A survey platform we have been using launched a new service promising an “expert review” of our surveys before we send them out for data collection. Unfortunately, it is a gimmick. It turns out that there are no experts reviewing our surveys. An artificial intelligence robot reviews them. It was interesting to see which best…
An unfortunate consequence of NPS (Net Promoter Score) mania is that now zillions of surveys stalk us everywhere. Therefore, the likelihood of any particular survey being completed is extremely low. That might be okay if you are a large company with hundreds of thousands of customers to burn through with e-mail blasts. But if you…
Let’s suppose that customers want to be surveyed. What is the best way to do it? Should we call them, send email, use text messaging, push surveys through mobile apps, or send old-fashioned paper surveys through the mail? This is a question we rarely ask in market research, because for most survey research we desperately…
Here is the e-mail subject line to a request I just received from a research company asking me to take a survey: Your Help Is Key to Our Success. I find it hilarious that somebody thinks this is an enticing subject line, as if I care deeply about their success. They really want me to…
This is the same survey I told you about a few weeks ago. It came back to me again, since I am part of the ABS-recruited probability-based panel that is fielding the survey. It is still one of the worst surveys I have ever seen. This time I took some screen shots: …
Survey questions that have multiple response options with an instruction to “select all that apply” are common in our industry, and for good reasons. They are efficient and easy for respondents to answer. They are efficient to lay out graphically. They shorten the length of a survey in terms of both time and space. The…
While it is tempting to use advanced programming to “force” good answers and good behavior out of survey respondents, don’t do it. Let respondents make mistakes. Let them mess up, and then review who messes up. This is one of the best ways to assess data quality in a survey, and trust me you will…
Survey response rates, which are still a measure of data quality and survey success in our industry, continue to drop. Most online surveys of customers (one’s own customers) will garner response rates of two to three percent—and that is if you are lucky and if you do everything right. Rigorously executed phone surveys achieve miserably…
A few weeks we wrote about launching surveys over holidays, and we quoted research noting that there is scant evidence for the widespread assumption that holidays periods should be avoided. Lest you now find yourself working over the Christmas holiday trying to squeeze in the last round of data collection getting input from every last…
So why are we asking them to do our jobs? I ask this question a lot when we execute surveys for marketing and business strategists. They’re smart people who want us to synthesize lots of data into compelling stories for their business clients. They love to assemble data into dashboards, visualizations, and grids. But they…