As researchers, we talk a lot about matching the methodology to the first objective. But given low response rates and the preciousness of qualified respondents, we need to focus a lot more on matching the methodology to the audience.
There are hundreds of market research agencies and hundreds of market research consultants. Changing agencies can be painful, but you deserve an agency that you can trust with your valuable market research investments.
If you allow employees to invite customers to take customer satisfaction feedback surveys, make sure they aren’t saying things like, “The highest score is a 10. I hope I earned a 10!” You have probably experienced this yourself, perhaps at an auto dealership or retail chain. Upon completion of your transaction, the clerk give you the feedback survey instructions (perhaps advising of a phone call you will receive, or giving you a URL to use), and then says something like, “I’m hoping you rate me as “extremely helpful.”
If you do an annual employee survey to gather current perceptions and attitudes—great! This is an area of research that can uncover real opportunities to boost employee satisfaction and productivity, and even identify ways to save money. But do be sure to include technology-related content—especially if your employees use computers, communications and related technologies as part of their jobs.
Quality is a concern no matter what country an outsourcing provider is based in—the US, India, France, Canada…anywhere. If you work with an agency and they outsource, you need to have some evidence that the outsourcing partner provides great work—and was not selected simply because they had the lowest price or a well-connected brother-in-law.
I mentioned that I would be writing up some more faves in a Part 2. The cool thing is that while I had my Part 2 blogs already in mind, several readers suggested others that were not on my planned list. Some are blogs I knew of but hadn’t visited recently, but others were entirely new to me! So I took some time to check them all out, and rounded out my favorite Market Research blogs, Part 2, below.
