“What Are We Missing?”: A Survey Question That Gains Invaluable Feedback

By John Capps

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Understanding how consumers feel about brands is a common goal in quantitative research. We plan our surveys accordingly, creating space for survey participants to evaluate and offer feedback.

But how we do we gain insights from ideas that aren’t featured on the survey? If consumers don’t have an opportunity to share their feedback, brands can find themselves scratching their heads and wondering if they don’t know what they don’t know.

One Question Changes Everything

After working diligently to field a custom survey and swim in a sea of data, I often find myself focused on feedback from one simple open-ended survey question: “What is missing from this brand, product, or service?”

Feedback from this question type is intriguing, especially when a fresh idea is mentioned over and over on an unaided basis. When a group of consumers have similar ideas on how to improve a brand, this is not only interesting, but potentially impactful!

Small tweaks to a product, service, or messaging campaign can change the game for a struggling product or service or help a brand differentiate itself from competitors.

At W5, we see these kinds of results often with product package testing. Consumers might give high marks to a variety of package designs and feel they are suitable, which is great. After the coded questions, we ask them an open-ended one: “What is missing?” When I analyze feedback to this question and read participant answers, I often think, “Hmm, that’s a great idea. Why hasn’t anyone thought of that?” Feedback from this question can lead to small packaging tweaks that help brands stand out overall as well as on store shelves.

Uncovering Surprising Opportunities

Asking an open-ended question like, “What is missing?” in a survey with a robust sample size and varying levels of brand interest and engagement not only identifies unmet customer needs but can also potentially turn the less engaged or non-customers into loyalists.

There may be low-hanging fruit where simple adjustments to a product, service , or messaging campaign fulfill needs and desires of more customers in total.

Our advice? Ask away in your next survey, you never know what you’ll find!

Next time you are conducting survey research, consider going beyond the pros and cons of current brand offerings and see what fresh ideas consumers might have with one simple question: “What is missing?”