What you'll accomplish
By the end of this guide, you'll have a repeatable workflow for coding open-ended survey responses using Claude Pro. A verbatim coding task that currently takes 5–8 hours of manual reading and tagging will take 45–60 minutes of pasting batches and reviewing results. You'll produce more consistent coding than manual review — and have time left over for actual analysis.
What you'll need
- A Claude account — free tier works for small batches; Claude Pro ({{tool:Claude.plan}} at {{tool:Claude.price}}) for larger datasets and longer conversations
- Your open-ended survey data exported from Qualtrics or Excel as a text file or spreadsheet
- Your coding framework (list of themes/codes) — have this ready before you start
- Time needed: 30 minutes to set up your workflow; then 45-60 minutes per 500 verbatims
- Cost: Free tier available; Pro for large batches without hitting limits
How-To Guide: Open-Ended Verbatim Coding with Claude
Step 1: Export your open-ended data
From Qualtrics or your survey platform, export the open-ended question responses as a CSV or Excel file. You need:
- Respondent ID (or row number)
- The verbatim response text
Clean it: remove any PII (names, emails) if your firm's data privacy policy requires anonymization before pasting into AI tools.
Troubleshooting: If your firm prohibits pasting client data into external AI tools, use example/synthetic responses to test the workflow, then apply the coding framework to real data manually using the AI-generated scheme.