Keeping your customers coming back for more requires knowing both the good and the bad about their interactions with and perceptions of your company. The nature of those interactions dictates whether your customer satisfaction strategy is supported by transactional surveys, relationship surveys, or a combination of both.

Evaluating the Ongoing Customer Relationship
Relationship customer satisfaction surveys, typically conducted once or twice a year, are appropriate when interactions with the customer are ongoing or very frequent, making this type of study common among many business-to-government and business-to-business companies. They measure satisfaction and performance levels in areas such as price, value, quality, service, innovativeness, and responsiveness as well as the company’s ability to meet customer expectations and needs.

Furthermore, they may include the input of several people at the customer organization. For example, a government contractor needs to know not only the opinions and perceptions of its daily points of contact at the agency, but also senior officers who would approve or disapprove the contract renewal.

Evaluating the Specific Customer Transaction
On the other hand, transactional surveys are appropriate when customer interactions are straight forward or only slightly complex. They are utilized for measuring infrequent, event-driven interactions, such as installing a network or buying a car. It’s best to conduct these surveys immediately after the transaction, when the experience is still fresh in the customer’s mind.

Transactional surveys are highly effective for specifically measuring the quality of customer service. In fact, some call them customer service surveys. They differ from relationship surveys in design in order to measure a contained customer experience all the way down to the specific employee involved.

Utilizing Both for a Complete Customer Satisfaction Picture
Some types of companies may require both survey types in order to implement a comprehensive customer satisfaction strategy. For example, a large federal solutions provider that has consulting, integration, and/or program management engagements with its agency customers certainly requires annual relationship surveys. But, that same company may also sell servers or other COTS products that result in infrequent, event-driven interactions with other customer points of contact. In this example, the company also requires transactional surveys in order to measure customer satisfaction in all areas of the business.

When it’s time to pursue your next research project, you don’t have to choose between a purely quantitative or qualitative approach. You may be able to reap the benefits of both.

To refresh your memories, quantitative research entails a statistically valid size of the target audience and gleans objective, structured, numeric data that provides insights into the “what.” Conversely, qualitative research is subjective in nature and reveals the “why” by capturing insights about feelings, attitudes, opinions, behavior drivers, and so forth.

A good research firm can often combine techniques from both types of research into one study. For example, a customer satisfaction phone survey can ask for scores in various areas of performance. This close-ended approach enables structured responses for a quantitative analysis. But, the survey can also include open-ended questions to reveal the reasons behind specific scores, thoughts on current and future best practices, needs unique to each customer, and more. A good research firm will analyze and report on qualitative data separately, as it often drives different follow-up actions than quantitative data.

Similarly, with qualitative research such as focus groups for concept or product testing, some structured questions can save the moderator time and help quickly gather consensus from participants.

However, even if you utilize some quantitative techniques in those focus groups or other qualitative studies, don’t make the common mistake of treating the study results as quantitative. In qualitative studies, the sample size is typically too small and not randomly selected, so the findings cannot be projected onto the target audience as a whole. It’s not even safe to combine the results of several focus groups in hopes of gaining a quantitative view, as numerous variables are different from group to group, thereby affecting data collection.

Your best approach is to clearly define your research objectives, knowledge gaps, and budget. From there, a strong research firm can help you refine those objectives and determine the most effective means of meeting them. This may indeed include mixing qualitative and quantitative techniques to generate richer market and/or customer knowledge.

In this internet-centric business environment, where online survey software packages are a dime a dozen, some organizations are opting to plan, design, execute, and analyze e-mail-based research initiatives in-house. However, unless those organizations have experienced research professionals on staff, many become frustrated during the process and, in the end, are highly disappointed with the results.

Certainly, when your target audience is likely to be online and e-mail addresses are available, an online survey may be a viable alternative to the telephone methodology. In addition to accommodating longer questionnaires, online research enables faster data collection and is less expensive to execute. It can also result in more precise feedback, since participants can see the questions and take time answering them at their own convenience.

But, it’s important to remember that an online survey does not imply “do it yourself” research. Some of the risks associated with conducting online surveys without research experts at your side include:

• A biased survey. Because the company is highly vested in the success of a product or program, they often inadvertently decide upon questions that they like most, causing misleading, incomplete or inaccurate results.
• An ineffective questionnaire design. Problems with clarity, specific wording, and survey structure are very common among inexperienced researchers. For example, one company asked customers to identify their top-two most-preferred methods of receiving information from a list of options. But, because of unclear wording, most customers picked more than one option for both their most-preferred and second-most preferred methods.
• An inaccurate or incomplete analysis. Experienced research professionals are trained in the numerous techniques of statistical analysis. Without this expertise, it’s very unlikely the research report will be completely accurate or reveal the insights that can truly drive measurable improvements. Top analysis mistakes revolve around sample size and misdirected causality.

Of course, organizations face these risks when they attempt any type of market research on their own – not just online surveys. But, most aren’t even tempted to take on hundreds of calls for a phone survey or to recruit and conduct a focus group.

