Posts Tagged ‘feedback’

The Time Out survey… come on guys, you can do better than that

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

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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How frequently do you do it?

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

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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