Running into the post office to mail a package, the woman behind the desk told me to please fill out the survey with the link at the bottom of the receipt to help improve their service.
I then went into Bed, Bath & Beyond to pick up a few replacement tools for the kitchen and the same thing happened at checkout.
Finally, I needed some cleaning supplies and went into the Food Lion next door, and yet again, another survey.
Everybody wants me to fill out a survey to help them improve their service. I understand why but I wonder how reliable the feedback is and how difficult it can be to glean insights on how to best serve customers.
Best Practices
Quantitative surveys can be useful tools when paired with qualitative research. My friend Pat Merrill, an expert in market research, helped me conduct market surveys in the wine industry in the U.S. and Europe when I worked at Nomacorc, to help me understand both consumer and trade perceptions issues. Pat is one of the smartest thinkers about consumer and trade behavior in the wine industry.
With years of experience, he helped me asked the right questions in multiple ways so we could gain insights into how people honestly felt. When Pat and I worked together, we always looked for consistency of responses, not just numbers. We search for themes, patterns, and trends. We spent most of our time on question design to make sure the respondent understood what we were asking them.
My personal preference is survey research that focuses on one narrow and specific topic you want to understand. I like to try and gain a perspective on how consumers or customers feel about an issue, not just what they think. Can I gauge if they even care about my topic of interest, do they care strongly, is the topic top of mind? Is the issue you are researching driving behavior and action?
Survey participation rates can be low, particularly as the survey gets longer and more complex. When I fill out a survey, I always think I’m more honest in the beginning and as the survey gets longer, I care less and less toward the end and don’t put as much time into my response. I call this survey fatigue.
My favorite type of research today is the Net Promoter Score approach where you ask one or two questions and get a single number that you can evaluate over time. An NPS can help you ask a simple question every few months and you can measure if your brand is heading in the right (or wrong) direction.
Overthinking the questions
I find that when I take a survey, I tend to over think it and spend way too much time trying to make sure I’m answering the right question.
Like an 8-year-old, who took a test in school, and was asked to circle the lowest number, I have a difficult time knowing if it’s a trick question or not.
By the way, I would have given the child an A for his imaginative interpretation of the quiz. (see featured image on my blog post)
With limited marketing dollars to spend, I prefer to start with one-on-one interviews.
I would rather invest more time with a few people but try and get some depth to understand their experience and the subtleties of what they mean through a dialogue. After conducting extensive one-on-one interviews, creating a survey allows me to test a few hypotheses based on what I heard. I’m also a big fan of observational research where I can see a consumer (or customer) in the wild and observe what they do – not what they say.
I worked on some qualitative research in Italy with just twenty subjects who did one-hour interviews. That research convinced me to advocate to kill the project we were studying because we weren’t solving any problem that these people had, and I suspected we would never succeed. There was a consistent theme that came from the interviews in different words, but all with the same clear message.
When I worked in the food industry, I loved to conduct in-store research in traditional grocery stores. I’d go up to someone who picks up an item and put it back on the shelf and at the moment ask, can I ask you why you didn’t buy that item? If you ask in a friendly manner, people often will respond.
More often than not, they weren’t sure why they didn’t buy it, but they felt it wasn’t the best choice. The store shopper had a gut feeling it wasn’t right for them and by asking a few questions, I could often get some shred of insights like they thought it would go bad before they used it or it didn’t seem like a healthy choice.
Market research is an integral part of marketing because it helps frames how to communicate benefits that serve your community.
How do you learn what your customers think about your brand or business?
My friend is conducting a marketing survey. You can take his survey here, and you can enter into a chance to win a $500 Visa gift card. The study is anonymous. Here is the link to the 15-minute survey.
Need help with understanding your customers? I can help with over 35 years of experience in studying consumer and customer buying behavior. Let’s talk. You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Try my new chat feature on my site if you have a quick question.
Photo courtesy of some parent who posted this quiz on the Internet
