Let things unfold in their own time.
Use open ended questions in in-person client meetings.
For example:
- What are the top priorities in your business at the moment?
- What are some of the best decisions you’ve made related to ____________?
- How are you feeling about your current situation related to _____________?
- If we were meeting 5 (10, 20) years from today, what must happen for you to feel good about your situation related to ___________?
- What opportunities do you see on your horizon?
- What challenges do you see in making this happen?
- If we were to work together on this, what are the top two or three outcomes you’d like to see?
- How will you be measuring our success related to these outcomes?
- What’s the biggest risk for you to not make progress on this situation?
Use open ended questions in customer interviews.
For example:
- What do you think of this product?
- What is the one thing I should do to make things better for you?
- What should we stop doing?
- Can you give me an example?
- Why and why not? (always helpful for elaboration)
- What annoys you about this product the most?
- How does or doesn’t this product solve problem X for you?
Use open-ended questions when planning preliminary tests or doing early-stage customer and product development.
Prioritize product features and experiments. Do it even when access to large data sets is available for quantitative behavioral analysis.
Use open-ended questions to get richer data in one-on-one usability testing.
Use them also in screening questionnaires, when recruiting participants for a usability study. Use them for qualitative research too, to derive valid information from few users.