Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 11:07 am

Picture this.

It’s late evening.  You’ve missed your train and have a half hour wait.  There’s an empty bench so you rest your legs.

A few minutes later a homeless person drinking from a can in a brown paper bag comes and sits down not quite next to you.  What’s your reaction?  Do you get up and move?  Do you worry for your safety?  Do you feel sorry for them, pity?

Your mind will perhaps have shifted to them from whatever it is you were thinking of previously, whether what was for dinner, work commitments or what you’re going to do at the weekend.

That’s assumption.  You’ve taken a brief glimpse at this person, sized them up and decided who they are, what they are and tarred them with a very broad brush.

Let me roll this forward (and it is a true tale… Waterloo Station if I recall rightly).

I had hiccups.  And you know how annoying they are.  Things just don’t seem to shift ‘em.

And this homeless person, who has been quiet for several minutes leans over.  (More assumptions?)  The upshot is that several moments later my hiccups had gone.  And any time I have hiccups…. I recall the advice of this homeless genius who was sipping export strength lager from a paper bag on a London train station bench.

Wouldn’t it have been so easy to refuse his advice?  To instead see him as someone not worth listening to because of the assumptions about his attire and circumstance?  Yet, having listened to him, hiccups now vanish within a minute due to his advice.  Genius!

But how can this be translated into business? 

I have conversations all the time with our clients and prospects who only want to canvas a small segment of their customers and clients.  Profiling of a client base is pretty old hat these days.  But that shouldn’t stop any of us listening to every piece of feedback and client view that we receive.

Today a report that Lloyds Bank are facing increased complaints but 90% of them are instantly ignored.

Perhaps the way forward is ask everyone their view, listen to what they have to say and you might find a flash of brilliance or a nugget of genius that you might not have found otherwise.

That’s the danger of assumption.

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Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 9:10 am

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Do you think about the future much?

We do.  Not just what are you having for dinner later in the week or plans for the weekend though.  Not personal thoughts of the future and what life has in store for you.  A wider picture.  The world, society, people, patterns, habits and innovations.

Now before you think, what on earth has the future got to do with online surveys… quite a lot.  Think 20 years ago.  The internet wasn’t born, the web and online weren’t even a thought bubble in the minds of the world population.  But now, 20 years on, it’s an everyday necessity.  Systems are online, research is driven quickly online.  Choice is vast, news can be leveraged globally in seconds and every body with a computer and a connection can be an influencer and have a say.  So online surveys were a futuroligical pipedream just 20 years ago…. and now, they can be used to understand peoples thoughts and views and extrapolate as to what the future may now hold.

What now?  What may the future have in store?  We’re emerging from a global recession, and indicators following the swingeing Government cuts suggest we’ll be heading back into recession in the next 12 months.  In the next few years decisions being taken now will affect businesses and individuals, wealth, health and how we live our lives.

Think longer.  Think 50 years from now.  Think beyond your lifetime.

How will society live?  How will we use technology?  Will we have shifted to a more protectionist country or will our borders be more open?  How will India, Brazil and even Africa have emerged?

Will there be more conflict, what natural disasters may have occurred shaping the planets landscape?  Will global warming have taken root or will be the planet start to cool itself?  Will we have run out of oil?

Will overpopulation be an issue?  How will food and energy supply counter that growing population?

What will people do for jobs if technology continues and manual labour becomes less required?  Will technology have developed so much it thinks for us?  How will we travel?  How quick and how far will we travel?

What will our homes look like?  How will our communities have deleloped?

Will there be more divides between impoverished and wealthy?  Will there be more gated communities, will security be a bigger issue?  Will we be safer?

Will diets be under control, will the world have a more obese population? 

Now think about your business.  And consider this one simple question.

What today is impossible, that would revolutionise how you do business?

Think about it.  Transporting goods.  Delivering and leveraging services.  Creating something that doesn’t exist or you arent yet technically able to do.  How could you make that happen now or take steps towards it?

And what don’t you know that could revolutionise your organisation?  Ideas, opinions, views….. staff, customers, markets…. see how easy it is to get back to knowledge, insight and understanding?

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Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 3:57 pm

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It seems all too long ago that the UK coalition government swept into power and promised a collaborative new way of doing things.  They stated an end to corrupt politics of wasteful practices while protecting front line public services.

I’m going to steer well clear of the political aspect of the rights and wrongs of their approach and policies, what i did want to open up though…

Should a government, once elected, devole decision making to the voting public?

Think about it.  Politicians have often run a campaign on a wing (left or right) and a promise that they usually ditch whenever the waters get choppy.  They publish a manifesto and sometimes pledges on what they would do when they got into power.

