Find the Themes in Guest Feedback with Gemini in Google Forms

What This Does

A short guest feedback form on your table cards or receipts collects open comments. Reading a hundred of them is a chore, and reading only the loudest ones skews your view. Gemini in Google Forms summarizes the open-text answers and groups them into themes, so you can decide what to fix at the restaurant level. Replying to an individual guest stays with your manager.

Before You Start

• You have a Google Workspace account with Gemini included (Business Standard, $14/user/month). Google's help page says the response summary feature needs an eligible Workspace or Google AI plan, and it is not limited to a trial program. If you do not see a summary after the steps below, ask whoever manages your Google account
• You have a Google Form with at least one open-text question, such as "What could we do better?" and enough responses. Google's page says summaries appear once there are 3 to 200 responses, and theme counts work best with 8 to 200
• The form does not ask for a guest's name, phone number, email or table details. If you want to follow up with a guest, use a separate form or a separate question that you keep out of this analysis. Google says summaries are not generated for direct questions such as names and addresses
• This is not a quiz form, since Google says quiz responses are not summarized

Steps

1. Open your responses

Open the form in Google Forms and click Responses at the top. For each open-text question, a summary is generated automatically in the summary block. Click Copy to save it, or Retry for a fresh version. Google notes the summaries are not saved, so copy what you want to keep.

2. Generate themes

Scroll to the text question you care about. Below its summary, click See theme percentages. Gemini groups the answers into themes and opens a new Google Sheet with a pie chart and a count of how many responses fit each theme.

3. Adjust the themes

Click Modify themes to rename, add or remove categories. Click Add for a new theme, or Delete category next to a name. Merge themes that overlap, such as "slow service" and "long wait." If the sheet shows an error, click Refresh & Generate in the Sheets side panel. If the theme button is grayed out, check the response count, because Google ties the option to a range of counts.

4. Verify against the real comments

Do this before you act. Open the responses and read 20 comments yourself, picked from across the list and not just the first 20. Write down the themes you would use. Count how many of Gemini's themes you agree with. If you agree with most, the grouping is useful. If you agree with only a few, rename or merge themes, or treat the summary as a rough guide only.

5. Turn themes into decisions

Pick the top two or three themes and write one decision for each: who owns it, what changes and when you will look again. Share the themes, not individual comments, with your GM and chef. Keep guest replies with your manager.

Real Example

Scenario: After a month of table-card feedback, you have a few dozen open comments and a feeling that "service is slow" but no proof.

What you do: Open Responses, click See theme percentages under the "What could we do better?" question, and rename two overlapping themes.

What you get: A sheet with a pie chart and counts such as wait for the check, noise level, and menu choices. You read 20 comments yourself and agree with all but one theme, which you merge into another. You bring the top two themes to your next manager meeting.

Tips

• Run the same question every month so you can compare themes against your own history. Do not compare against numbers from elsewhere.
• Themes tell you what to look at, not why. Follow up with your staff before you decide on the cause.
• Do not put raw comments into a public chatbot if they could identify a guest or a staff member. Using the built-in feature avoids that copy-and-paste step, but check your account's data settings with whoever manages it.

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