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Category: Best Practices

How to Avoid Customer Feedback Fraud

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.”

Including IT topics in Employee Surveys: Stop Investing in Technology that Employees Don’t Want

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.

Market Research Quality: Transparency is Key

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.

Great Market Research Blogs, Part 2

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.

What Peter Shankman Said About Market Research Today

It’s great to hear a social media authority praise—even promote—the benefit of asking customers’ about their views. In this case, Peter was making the excellent point that companies need to ask customers how they want their information delivered. In today’s presentation in downtown Boston, Peter specifically advised the business folks in attendance to take the time to ask their audiences (clients, prospects, whatever) how they want to receive information. He points to the fact that the way information is delivered these days is extremely fragmented. Nobody can afford to simply guess how their audience wants to get information.

Bringing Life to Market Research Results

Have you ever delivered a big market research study, and had your internal clients completely ignore it?

It is an unfortunately common and painful experience.

Sometimes the challenge is that audience members find numbers too impersonal. They see charts and graphs and they just don’t seem to represent living, breathing customers. And nobody is going to take action based on market research data in which they don’t completely believe.

In-house Market Research Manager: It’s a Tough Job

Managing in-house market research is tough work. And your internal clients don’t make it easy, do they?

Your internal clients say they want powerful, fresh, objective customer insights. But too often, their behavior shows that they just want you to confirm their personal views.

Does Your Audience Hunger for Data?

A tricky part of successfully delivering client insight data is knowing how much data your audience really wants. So, be honest with yourself: do you understand your colleagues’ or clients’ data appetite?

Data Pointillism: Are You Too Close To Your Customer Data?

You may have collected thousands of data points. You savor them for a time (I know I do!), and that’s fine. But then it’s time to step back, and take it all in…unless something blocks you. It may even be that you have colleagues who are so hung up on examining the little dots up close, that you get stuck too.

Be bold. Break away from the crowd. Step back.

Bringing Market Research In-House: Watch for this Gotcha

Are you bringing more market research in-house? Relying less on outside market research agencies? That can be a perfectly reasonable choice—for many reasons. But before you …