The bottom line is effective research requires specialized expertise – regardless of whether it’s implemented via e-mail, telephone, mail, or face-to-face.

With today’s information overload and competitive hunger for more market research, some marketing organizations may lose sight of a valuable data resource right at their fingertips: their own internal experts.

Whether called subject-matter experts (SMEs) or “go-to people,” every organization has people scattered throughout who deeply know aspects of the technology, market, competitors, and more. And, if the input process is structured correctly, these experts can be an invaluable source of new ideas, market insights, message refinement, business opportunities, and innovation.

Start by identifying the best known ones and documenting their expertise. Inquire with managers and others about other likely candidates. Of course, it’s optimal to build a database that can be sorted by person, subject, location, and so forth. But even just a thorough list is useful.

From there, build the venues and processes for tapping into and sharing their expertise. Some of these may include:

• Staff Meetings: Structure agendas to discuss market developments, recent lessons learned, competitive advantages, and so forth. Include Q&As and plenty of time to discuss potential implications on the business and next steps.
• Brown-Bag Brainstorms: This casual environment helps break down the barriers and get people engaged in the information- and idea-sharing process. Assign a session leader. Use a white board/pad and hang the idea sheets around the room.
• One-on-Ones: Marketers should be frequently spending time with SMEs – over lunch, on e-mail, and in structured input sessions. It’s important to maintain ongoing working relationships and interactions with your SME network. Continuously add your knowledge to the SME database. SME’s can both help structure efforts and interpret results. Thank them every now and then with an extra premium item.
• Internal Newsletter: Ask your experts to draft articles for your organization’s internal newsletter or other communications vehicles. They’re busy people, so make it happen by providing specific word-counts, deadlines, visuals, and so forth. Many of these internal articles could be re-purposed down the road in other communication vehicles both internal and external.
• In-depth Interviews and Focus Groups: Your research firm can glean valuable business strategy insights by incorporating and evaluating SMEs as another audience in your market studies. The SME’s help take new research to a different level without rehashing over commonly held knowledge.

Combining the input of internal experts with other research data gives even more performance power to marketing and sales. Make it easy for your experts. Their specialization is the information, yours is how to present and package it.

Metrics are on the minds of executives everywhere, as many continue to look toward scorecards and other tools to measure their business initiatives. The performance gains delivered by leaders armed with true metrics are undeniable. Yet, surprisingly, many organizations’ commitment to marketing and customer relations metrics often ends up on the cutting room floor during annual budgeting.

Benchmark studies are an effective method to accurately identify best (and worst) practices within marketing and customer satisfaction – but it can be tough to get such studies off the ground. Furthermore, organizations need to conduct them regularly, since each one serves as the benchmark against which the next study is compared. The value of benchmark studies – understanding how to more effectively build awareness, consideration, preference and loyalty – is significant. And, the more studies you do, the easier it gets.

Certainly, it’s useful to benchmark against peers if the data is available. But, your organization’s number-one priority should be benchmarking against itself – with consistency being the key to success. This requires research professionals to structure the survey and script the questions – and to consistently ask the same ones from study to study. As the studies continue over time, carefully evaluate new comparison areas and/or questions in light of the benchmark objectives so that the surveys don’t drift and expand out of control. It’s also important to survey the same audience from study to study – at the same time you carefully introduce new required audiences or segments without skewing the results.

Of course, also comparing your organization to others will provide even richer measurement insights. Some trade associations and third-party research firms conduct and sell industry index research against which you can benchmark. (For example, in the federal IT contractor space, Market Connections is developing perception index ratings for 16 providers and 8 key performance factors.) You can also include survey questions in your own benchmark study that will enable comparisons to others. The key is to clearly delineate a core set of comparison questions from those questions that are unique to your organization.

If your organization is one of the many that still isn’t consistently measuring its marketing and customer relations performance – now is the time to light your torch. Begin stating the value of annual benchmark studies – as well as the internal resource and process requirements – with persistence. And, once you win the debate, be mindful that there are right and wrong ways to design and implement market awareness and customer satisfaction surveys as benchmark metrics tools.

Objective research is critically important to assessing the market viability, focusing the development process, and successfully launching a new or upgraded product or service. To maximize your market intelligence, it’s wise to integrate a blend of research tactics throughout the product or service development process.

Upfront Secondary Research: You can cost-effectively conduct this phase of the research in-house. Internet searches as well as web site and trade publication reviews will help you identify and evaluate products or services with comparable characteristics to the one your company is developing. In addition to potential competitors, look across industries and sectors that bear similarities to your situation and dynamics for innovative ideas, best practices, and mistakes to avoid.

Once you’ve selected 10 to 15 products that warrant a focused comparison, structure your research and analysis of them around logical categories. At a minimum, these should include the products’ features/benefits in order of priority, price points, a prioritization of sales messages, how they’re sold into the market, the strengths and weaknesses of the marketing strategies and tactics, the power of the corporate brand behind them, and informed assumptions on costs of the launch as well as ongoing sales and marketing.

