In
this issue: Announcement: We've Moved!
Building Internal Support for Research Understanding Customer vs. Competitor Research
We are excited to announce our recent move to new offices. The move allows us to take advantage of updated facilities and accommodate our expanding team and client base. We give a special thanks to everyone who has helped contribute to our growth.
Please stop by and visit us anytime in our new offices at:
So, you’re ready to begin your market research project. Funds are allocated, proposals accepted, and a contract awarded. You have everything you need to get the ball rolling—except the commitment and involvement of key internal stakeholders.
It’s not uncommon for the internal research sponsors to encounter struggles and obstacles when attempting to build consensus around and participation in the proposed study. In many cases, others in the organization don’t clearly understand the value of the research project and are already stretched too thinly on their own initiatives and priorities. Here are some tips for engaging your stakeholders and employees in your next research project:
Take Holistic Approach to Planning: Consult with your research provider to identify the managers, department heads, and so forth that will be needed as subject matter experts during the development of the research program. Also consider the possibilities of where and how the survey data could drive performance improvements across the organization. Engage – in advance – the desired stakeholders related to both areas. Seek their input when refining the project goals to ensure the study is designed to fill as many information gaps as possible. Consider who you’ll want to review and provide feedback to the survey instrument and ask for their support up-front. Communicate Clearly: When you begin talking with or emailing these individuals about the project, clearly articulate the ways in which the resulting business intelligence can drive more effective processes, strategies, and programs in the future. Also, effectively summarize the research specifics – the objectives, methodology, schedule, and so forth – so stakeholders share a clear understanding of the program. Reach out to Other Internal Audiences: Consider which additional internal communities it would be appropriate and perhaps even beneficial to engage in the research initiative and/or results. For some projects, this may be those who will be directly impacted by the business decisions the data will enable. In other cases, where some or all of the information can support a “full visibility” culture or help build and sustain morale, it may be all employees. Encourage those you engage to ask questions. Share appropriate materials with them, such as the final research report or executive summary. Stay in touch on the plans for acting on the data – and the results those action plans produce. Follow Through: The final research presentation is when the real work and collaboration begins. Don’t make the mistake that many do by applying relevant data strictly to your business area and letting the report gather dust on a shelf. Rather, immediately assemble and charge a cross-functional team with assessing the potential areas for action and developing plans for moving forward. By engaging stakeholders early on in a research initiative and effectively communicating to all your internal communities, you and the organization overall will gain more benefits from the study. Equally important, you'll build a better understanding of the important benefits research delivers, making it much easier to gain internal support of and involvement in future studies.
When we work with clients on a customer satisfaction program for the first time, many ask if they can expand their study to also assess competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Though the assumed research efficiencies would be nice, unfortunately it’s unwise to mix the two audiences. Differences between these two study types include:
Open vs. Blind Surveys: With customer surveys, Market Connections reveals our clients' identities. However, so as not to influence responses, we conduct competitor studies as blind surveys, meaning we don’t reveal the survey sponsor.
Recruitment/Incentives: Typically, cooperation rates are higher among our clients’ customers, so we don’t recommend incentives for this type of research. However, cooperation rates are lower with competitor research. In fact, we usually recommend an incentive such as a gift card or charitable donation in order to generate acceptable response rates in competitor studies. Access to Survey Population: The client gives us the contact list for customer surveys, whereas competitor surveys typically require renting one or more lists from various market sources. And, because of those lower cooperation rates, they also require longer calling lists. This increases the cost of the research and also dictates the need for screening questions to ascertain if the respondent meets the study’s audience criteria. Nature of Questions and Resulting Data: A customer survey questionnaire is very specific in nature, as assessing the customer's true experience requires fairly granular data. Furthermore, customers will likely be very forthcoming with their opinions about the client’s organization, particularly if a third-party research firm is conducting the survey. If developed correctly, a customer survey will reveal problem areas in your operations that are in need of further assessment and process improvements. On the other hand, competitor surveys usually contain more general questions – and, in some areas, will probe the respondents’ perceptions of and general experiences with more than one provider in the given product or service category. Competitor studies are therefore better suited for obtaining market perceptions of your organization as compared to the competition, rather than for gathering detailed feedback on specific transactions. Certainly, a customer satisfaction study can be conducted without a competitor study, and vice versa. But, marrying the information from the two surveys can be very valuable. In fact, to provide visibility into the views and perceptions of customers and prospects during the same time frame, we sometimes implement the two separate studies simultaneously. In other cases, we incorporate competitor questions in customer surveys to glean data for driving process improvements as well as to help inform decision making around sales and marketing strategy development. | 
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