How YouGov collected cost-effective insight by doubling the quality of open-ended question with smartinterview

Partner: YouGov Switzerland

Overview

YouGov, one of Switzerland’s leading market research institutes, partnered with Pulse Partners to enhance their ability to collect and analyze qualitative insights at scale. With a survey involving approximately 3,600 respondents across Switzerland (both French- and German-speaking regions), we aimed together to gain a deeper understanding of regional product perceptions.

Through SmartInterview, we were able to refine open-ended feedback collection, uncovering deeper context, and increasing the number of topics extracted from their respondents’ answers. This collaboration allows us to maintain and improve its excellence in insight discovery of YouGov, while optimizing the research processes further.

Challenge

Extracting meaning from Open-Ended Questions

Research institutes regularly collect qualitative responses, but getting in-depth response and manually analyzing such extensive open-ended data presents major challenges:

• Lack of depth: Standard surveys often result in short, underdeveloped responses, limiting the richness of insights.

• Scalability issues: Processing thousands of open-ended responses requires significant time and resources.

To overcome these hurdles, SmartInterview offers an AI-driven qualitative research software to extract meaningful, in-depth responses at scale.

Solution

SmartInterview is an automated, voice-enabled interview system, powered by AI that engages respondents in a natural, interactive dialogue, refining open-ended responses in real time.

Key Features used:

✔ AI-Driven probing: Smartinterview dynamically asked follow-up questions, prompting respondents to elaborate on their answers, ensuring more detailed responses.

✔ Multi-Language: The survey was conducted in French & Swiss German, with success ensuring cultural and linguistic relevance for Swiss respondents.

✔ Sentiment & topic analysis: SmartInterview automatically extracts key themes from responses and structured insights using AI-powered classification.

How SmartInterview enhances insights

Example of AI-Driven Qualitative Conversations

French Conversation Example:

🗨 SmartInterview : "Vous pouvez répondre librement à cette question. Selon vous, qu'est-ce qui caractérise un produit régional ? Veuillez dire tout ce qui vous vient à l'esprit."

👤 Répondant : "Cela veut dire qu'il est fabriqué, produit dans la région, que ce n'est pas importé, que c'est fait par les locaux, voilà pour moi c'est ça que ça veut dire."

🗨 SmartInterview : "Qu'est-ce que la production locale apporte à un produit selon vous ?"

👤 Répondant : "Pour moi, ça veut dire que les produits sont frais déjà, plus sains. Qu'est-ce que ça apporte encore ? Ça ne pollue pas, ou en tout cas, ça pollue moins parce que ce n'est pas transporté de loin. Et aussi, ça fait travailler des locaux, des agriculteurs de la région, des entreprises de la région. Voilà, pour moi, c'est ça."

🗨 SmartInterview : "Comment l'impact écologique influence-t-il votre choix de consommation ?"

👤 Répondant : "Comment il influence ? Il influence dans le sens où avant, je ne regardais pas la provenance, maintenant si, en tout cas plus qu'avant. Du coup, j'essaie de choisir plus souvent le local, on va dire. Et voilà, j'essaie d'acheter le plus souvent possible le local."

German Conversation Example:

🗨 SmartInterview: "Können Sie mir bitte genauer erklären, warum der Geschmack für Sie entscheidend ist?" (Can you explain in more detail why taste is important to you?)

👤 Respondent: "Ich denke, am Geschmack erkennt man, ob ein Produkt schonend hergestellt ist, indem man auf die Umwelt Rücksicht nimmt. Dann hat es meist auch einen guten Geschmack. Es kann aber auch sein, dass ein Produkt konventionell hergestellt wurde und dennoch besser schmeckt als eines, das sogar nach Demeter-Standards produziert wurde. Aber meistens ist es so, dass wenn es schonend, gut und nachhaltig hergestellt wird, es auch einen besseren Geschmack hat."

🗨 SmartInterview: "Warum ist Ihnen Umweltschonung bei der Herstellung so wichtig?" (Why is environmental protection in production important to you?)

👤 Respondent: "Weil wir eine Biodiversitätskrise haben, und diese kommt vor allem daher, dass wir so viele Pestizide, Fungizide und was weiß ich noch alles versprühen. Das ist ein Desaster für die Umwelt, und deswegen kaufe ich nur Biodiversitätsprodukte. Weil ich halt nicht das Fisch essen will, sondern..."

These dynamic interactions enabled YouGov researchers to extract deeper, more structured insights than traditional surveys, making them a game-changer in delivering greater value to research projects.

A new standard for open-ended market research

Key Achievements

2.2x More topics captured per response: Compared to traditional open-ended questions, respondents provided significantly richer answers, enabling more comprehensive analysis.

The following comparison graphics illustrate the number of topics generated from a traditional open-ended response versus a SmartInterview open-ended question for each respondent.

Traditional methodology:

Smartinterview methodology:

In the manually coded topics, we capture a richer context across all respondents.

Access to long-tail feedbacks: We can now capture detailed, highly specific feedback from a subset of respondents who would otherwise provide limited input (highlighted in yellow in the following graphic). 

With SmartInterview, we can seamlessly integrate qualitative interviews within a quantitative survey, capturing in-depth insights in a single run. This approach eliminates the need for separate qualitative and quantitative studies, significantly reducing costs while maintaining the richness of open-ended responses typically found in real-life qualitative interviews.

This graphic compares the performance of traditional methodologies with SmartInterview based on word count distribution. The data reveals that, at the median level, SmartInterview captures significantly longer responses, enriching each answer with deeper insights.

Beyond enhancing qualitative depth, this technology enables the creation of highly precise customer personas by analyzing open-ended responses. With effective segmentation, businesses can better understand their customers' psychology and communicate in a way that truly resonates with their audience.

Game-changing results - 4x context length and 2.2x topic numbers.

The collaboration between YouGov and Pulse Partners demonstrates the transformative power of AI and voice in market research surveys to increase the insight quality at the same cost.

By adopting smartinterview, research institutes can increase the depth and accuracy of their insights and can propose this technology to its end-client.

“SmartInterview is an exciting tool with interesting possibilities. We were able to integrate it seamlessly into our survey, making it available for clients who may wish to use it with us in the future. In particular, we see potential for gaining more cost-effective insights: with SmartInterview, it may be possible to derive the same insights from open-ended questions with fewer survey respondents.”

— Dr. Manuel Cariappa-Schwaninger, Research Consultant, YouGov

Want the Full Dataset?

Send a mail to matthieu.saussaye@pulse-partners.ch and we would send you the full dataset to help you!