So if this brave new world (of stakeholders making decisions where they can and where the government want) is to continue… what’s the point of an election?  Is it to become an X factor popularity contest?  The most credible face gets in irrespective of flag colour and we’re faced with weekly votes based on what the government should do on everything from policing to taxes and what kitchen David Cameron should have in number 10?  (Silly me… such important aspects should never be decided by the public!)

Can the public decide en bloc?  How do you channel all those diverse opinions into one melting pot and pick out some salient ideas that prove to be effective for all?

Or… could we be so cynical to suggest that the UK coalition government really doesn’t care what the people think.  Instead they could be looking for tokenism.  Or to pass the buck that its “what the people wanted.”

Is the UK coalition government feedback process and using “crowdsourcing” an effective use of time, effort and tax payers money… or should politicians roll their sleeves up and get on with the job.  Surely the public will decide at the next general election what is right and if they have done a good job.  Is it really our job to make decisions for them?

What do you think?  Tokenism?  Lips service?  Or genuine proactive feedback to drive change and help the UK coalition government make better decisions?

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Saturday, June 5th, 2010 at 10:30 am

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I was thumbing through the latest London Time Out magazine… actually not thinking about work for a change and then there it was.  An insert to take part in the latest Time Out survey.  Red rag and bull are the words that spring to mind.

So I had a nosey and followed the link.

Let’s just say I was someway from being impressed by such a large company.  It’s obvious from this survey that there are a number of pitfalls in putting together an online survey, so by critiquing the Time Out survey, perhaps you’ll pick up some tips and ideas and avoid repeating mistakes, attaining poor click-through rates and actually damaging the perception of your product, service and company.

1.  Design…. it’s left justified and looks messy, it has a token TimeOut logo in the top right corner but the fonts, margins, buttons don’t match… it looks cheap, naff, poorly thought through and subsequently hinders the professional Time Out brand (pity that).

2.  Personal pet hate… the survey starts by trawling for information instead of opinion.  The options are two lengthy and it makes the survey feel huge (which it turns out to be.)

3.  Questions of frequency… it asks if people are subscribing or frequency of buying Time Out.  Now fair play if thats used to group responses so those who don’t subscribe are analysed together… but otherwise, whats the point.  Imagine the results…. 28% of people who responded are subscribers.  So?  Is that good?  Does that mean subscribers saw the link in their magazine… and if someone “never” buys Time Out or visits TimeOut.com… how did they find the survey?  You can see the flaws in thinking.

4.  Scoring/ ranking options.  The options are quite leading.  By using words (which don’t always correlate or fit together), you have the potential issue of leading your participant.  Try and use numeric scoring where possible.  It’s just consistent and everyone knows what numbers mean and how to interpret them.

5.  Fishing…. the penultimate point of note (and there could be plenty more)… As you look at the questions, you wonder the value of the participant.  Which drink do I like?  How much do I spend going out, eating out, theatre?  Whose benefit is that for?  Is that data going to be sold to third parties to build a profile of who I am (the fact iPad’s are being offered as prizes suggests so!) and mean I get hammered with spam?  Thats proven late in the survey when asked about when my home insurance is due, what car you drive, household income.  You could argue that it’s to build a profile of it’s audience, but all too often there are data selling companies who encourage organisations to survey their customers/ members and then sell the data to external companies.  Beware!

6.  The final point….. size.  The survey is huge.  It’s too much.  It’s too extensive and many of the questions are pointless and will struggle to generate information of value for Time Out.  The survey would have been much better if they had used branching.  Give the recipient the option of selecting what is relevant to them.  That way the participant is more likely to complete the full survey (beceause it’s relevant) and the survey will be shorter.  And the survey results will be more credible.  How many people “fly tick” something when a prize or reward is attached?  58 questions and 18 pages (long pages at that)… way too long.

The nutshell (I’ve noticed I say that a lot) is the survey is poor.  It doesn’t look good, it doesn’t inspire the participant, it’s lengthy and potentially damages the integrity and perception of a well known organisation from data farming.

Come on TimeOut…. you can do better than this.

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Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 7:56 am

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Reporting.

That document, piece of paper or digital output that interprets the work done and is seen as the deliverable of the project.  All the time taken to understand the business, the purpose.  Understand the company style and tone of language.  Form the questions and flow.  Design the survey and invite.  Run it, monitor it.

Then to the last… the report.

We have a reputation for constantly evolving what we do… and next in line for evolution is our end output that our clients see.

