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Do you ever wonder how margins of error in political opinion polls are so precise? For example this article on the race for the Republican nomination for this year’s presidential election in the US describes how a national telephone poll had a margin of error of +/-4%.

The answer lies in the number of people who expressed their opinion. In this case that number was 600. The people who designed the poll chose that “600” deliberately. They chose it because they wanted a margin of error of +/-4%. If they had been after more accuracy and wanted a tighter margin of error, for example, +/-3%, they would have chosen a higher number of respondents. Researchers make these choices based on a number of factors. One such factor could be cost. The more people who take part in a poll – the more accurate the poll’s results. But it costs money to get people to answer questions!

If you have any questions on the above, feel free to contact me.

You carry out a customer satisfaction survey and you have a decline in the number of customer complaints you are receiving. A good thing surely? Well, maybe not…. What if the reason for the “good” news is that your customers have become indifferent towards you? Or that your systems for receiving customer complaints are so unwieldy that customers hate the time and effort needed to register a complaint? There are just two examples – of course there could be other explanations too that reflect badly on your company.

Now of course it is good to monitor the number of complaints. And tracking the trends over time are also a useful indicator. But you need to interpret the results correctly!

I know this business owner.  He’s nervous of assessing how satisfied his customers are. He feels that if he asks his customers what they think – then somehow that will make things look worse. That might appear crazy – but I’ve a suspicion as to what’s really going on.

He prefers to avoid taking action! If he asks a customer what they think, and if they point out something to him that needs attention, then he might feel compelled to fix it. However, if he stays in his cocoon, and doesn’t shine the cold light of day on the issues, then he can continue on just as he has been going. He can avoid change. He can avoid the embarrassment of failing to do what his customers now explicitly expects him to do.

To me this is crazy!  Ok – there may be a short-term benefit – but the business is doomed.

Are you scared of what you might hear if you actually ask your customers what they think? Or do you see it as an opportunity? It’s all about perspective. It might be a humbling experience but try and imagine the possibilities… By asking them you get the following direct benefits :

1. You find out what you need to fix.
2. You learn about ways in which you can make improvements.
3. You learn what’s adding no value and which you can stop wasting time on.
4. You identify what you need to continue to do well.

Would that benefit your business?

The crucial thing though is to ACT on the results. Diagnosis and prescribing are necessary but insufficient. You need to go to the next step and close that gap between your thoughts and your actions.

If you’d like to see what you can learn by listening more to the voice of the customer – get in touch and let’s see if I can help you.

Imagine company “X” has an idea for a product or service – say a new widget.  It’s just at the concept stage.  Little or no money has been spent on its development.  So company “X” decides to probe to assess if their target market is interested in the widget, whether people are willing to pay for it, and how much they’re willing to pay.  So they commission a piece of market research.

Imagine a negative outcome – that the research shows that there is no money to be made from selling the widget.  Company “X” has incurred the cost of the market research.  But they’ve saved the costs of developing and marketing the widget.

Earlier this year I read a provocative article in the Irish Times by Shane Hegarty.  In it he said that it’s “amazing how many of these surveys release headline results that correspond precisely with the marketing needs of the people who commissioned them”.  but think about that a little – that’s entirely what we should expect.  Company “X” would have been foolish to launch the widget and tell the market that there’s no interest in it!

Now imagine a positive outcome – that there is interest in the widget – and that the market is willing to pay a price that would make it profitable for company “X” to develop and market it. So company “X” develops the product and begins a marketing campaign.  And in that marketing campaign they make use of the results of the market research.  Sounds reasonable I think!

If you have an idea for a product or service, and if you see merit in exploring whether there is a market for that product or service, then get in touch to explore if I can help you get those answers – before you invest a lot of money!

Money is very tight. And you want to avoid spending money unless you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get a decent return on investment in a reasonable time. So – how to know what to do?

Learning from mistakes gets lots of attention – and the idea does have its merits. All we need is the humility and the perception. We can also save time by learning from the mistakes made by others. And we can also deliberately just try something knowing that we’ll learn by doing – you can’t get a reaction to something unless there is a something!

However, when it comes to business and organisational issues, beware of overrating mistakes and failures as learning mechanisms. What about AVOIDING the mistake or failure in the first place through engaging in market research?

Get in touch if you’d like to explore this with me – before you invest a lot of money!

So you’ve decided to revamp your website.  You have your opinions on what you want the website to look like.  You have ideas for the look & feel, what the call to actions might be, whether or not you want a newsletter sign-up capability, what social media share capabilities you want, etc.  Your website design company will also bring other suggestions and recommendations to the table.

But is that enough?   Ultimately, who do you want to use your website?  Have you asked those people their opinions?  What features would they like to see on the site?  What would they prefer to see missing from the site?  And, if you want your website to generate leads, what keywords are your target audience using when they’re searching online for your product or services?

Get in touch if you’d like to explore how to get these answers – before you invest a lot of money!

What are you trying to achieve when you carry out a customer satisfaction survey? Is it to find out what you’re doing really badly and improve that?  Is it to truly excel?

In a previous post we emphasised the importance of taking a pragmatic approach to improving customer satisfaction.  For example, as a first step you may wish to move dissatisfied customers to at least be moderately satisfied.  This might be to simply avoid bad publicity.

However, is it worthwhile trying to get to the next stage and completely satisfying your customers?  You may in theory say or claim that your aim is to deliver excellent customer service.  But, in these difficult times, is it financially worthwhile for you to make the required investment to do so?  Here’s a fascinating blog by Vovici’s Jeffrey Henning arguing that you should.

In essence, “a totally-satisfied customer contributed 2.6 times the annual revenue that a somewhat-satisfied customer generated and 14 times the revenue of a somewhat dissatisfied customer”.  Food for thought!

Ever wonder why political opinion polls can claim a margin of error of 3% when they survey only 1067 people out of an electorate of, say, 2 million?  1067 is a tiny percentage of 2 million – way less than 1% in fact.  So how is this possible?  For most people, such a low response rate (in percentage terms) would provoke a sceptical reaction.

Response rates get a lot of attention when it comes to surveys.  Whether it’s a business conducting market research or an organisation conducting an online survey to gauge member satisfaction, the focus is often on reaching some target response rate, for example, 40%.

Of course there is merit in this focus on response rates – the higher the response rate, the more representative the data.  But response rates are only part of the picture.  The margin of error is also very important.

Imagine two online surveys achieve an identical response rate – 20%.  The first survey was of 200 people – so it got 40 responses.  The second survey was of 1000 people – so it got 200 responses.  But guess what?  The first survey’s margin of error is 13.89% whereas the second’s is 6.2%.

This has some interesting implications :

• As the size of a population increases, and if the percentage response rate stays the same, the margin of error decreases.
• As the size of a population increases, the required sample size to achieve a given margin of error decreases!

So – be mindful of response rates – but don’t focus exclusively on them!