Posts Tagged ‘satisfaction research’
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
Friends often solicit from me quick advice about conducting do-it-yourself customer satisfaction surveys. What questions should they ask? How many questions should they ask? What measures and scales should they use? And, of course, shouldn’t they be using NPS (Net Promoter Score) like everyone else?
I tell them that, by far, the most useful question they can ask is an open ended question that would be something like this: (more…)
Tags: insight, open-ends, satisfaction research, Survey Design
Posted in Survey Design, Survey Tips | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
It's pretty, but it's chartjunk
Turning data into stories involves not just words, but pictures as well. In the world of quantitative market research, that usually means charts, graphs, and tables. Moreover, just like poorly written sentences that often complicate rather than clarify data, charts and graphs in market research too often suffer from “chartjunk,” as Edward Tufte calls it. Any superfluous details, design elements, or decorations that do not tell the viewer something new about the data are chartjunk.
At Versta Research we write a lot of reports. We also revise others’ reports to help our clients find and more clearly present research stories to their management teams. Here are three of the more common chart design mistakes we see and help our clients avoid: (more…)
Tags: charts, Market Research, satisfaction research, stories, visualizing data
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Presenting Research, Turning Data into Stories | No Comments »
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
Executives who lead entrepreneurial firms have dramatically different attitudes about market research from their counterparts at larger established firms, according to a recent study from Saras Sarasvathy, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia.
The study suggests that entrepreneurs are more focused on immediate and practical questions that will help them get their products into the hands of customers, and that traditional market research may not be the best way to get the right data and answers. That makes sense.
But according to an article in the February issue of Inc. magazine, “when asked what kind of market research they would conduct for [a] hypothetical start-up, most of Sarasvathy’s subjects responded with variations on the following: (more…)
Tags: data, insight, Market Research, product innovation, research, satisfaction research, segmentation, tracking studies, value
Posted in Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, New Products and Innovation | No Comments »
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
We have always been big fans of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric because it has convinced many firms to begin using customer satisfaction measurement scales that work better and that are tied to what people do rather than what people think. Eleven point scales (with points zero to ten) allow for optimal variation. They are intuitive and appealing: people quickly grasp the idea of rating something on a zero to ten scale, and are familiar with the idea from grade school. They also have a neutral mid-point, which is important for many customer satisfaction and loyalty studies.
But NPS questions do not make sense in many situations. Here’s one we saw last week—it’s a survey sent by Amazon to sellers who call regarding complicated issues with how their products are being displayed on the website or how payments are being transferred:
A Poor Use of the Net Promoter Question
(more…)
Tags: measurement, satisfaction research, Survey Design, tracking studies
Posted in Market Research, Methods & Tools, Survey Design, Survey Tips | No Comments »
Saturday, May 21st, 2011
We like this cartoon because it highlights the unrealized potential of really smart research, but also the potential perils of research gone bad.
The cartoon brings to mind three lessons worth pondering:
- Customer satisfaction research is often “not fun”—but it can be
- Internal data can be a goldmine of insight and there is often a lot of it lying around
- Ethical considerations dictate that just because research can be done does not mean it should be done (more…)
Tags: data mining, ethics, insight, satisfaction research, tracking studies
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Funnies, Market Research | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011
One reason that some people dislike surveys (okay, I may be projecting) is that too many surveys have the Me Generation attitude:
Enough about you, the customer, and what you need. What about ME? Do you like me? How much do you like me? Would you recommend me to your friend? Please let me know, because we need to track our satisfaction scores. It helps us build our metrics and our dashboards. And if you like me enough, I get a big bonus. Hurray for me!
Who are your customer satisfaction surveys really about?
(more…)
Tags: best practices, marketing, satisfaction research, survey respondents
Posted in Market Research, Methods & Tools, Survey Tips | No Comments »
Thursday, March 24th, 2011
One of the most powerful pieces of advice our clients sometimes hear is to stop researching and start marketing. In fact, a client told us yesterday that our presentation of findings last year was good, useful, impressive . . . all that. But it was when we said, “Stop worrying about the next level of precision and rigor that you could get with this data if you had more money and time to invest. These data are strong. They’re based on sound methods. We have good answers to your questions. Go put it to use.” They did, and their business is blossoming.
It’s an oddly common situation we find ourselves in these days: advising our client against more research. For advocates of information and fact-based strategies (including us), the increasingly central role for market research is gratifying. But too many surveys and research-for-research’s-sake can’t sustain itself, nor should it. Market research only matters if it is acted upon and used in smart and strategic ways.
How do you know if, instead of research, you should focus on a full-force marketing effort or at least a better strategic plan before launching research? Here are three situations we typically see: (more…)
Tags: insight, Market Research, satisfaction research, stories
Posted in Market Research, Turning Data into Stories, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, November 18th, 2010
A pet-peeve of mine is that many (way too many) market research professionals talk about “actionable insights” and I almost never know what they are talking about. I suspect most of them don’t either. The more our clients complain that research reports are sitting on shelves collecting dust, the louder every research firm starts proclaiming that it delivers actionable insights. Some even claim to have tools that, with the click of a button, deliver actionable insights right to your desktop.
Besides the ugliness of taking a verb (to act) and turning it into a noun (action) and then forcing that into an adjective (actionable), “actionable insight” just doesn’t mean much in our industry. Now we have clients with reports full of “actionable insights” collecting dust on their shelves.
In our view, the problem is that few research professionals make an explicit link in the design phase of their research between the data that will be generated, and the specific decisions that need to be made. If that link is not specified, then even if the report is rich, detailed, and full of insight, chances are it will not be used. And if it is not used, it probably was not “actionable” to begin with. (more…)
Tags: data, insight, research, research design, satisfaction research, Survey Design
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Future Trends, Market Research, Survey Design, Turning Data into Stories | No Comments »
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
In July, I moderated a panel of thought leaders in market research to ponder the question: “How Will Social Media Change Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty (CS&L) Research?” The event was sponsored by the American Marketing Association, and included participants from GfK, Maritz, MARC, SAS, Market Tools, and Versta Research.
The Role of Social Media in Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
A partial transcript of our panel’s deliberations was just published in the October 2010 issue of Marketing News, the AMA’s monthly magazine. Here is a quick summary of key points highlighted in the article: (more…)
Tags: innovation, qualitative research., satisfaction research, social media, tracking studies
Posted in Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, New Products and Innovation | No Comments »
Friday, July 30th, 2010
This past Monday I moderated a panel of thought leaders in market research to ponder the question: “How Will Social Media Change Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research?” The event was sponsored by the American Marketing Association, and included participants from GfK, Maritz, MARC, SAS, Market Tools, and Versta Research.
One of the fascinating insights to emerge from our discussion was that social media is not only a new channel of information and data, but that it is fundamentally different from previous channels of data. (more…)
Tags: Market Research, networks, satisfaction research, social media
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Sampling | 2 Comments »