One of the devilish problems with statistics in market research is that we deal with probabilities rather than simple yes/no answers. But you, as a business person, need to make clear-cut decisions: Should you launch the product, yes or no? Which one name should you choose for your new service? Which three areas should you…
You might think that a research firm specializing in surveys would be glad to see a world in which customer feedback surveys are everywhere. Not so. I take part in a lot of webinars, and unfortunately I am asked to complete a survey (at least one) every time I attend. Some websites ask me to…
Market research has made it all the way to the top! It has a seat at the c-suite table just as marketing and research champions have hoped for all these years. According to a recent analysis by The Wall Street Journal, a large number of CEOs now track their company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) obsessively,…
An important role for good survey researchers is to translate ridiculous sounding jargon their clients give them into ordinary words that real people use. The jargon is typically business or marketing related, because most surveys are done for business or marketing clients. But I just ran across some “marketing science” jargon (created by market researchers)…
Conducting surveys with your own customers is surprisingly difficult anymore. Phone options are dead, and online surveys are tough, because nobody answers or responds anymore. So what’s a researcher, strategist, or marketing professional to do? How about conducting a paper-based mail survey. It sounds crazy, but we just did it, and it succeeded beyond what…
Here is the third invitation in our review of three survey invitations. (See also: #1 How Bad Are We? and #2 How Amazing Are We?) In my opinion this one is easily the best. It is truthful and sincere, and tells me immediately why helping this company (by completing their survey) is important to them…
Of the three invitations up for review in our mini-series on survey invitations (see also: #1 How Bad Are We? and #3 How’s Our Relationship?) this is the laughably obnoxious one: What do you think about Acme? Tell us about your experience with Acme products and solutions to help us understand what’s going well, and…
I received survey invitations from three different companies over the last three weeks. Each takes a starkly different approach to wooing participation. One of them I admire; the other two offend me. The invitations brought to mind two feature-length articles we wrote for our newsletter subscribers in 2017: Building a Better Customer Satisfaction Survey and…
A good friend and client likes to joke during every project: “Remember Joe, correlation does not imply causation.” Well, I thought she was joking. Surely everybody with a job in marketing research knows this? Apparently not. Even professors at fancy business schools seem to forget it, as evidenced by this snippet of an article a…
This is still raw, so I’m working hard to be constructive and not mean. But seriously, how much more self-centered can a veterinarian company be, than to send me a survey the morning after my dog dies to ask, “How did we do?” Yes, this really happened. On Friday, Lancelot (pictured above, on the day…