Open-ended survey questions have the potential to gather deep insights into the “why” behind consumer behavior. However, respondents rarely provide the multiple layers of reasoning that underpin their thoughts and decisions. But now, thanks to Nfield’s new integration with inca SmartProbe, this has all changed.
inca SmartProbe is an AI-driven solution that dynamically prompts respondents to elaborate further on their answers to uncover richer, more meaningful insights. Its integration in Nfield gives market researchers a whole new level of opportunity through utilizing open-ended questions.
Why inca SmartProbe is a market research game-changer
Traditional open-ended questions capture a single layer of thought. With inca SmartProbe, every response becomes a doorway to establishing underlying motivations, emotions, and context that static surveys simply can’t reach.
According to inca’s benchmarks, inca SmartProbe delivers:
- 2.8× higher word count — as respondents share more thoughtful, detailed feedback.
- 2× more differentiated findings — enabling clearer distinctions between audiences and more robust segmentation.
- 2.4× greater likelihood to explain behavior — giving researchers insights that lead to more actionable recommendations.
(Source: inca SmartProbe results summary)
In essence, this technology turns quantitative research into a more conversational, human experience — one that listens, learns, and adapts in real time. For market research clients, that means richer narratives, clearer patterns, and sharper strategic direction — all without adding manual probing or fieldwork time. For a deeper look at how inca SmartProbe works, watch their official video on YouTube.
How inca SmartProbe complements Nfield
The inca SmartProbe integration in Nfield opens up a whole new world of possibilities for bringing qualitative depth into quantitative surveys. We’re talking about:
- Turning simple satisfaction questions into deeper storytelling moments.
- Enabling large-scale surveys to feel more like live conversations.
- Capturing emotional and behavioral nuance at global scale, across different languages.
How? Here’s a typical scenario to illustrate:
- Question 1 (Q1) is an open-ended question which asks: “What do you think about the drink?”.
- The respondent provides their answer.
- Nfield automatically sends the response (together with Q1 context) to inca SmartProbe.
- inca SmartProbe instantly generates a contextual, AI-powered follow-up probe question, such as:
“You mentioned the drink tastes refreshing — can you tell us what makes it feel refreshing to you?”. - The respondent then answers this probe, thereby providing deeper and more specific feedback.
- Both pairs of questions and answers are sent to inca SmartProbe to obtain the demerit scores (see below for more information about demerit).
In this way, Nfield’s robust data collection teams up with inca SmartProbe’s intelligent follow-up capability to deliver next level research insight.
Check it out
We’ve put together a showcase video to demonstrate how Nfield seamlessly connects with inca SmartProbe’s API to enhance open-ended questions in a live survey.
This gives you a flavor of what to expect when inca SmartProbe gets to work within an Nfield market research survey. inca SmartProbe’s capability extends to:
- Multi-probing sequences, where follow-up questions evolve based on each response.
- Smart configuration, so researchers can define the research topic, target audience, and areas to explore or avoid.
- Quality assurance, with a demerit score assigned to low-quality or irrelevant responses so you can disqualify or flag them later as necessary during data cleaning.
Watch the demo video:
Introducing inca SmartProbe Studio
inca SmartProbe Studio is accessed via a web interface. Researchers write their open-ended question in the studio, optionally adding a brief with objectives and context. The AI generates 3 simulated responses with probes to preview — or researchers can try it themselves and provide their own test answers to review the probes generated. When satisfied, the researcher presses a button to generate ready-to-use code to hand to the survey programmer, eliminating back-and-forth between teams.
For more control, Advanced Settings gives complete transparency into how inca’s AI is reasoning, allowing researchers to set specific topics and rules, brief the AI to take on a particular persona, and train it on the fly using examples of good and bad probes.
Key benefits of inca SmartProbe Studio:
- Transparency and control — making it the most sophisticated AI moderation solution available for market research.
- Intuitive to use: any researcher can set up sophisticated single or multi-turn probing with specific rules, and the AI will automatically configure topics for probing.
- Cost savings: run unlimited tests in the Studio without consuming API credits.
Ready to put inca Smartprobe to work?
Our article How to integrate inca SmartProbe with Nfield walks you through how to set up the integration step-by-step, so you can start experimenting with what AI-powered probing can do for you.