Staged Primary Research: After applying lessons learned from the secondary research to the new or enhanced offering concept, it’s time to conduct a primary quantitative study. This will help assess the true viability and potential market size of the new offering before you go too far down the expensive development, marketing, and sales paths. It will also provide crucial input on specific market needs related to the offering, perceived benefits, rankings of competitive products, price points, and more.

Then, once your company is ready to launch its new product or service, focus groups will shed light on how to effectively market it. With this qualitative research tactic, you’ll hear and see potential buyers’ reactions to and opinions of your product positioning, message platform, and ad creative executions. This is an important discovery process, as no matter how strong a new product or service is, it won’t sell without the support of a campaign that resonates in what is likely already a very cluttered and noisy marketplace.

Certainly, integrating a combination of research tactics into the new product or service development and launch processes takes time and money. But, just for a moment, consider the enormous risks of skipping the research…..Exactly.

You’re likely familiar with the purpose focus groups. Conducted as open-ended discussions with a small group of potential buyers, focus groups are a qualitative research tactic used to uncover opinions and attitudes toward a particular concept or topic. Companies often utilize focus groups to probe and prioritize the factors for motivating trial, purchase, and ongoing use of a product or service. Or, with that information already in hand, they’ll use focus groups for assessing and improving marketing messages and creative executions planned for a product or service promotion.

However, even with the best laid plans, focus groups are only successful when executed with close attention to the details. Here are some tips for ensuring your next focus group stays on track:

• Establish explicit and attainable objectives: Set concise and clear objectives for the focus group in writing. Then work with your research firm to ensure they’re all attainable within the focus group format. It’s important to share these objectives with internal stakeholders in order to properly set expectations for the results.
• Carefully develop the screener: The screener is the tool the research firm will use to recruit participants. It’s critical that you provide upfront input to and back end review of the screener in order to ensure the recruited participants exactly fit the profile of the desired target audience.
• Know the optimal group size: Any research firm worth its price will advise a focus group size of no more than 8 to 10 participants. It’s small enough to allow participants somewhat equal time in stating their opinions while minimizing interruptions. Yet, it’s large enough to get a variety of opinions and to steer one or two participants away from dominating the conversation.
• Review the moderator guide: The research firm will develop a guide for the professional moderator to use when driving the discussion points with the group. The guide must be both explicit and flexible in order to start and shift the conversation flow as well as facilitate participants’ feedback and keep them on track. To maximize the effectiveness of probing, the guide will usually begin with the broader aspects of a topic and then naturally drill into its more detailed subsets. It’s beneficial for clients to review and provide feedback to the moderator guide before the focus group is conducted, as their insights can often improve it. In addition, advance knowledge of the intended conversation flow ensures clients aren’t unpleasantly surprised while the focus group is in progress.
• Entrust the moderator selection to your research firm: As the focus group is being conducted, the moderator is in control of its success or failure. He or she must be able to stay in control of the discussions, glean independent opinions from all participants, quell any overbearing personalities, remain on task, and spontaneously make adjustments to satisfy the client’s additional on-the-spot probes. Good research firms have working relationships with trained and experienced moderators that they trust. Follow their advice on which moderator to use.
• Attend your focus groups: Whenever possible, attend your own focus groups. You’ll hear and see useful insights that may not get captured in the written report. Furthermore, you’ll be able to request clarification and/or additional probes in reaction to participants’ feedback.

The bottom line is you should and can trust your research firm to manage your focus group project. But, without micro managing them, do stay involved. After all, you know your business and target audience better than any partner — even those you trust implicitly.

We’ve emphasized in numerous Research IT articles the importance of conducting brand awareness benchmarking studies to gauge the holistic impact of your integrated marketing campaigns. But, how do you measure the effectiveness of individual tactics? Clearly, with lead-generation activities like direct mail, e-mail blasts, and trade shows, you can employ a closed-loop system to calculate each program’s response rate, cost per lead, and sales conversion rate.

But, unfortunately, such an approach can’t be applied to paid advertising – a tactic that typically doesn’t drive leads but is nonetheless very important for building, changing, or maintaining a differentiated brand identity.

That’s where ad recall studies come in to play. This type of research measures the effectiveness of creative executions against message strategies and also purchased media outlets against the desired target audience.

We’ve helped some clients conduct ad recall studies every six months so that, if necessary, they can tweak their creative and/or media buys to improve effectiveness before their full annual budgets are expended. Among other things, we ask survey participants – which are aligned with the target audience of the ads – when and where they first heard of the company as well as their top-of-mind perceptions of its strengths, weaknesses, and offerings. We also ask if they recalled specific ads and, if so, what they recalled about them and where they saw or heard them. Even if they can’t remember if or where they saw the ads, we know the campaign is working if an acceptable percentage of respondents share perceptions that the advertising messages support.

For other clients, we incorporate ad recall questioning into their annual market awareness studies, which provides excellent input for planning the next year’s ad campaign.

Advertising can be an extremely effective branding tool. But, it’s also an expensive one. Ad recall studies will ensure you maximize the return on this important investment.