So… what’s important in our research reports… and how can we shape them to be of even more value?

Should they be word…. powerpoint…. HTML or something else?

Our layout (simply) is:

  • key issues
  • executive summary
  • summary of results

Should we be mainly narrative based or highly graphical?  Should our reports be heavily branded or more basic?

Could we use wordle (generates “word clouds”) or is that a bit gimmicky?

The question is…. as a potential reader of a survey report, that could have been for a customer or client survey, a staff survey or market research…. what would make the survey report the most innovative and valuable that it could be?

Don’t be shy….

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Saturday, May 15th, 2010 at 4:32 pm

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How many times have you clicked on a survey link and within the first few moments clicked out of it because it was an overt sales process?

Yes… we’ve done that plenty of times too.  One of the many downsides of the increase in surveymonkey type tools is that it places the ability to create surveys in the hands of people who haven’t had any guidance.  And because it’s a dirt cheap exercise it’s caught on lots.  Just like e-mail bulk marketing.

But just because its cheap it doesn’t make it valuable necessarily does it?

The sad thing is, in many circumstances, those creating the surveys don’t realise the negative sway of opinion they are creating.

Think about it… a survey enticing you to take part for a “free ipod” just give your details and take these few short questions …  You know your e-mail is going into a sausage machine don’t you? 

So if you’re thinking… “i’d really like to understand why people buy from me”… what should you do?

First step…. don’t put the survey into the hands of a sales or marketing person.  Nothing against you/ them… but the natural inclination is to ask questions that 1) your customers will see as being sales driven and data mining and 2) will sound slick and salesy.  And those are two of the worst elements to put in a survey.

Maybe we can step back even more here.  If you start with the intent of trying to persuade your audience, or gaining personal data from them…. don’t use a survey.

Use survey technology perhaps… but that’s not a survey.

A survey should be based on understanding.  Gaining an opinion.  And gaining that opinion with the purpose of taking action.

Don’t ask questions that ask about when someone last purchased from you (you should know that from your finance systems) and don’t ask when they will next buy from you.  That’s just not cricket!

Instead ask opinion.  About how they view your speed, quality, service, personality and knowledge.  Wrap the questions around process and not people.  And give them the chance to have a vent.  If something is badly wrong… you need to hear it and fix it … sharpish!

So if you’ve thought before reading this…. “ooh a survey would be a great sales tool to capture personal information and understand when people will next buy from us”…. sorry to burst the bubble.  You’ll get a rubbish response rate, you’ll damage your perception in the eyes of your contacts and most of all you might feel inclined to do it time and again because of the low costs that a DIY approach provides.

Surveys are for feedback and research.  Please don’t go using them to sell.

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Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 9:57 pm

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Are you?  Happy?  Are you happy?  Really?

What does that actually mean?  Happy?  Or strike me down before I say this …..  “satisfied”….*cringe*

We’re talking in a business context here.  Let’s say you are a business owner.  You visit your accountant, say, and they run through your financial accounts with you.  It’s been a hard year.  Your turnover is down, you’ve made a loss and you’ve laid people off in the period being reviewed.

Are you happy at that point?  No… of course not.  You’re downbeat, crestfallen, disappointed.  You’re as far from happy as you’re going to get.  You’re walking through a necessary evil of signing off your annual accounts.

So if your accountant takes the opportunity to get out his silly “are you happy” cards (and yes I’ve seen them in gory technicolour)… you’re not going to be too chuffed are you?

It doesn’t matter how jolly your accountant is, what cup you’re having your coffee in, or how your accounts are modernly bundled together.

So with this in mind…. why do so many feedback attempts follow the focus of asking how “Happy” people are?

And if someone sends you a survey, and you say no… I’m not “Happy”… what happens then?

The point that’s trying to be got over here is the question itself.

If you ask a silly question, you’re going to get a silly answer that at it’s worst could mislead you further into making the wrong decision.

I remember a few months back.  I was chatting with a person from Business Link in South Yorkshire and they were proudly boasting that they had satisfaction levels in excess of 93%.

So… I asked what that actually meant and for what services and what situations and from what sort of businesses and for what period.  Yes ok…. so maybe I knew the chap wouldn’t have a clue, but it was good sport! 

But do you see how pointless a question it is?  If I was one of the 7%… what happens?  They aren’t asking the question in such a way with such a context that they can fix the problem.  If they ask specifically about contact points and services and people involved… they might have a chance of nailing the issue and improving what they do.  But a wide open question… “Are you satisfied?”  It evades the point.

