Tips: take care with pre-selected answers
Pre-selected, default or initial answers can be helpful, encouraging, demanding or simply confusing. These are answers that have already been selected when a customer reaches the question. Depending on the context, this may encourage customers to provide their own answer, but it may also lead them not to answer at all.
Pre-selected answers should always be carefully considered and planned.
For example, if “Very satisfied” is already selected in a satisfaction question, customers may find this amusing or arrogant. However, if you pre-select a “No answer” option alongside a scale question, customers can see that they need to move the slider; otherwise, no answer will be recorded. Scale questions are a good example because they always require an initial slider position when displayed. A pre-selected additional option such as “No answer” provides a solution.
Conclusion: Overall, pre-selected answers are a complex tool. They can influence opinions, but they can also encourage customers to respond.
