I read a great article by Donna Fluss in CRM Magazine recently, Surveys Alone Are Not the Answer. What really hooked me was this statement: After years of analyzing exceptional service organizations, it's clear to me that the organizations that deliver great service do something that others...read more

There comes a time when those of us in consumer and B2B market research realize that we are not just the messengers, the conduit for the voice of the customer, but we also are the change agents. This realization came to me some time ago, but was reaffirmed while reading the book Outside In by Harley...read more

The choice is yours as the survey creator. How we phrase a question impacts our ability to gather feedback and conduct survey data analysis. I was reminded of this recently when looking at a question regarding annual spend per employee on training. There are two basic options we as survey authors...read more

Dan Ariely: Beware Conflicts of Interest I love this story. Towards the end Dan says "The most difficult thing, of course, is to recognize that sometimes we are too blinded by our own incentives... When I was doing these experiments, I was helping science. I was eliminating the data to get the true...read more

As anyone with a sister, mother, wife, girlfriend or daughter knows, reasons aren't always right or logical. Same is true for the reasons organizations have for not having a customer feedback program. Some of the common "reasons" include: thinking they already know what customers are going to say;...read more

Your survey invitation is the key to action. In a previous post I spoke about pre-notifications as part of the communication stream. In this post, I would like to emphasize the invitation as being your primary call to action. If your target group is an existing panel, or members of your customer...read more

Borrowing again from our kin in direct marketing, researchers can utilize the technique of pre-notification to set the expectation that a survey is on the way. The notification can be via email, phone or as insert or mention on an invoice. Banners can be placed on high traffic spots on the company...read more

Survey research projects, like any projects, run the risk of running off course. There isn’t a researcher currently in the business that hasn’t had to face scope creep and question creep. This is particularly true if the survey was designed by cross-functional groups. In these cases, group members...read more

Having worked for many companies in my career thus far, I am always curious to see how senior management responds when employee attrition sky rockets. Do they understand it is because there is a general sense of unhappiness among their employees? Do they think the employees who are leaving are just...read more

The late Theodore Levitt, former editor of the Harvard Business Review, stated that the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. This belief applies to companies both large and small, as well as non-profits and government organizations. The process of creating and keeping a customer...read more