Archive for the ‘Funnies’ Category

Keep Your Surveys Honest

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

One problem with new survey technologies that make it easy (and inexpensive) to design and field surveys is that we now have an explosion of poorly done and ill-intentioned surveys.  Have you ever suspected that a survey isn’t quite legit?

Dilbert.com

Keeping your survey efforts honest is critical.  Sincere efforts to document issues through rigorous surveys succeed, and when done correctly, people are influenced by numbers.  But trying to shock or manipulate with sensationalist, biased, and phony data gets you only so far.  For a great survey, keep it honest, rigorous, and valid, and carefully control for bias.  We, at Versta, can help you succeed with this.

-Joe Hopper, Ph.D.

Listen to Your Customers

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

It hurts, but when your customers hate you, you should be listening all the more carefully:

Dilbert.com

You need to find out the who, what, where, when, and why they hate you.  Probe deeply with focus groups, in-depth interviews, social media monitoring, and survey research.  Rigorous research done right (our specialty) will give you valuable insight.  And if it is communicated expertly to management (our specialty) you can probably fix the problems.  Then, the next time you listen to your customers, you won’t need to duck and cover.

-Joe Hopper, Ph.D.