Unquestionably, with customer feedback in hand, your organization could make improvements in numerous areas. So, why not have your sales reps provide that input? Working on the front line with customers every day, they’re in an excellent position to collect and share this important market research, right? Wrong. In fact, it’s highly likely that such an approach will produce inaccurate and/or incomplete data that does little to drive meaningful operational improvements.

We’ve seen numerous organizations make the “do-it-yourself research” mistake in the name of cost-efficiency. Some make assumptions about their clients’ opinions based on what their sales reps and other customer-facing staff members recall hearing and seeing while going about their daily business. Others task these employees with actually conducting interviews with clients using survey instruments that were scripted in-house.

Certainly, many of your sales people and other customer-facing staff members are very good at what they do. But, they aren’t trained and experienced market researchers. And, that inexperience puts your research at high risk of failure due to leading questions, selective memories, inaccurate interpretations, and even customers who are uncomfortable being completely candid with people they interface with on a daily basis.

You’ll get significantly better data by using professional researchers to develop and conduct your market surveys. In addition to your customers and prospects, a good research firm will recommend also talking to your sales force, customer-service personnel, and executive team as part of that study. Many of those “feet on the street” staff members have excellent client relationships and keep their ears to the market ground. Marrying their feedback with data gathered directly from your customers and prospects can result in even richer research results,?? and that means even richer operational improvements.

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Conducting membership surveys is a common and wise practice among associations. If done correctly, they help an organization validate its assumptions, shed light on unexplored areas, improve upon current practices and programs, and help shape future initiatives. However, beyond the occasional tweak here and there, many haven’t revisited the structure and content of their survey instruments since they first developed them.

To maximize the insights gleaned from your next member survey, ensure it accommodates three key areas of feedback:

• Importance of both current and upcoming initiatives and member benefits
• Satisfaction with current and planned initiatives and member benefits
• Open-ended opinions on areas of interest and issues of concern

Start by evaluating the validity of each question on your organization’s previous survey instrument. You’ll likely identify both questions that can be eliminated and new questions that are important to add. In addition, many associations will seek the input of numerous staff members as they develop their survey instruments. While this is often a very useful step in the process, make sure it doesn’t lead to an overly lengthy survey. Rather, carefully edit and rank questions based on what the organization must know versus what would be nice to know in order to improve member services and benefits.

Avoid “stacking the deck” with questions that eliminate opportunities for members to share negative feedback. Also allow for “non-applicable” and “don’t know” responses rather than forcing members to select an answer or rating that doesn’t truly represent their stance.

While satisfaction ratings in various areas are critical to know, they won’t give your organization a complete picture of members’ opinions. Always include open-ended questions to which members can share their thoughts and opinions in their own words. Be prepared to be surprised by what they say,?? and to act on the areas in which opinions of enough members converge.

Of course, a thorough analysis of the results will enable your organization to correctly adjust its resources and goals. Consider ranking responses in a quadrant that separates topics into high importance/high satisfaction, high importance/low satisfaction, low importance/high satisfaction, and low importance/low satisfaction. From there, priority areas for improvement will become apparent.

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