And sorry for echoing this point, but this point is really crucial.  A silly question results in a silly answer.  That makes the feedback process pointless and you alienate the person you’re asking.  It’s a bit like being asked by your banks call centre people if there’s anything else they can help with when you’re asking them to transfer accounts!  It’s pointless, daft and only going to raise the heckles.

So do us a favour.  The next time you receive a survey (online survey or paper) and it has a generic question that asks if you are “Happy” or god forbid even worse “Satisfied”… why not be playful and ask “about what?”  And if the timing is really silly… pick them up on it.

Feedback is a fantastic opportunity to really understand and improve how a business operates and what it could do to improve.  But like estate agents, traffic wardens, MP’s and bankers…. it’s easy to tar online surveys and any feedback process with the brush of annoyance.

Questions that have value, not questions that are vague.

That’s the way forward…. now…. as I’ve got that off my chest, I can step back down from my soapbox… back to watching the Fulham Europa League Final!

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Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 2:58 pm

Now I don’t want to appear like i’m in a house made of glass with a hand full of rocks… but I thought i’d share a little ironic aside with everyone.

I don’t know if i can speak for anyone else here…. but we receive spam and unsolicited e-mail every day and you get used to it.  Some of it is even interesting or moderately useful if the individuals have taken the time to see who we are and what we do.

We tend to be easy going about receiving spam (and empty blog spam every day with people trying to peddle their wares) and if someone approaches us the right way we’ll respond.

We also have the standpoint that if you make cold contact with us…. we can tell you about us too. 

So isn’t it extremely ironic that those who cold call, cold e-mail and approach us out of the blue…. always unsubscribe the first time we send them a newsletter or survey invite.

So thinking aloud, the only conclusion i can think is that the cold e-mailers don’t want to hear about people they try selling to or don’t appreciate cold approaches themselves… even from people they are trying to sell to themselves.

Strange isn’t it?

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Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 10:17 am

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In the midst of networking and chatting to new (and sometimes existing) contacts, I’m often asked why someone should work with us and why what we do is of value.

Well…. until last week we didn’t have a super digest of getting that across.  But then… a throw away line and the next thing you know, your client says “hmmm” and you think “hmmm” and …. it’s stuck.

So what’s the digest, the sound bite, the summary?

Well…. it’s the title.  We help capture the good, the bad and the referrals. 

The good… so you can talk about it and use it in marketing and communications.

The bad… so you can fix the niggles and show your customers that you listen and act on their issues.

And finally…. the referrals… potential streams of new business that are passed on from the customers who love what you do for them.

God bless the soundbite!

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Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 12:37 pm

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Before your mind starts coming up with a range of random notions, let’s frame the statement for you.

How often do you get feedback from your customers.

Sorry if that’s a million miles from where your train of thought was going.  But it is what we do so we feel obliged to talk about issues in our area to some degree!  Anyway…

We don’t think businesses are doing it enough.  Let’s put to one side the quality of the questions and how its done and by who.  Let’s just talk about how much.

In our experience, at the point where we sit down with a business and ask how often they are doing it, the notion of capturing feedback from customers is somewhere at the back of the mind.

They may have dabbled with one of the cheap nasty online solutions.  Or perhaps got the office junior to ring round customers using a set script.  Or most likely in the professional services sectors… cobbled a manual paper based form together (often in times new roman) and thats the job done.

Not the most scientific measure but we see businesses on average delivering a customer feedback exercise every 12-36 months.

That’s against the backdrop of staff feedback every 6 months (usually face to face appraisals) and monthly management accounts.

The message that sends to us is that customers aren’t seen as important as financials and employees.

Look at it this way though.  What do you have if you don’t have customers?  You don’t have money because there are no sales and you don’t need people if there’s nothing to do with them.

So let’s change the thinking.  Think customers first.

If you understand them better, their preferences, the way they see how you do business, the processes you have for engaging with them.  If you can find out the bad stuff and change it, the good stuff and talk about it, you’ll most likely be doing more than your competitors are.

We really don’t know why there is such apathy and fear among businesses in asking customers what they truly think about the way they do business with them.  What we do know is those who don’t ask and those who don’t ask often enough are missing opportunities.

And the more apathetic and less positive engagement that goes on, the more likely that competitors come into the mix.

It’s not a case of pestering.  And besides, if contacting customers is a nuisance… well what is selling deemed to be?  What do you call newsletters and brochures?  Mailers, e-mails and phone calls?  How many of those do your customers experience each year from you?

So what difference would one or two requests for feedback make?  Not a hinderance to your customers, but lot’s of benefit for you.

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