Treat others as you’d like to be treated.
Can we accommodate the demand for vast amounts of insight while being considerate to individuals? We must. If we don’t engage people in a way that inclines them to answer questions honestly, all the science and design in the world will be for naught.
We mix the soil in which our nemeses grow
The industry is awash with talk of speeders and straightliners and bailers and incentive-driven cheaters and while we work frantically to catch and discard for the sake of results, we forget to consider our own role in creating them.
When you ask someone to take part in something unenjoyable—even good-intentioned, honest people—you incent them to act poorly. Rather than bailing on something unenjoyable, most people will reach the end of patience and switch on an auto-pilot that speeds and careens and skews and distorts its way through the rest, reaching for the end.
Respondent-centric research is a counter to the often blind, relentless pinging of market research. It’s a graciousness that can sometimes get lost in the pursuit of sheer quantity—which makes answer-givers feel more like cattle than valued participants in the direction of a brand.
Respondent-centric research is a nurturing rather than a trawling, most often led by the following tactics and ideals:
1 / Respect the gift of time.
Anything beyond the 7-10 minute mark represents a long time, online—people drift, wishing to be done and elsewhere. Keep questionnaires as concise as possible, and include signposts throughout—you’re halfway finished or five questions left or almost done—to demonstrate gratitude for the time granted you by every respondent.
Would you take your own survey? More important—would you finish it, and with unfettered dedication? Would you do another? Try having someone read your own survey to you out loud. Put into the position of a respondent, does what you hear make you impatient, or engaged?
2 / Qualify in rather than qualifying out.
Show that you’re listening.
On big access panels, the process of elimination is a popular thing. A survey is sent to huge numbers of people, trawling for a narrow field of incidents or characteristics—for instance, a poll looking to identify people who are considering buying a car in the next six months. Qualified respondents are determined by way of exclusion—Please come and take my survey! C’mon! (people arrive, answer the first one or two questions) Oh! No. Never mind. We didn’t mean YOU. As you can imagine from the respondents’ point of view, this approach is damaging, a sapping of goodwill.
Instead, take a continuous pulse. Our monthly screener, for instance, anticipates our upcoming polling needs. Our goal—flagging potential respondents to all the segments on deck—is transparent. Later, when it’s time for a poll, we only invite and incent people who have already qualified. Further, our technology remembers every answer from every survey, and we sample from that. If someone indicated that they lived in an urban setting one year ago, chances are good that they’ll be able to participate in a study on how city residents use municipal libraries.
A continuous pulse helps you to avoid wasting respondents’ time, and ensures that each time you ping an individual, you do so with questions that are meaningful, current and relevant.
3 / Be visual.
Anything that looks good and gets respondents away from heavy grids is a good thing. But the benefits of visual questions aren’t just aesthetic—they’re quantitative.
When we first started testing the visualization of questions at Vision Critical, we tested the theory of curb appeal by issuing parallel versions of the same survey at the same time—one with text-based questions and one with visual questions. As we’d suspected, surveys that are pleasing to the eye and fun to play with make respondents feel more willing and focused—which inspires them to return for more.
Wouldn’t you?
4 / Don’t incent. Engage.
Once per year, we run a panelist satisfaction survey. Time and again, the biggest driver of satisfaction (what makes for responsiveness) is I feel like my opinion is being heard and valued.
Instead of just offering draws for prizes or participation incentives, show that you’re listening. Mention survey results in newsletters, or in letters from the president—and tell customers and respondents how that insight has informed policy. Make insight public, and show that you’re grateful for what you learn.
NASCAR, recipient of a ‘Panel of the Year’ award for its customer survey excellence, used a fan forum to help make a decision on a major rule change—and then used that decision to promote the street-level impact of fans. On national television they gave credit to the panel (the ‘fan council’) for leading the organization in new directions, a thank-you that was both endearing and smart.
When it comes to demonstrating good listening, profound improvements are just as impactful as small but delightful gestures.
5 / Be as open as your questions.
Are we just giving lip service to being considerate?
In response to an open-ended question at the beginning of a client’s survey, one respondent wrote This is all well and good, but I don’t think anybody’s really reading this. Within hours, someone from the client’s research department had telephoned the respondent to thank him for his feedback and let him know that yes, indeed, the brand absorbed each and every piece of feedback from its very invested fan base.
Open-ended questions give respondents a chance to address what you hadn’t yet considered—and can lend a more human, more conversational feel to what would otherwise be an almost mechanical gathering of opinion. And it’s not just open-ended questions, but the concluding of surveys on an open note by asking is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
This is a chance for panelists to tell you how well you’ve gauged their opinion, and to fill in gaps that you didn’t know were there. For listening-inclined brands, the actionable feedback gained at this touchstone moment is among the most useful of all.
The proof, the pudding, and a hot debate.
Across all sectors, access panels stacked with bought names rarely peak beyond a response rate of 20%. Our national panels, meanwhile, top the 50% range.
At Vision Critical, we value our services differently. This changes how we mine for answers on behalf of our clients. In order to encourage more frequent and shorter surveys, our software is priced based on panel health. Rather than pricing based on completes, we judge our value on panel size. This means that good behaviours—shorter, more targeted, more frequent surveys—are not cost-prohibitive. Our researchers are incented not by sheer pings, but by how well their research makes sense to the people who answer their questions—and how well they keep contributing.
Why? For good manners as well as good results.
Respondent-centric research. No one would disagree with the principle behind it, and its value—but the lack of survey-by-survey adherence suggests a gap between what we say and what we do. Are we just giving lip service to being considerate? Is a focus on quality over quantity plausible at all, given the demand for quantifiable insight that we all face?
Do we make our own nemeses? What can we do as market researchers to both satisfy the thirst for information on behalf of our clients, while respecting the experience and time of respondents?
What does respondent-centric research look like to you?
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