Lesie Pegel, senior consultant for Walker Information, recently posted the results of a study they conducted of over 1,500 users of customer feedback representing 37 of their clients. Although Walker found that 75% of respondents thought that the collection of customer feedback was having a bottom line impact on their company’s financial performance, they went the extra step of comparing those individuals againt the companies that said they didn’t see any bottom line improvement.

Companies are more likely to see a bottom line improvement in financial results if they:

• Use the customer feedback they collect to motivate employees;
• Use the customer feedback in strategic planning;
• Seek to continuously expand the use of customer feedback;
• Dedicate resources to understanding the feedback they collect.

Other key findings from the survey:

• Customer loyalty improves when feedback is acted upon;
• A formalized follow-up process driven by the account team maximizes the value of the feedback to the organization;
• In reports, focus on key learning points instead of data points.

Read the full article at CustomerLoyalty.

Mario Menti of msurveys.com recently posted a note on his blog describing how easy it was to create a survey, solicit responses, and then compensate the respondents in SecondLife. A very interesting, unique and possibily even useful experiment to be sure.

Second Life is a virtual community much like a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) such as World of Warcraft, Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies except that instead of fighting monsters and completing quests your objective is…well…there isn’t really one. You buy property, meet people, simply fly around or create things. In fact, using the basic building blocks provided by the software you can create just about anything if you have enough patience and skill.

While most people build digital representations of physical things (like buildings, sculptures or stargates). Mario used his time and skill to create an online survey. In fact, he even set it up so that individuals who finish the survey are rewarded with in-game money.

Think about this in context with the recent findings of the Pew Internet & American Life project, where 52% of a broad-based, national sample agreed with the following:

"By the year 2020, virtual reality on the internet will come to allow more productivity from most people in technologically-savvy communities than working in the "real world." But the attractive nature of virtual-reality worlds will also lead to serious addiction problems for many, as we lose people to alternative realities."

The entire report (entitled "The Future of the Internet II") is fascinating and contains a number of interesting predictions for the future (along with what people thinking of them). Definitely worth a read.

I love Mario’s experiment. And while it is probably true that it is just a little too early to jump on this technological bandwagon (unless you’re trying to do a survey about virtual communities and the people who use them, it is probably going to be difficult to come up with a sample that is relevant to your research questions) I think the time won’t be so far off when data collected in environments such as Second Life is the norm.

Read about Mario’s Second Life survey experience on his blog.
Watch a video of someone completing the Second Life survey.

Roy Poynter of The Future Place has posted a fascinating, thoughtful note about a session he led at a recent meeting of the World Association of Research Professionals (ESOMAR) in which the topic of discussion was the degree to which marketing research is being changed by the Internet. I won’t rehash the entire post here (it is eloquently written and worth the few minutes it will take to read) but I think it is worth identifying a few highlights.

First point: the fact that surveys are easier to conduct and that people are participating in more surveys doesn’t necessarily mean that the resulting data is less valid. I agree. In my experience, while it is of course necessary to think about the questions you are asking in the context of the respondent base you are using (whether a rented panel or your own in-house list), there is no reason to think that the results you get from an online survey will be any more biased than the results you get from calling those same people on the phone or visiting them at their homes.

Second point: Shorter time lines caused to some degree by the availability of quick data collection capabilities, easy to use tools, and smaller research budgets may be leading to less time spent on thoughtful analysis. While this is certainly possible in some environments, I would argue that this doesn’t always have to be the case and that the same tools that are making things so quick and easy may be eliminating much of the grunt work and leaving more time for analysis. Plus, as we move forward, better analysis tools will do even more of the work leaving more time for thinking.

There is more: such as a discussion about the role of online panels, the growth of outsourcing and what marketing research will look like in the "Web 2.0 era" (Research 2.0).

One last point that I thought was especially thought-provoking:

"A key conclusion of the session was that Research 2.0 will need new skills and a greater understanding of how people are taking over the Internet. It was also clearly understood that any researcher who wishes to be competent at Research 2.0 will need to master conventional research."

Read Ray’s full post and view the slide show.

Read a summary of the event at mrweb.com

Los Angeles based HotelSurvey has announced a new tool to help hotels and other hospitality related businesses to quickly capture customer feedback and resolve complaints before they result in defection using their new web-based survey platform.

Features of the HotelSurvey system include: ability to collect data from e-mail surveys or the hotel call center; immediate response from guest (the system sends out surveys right after they check out of the hotel); seamless integration with Lodging Management System; integration with multiple lodging, gaming, Food & Beverage, and entertainment systems; multi-property management tool (on one centralized site); auto-emailing of customer issues to specific departments and more.

Read the full press release at CRM Today.

Grapevine Surveys announced today the release of a new version of Employee Evaluator, a 360 degree feedback web-based software package specifically designed for performing HR evaluations of all types, including employee evaluations, team assessments, performance appraisals, job reviews and multi-rater feedback.

The new version features a number of enhancements, including a start-to-finish Wizard-based system to guide and manage the entire process, a comprehensive survey approval process, and a totally revamped graphic interface. Grapevine Employee Evaluator continues to include in-depth multi-level reporting and distribution control, an extensive selection of professionally-designed survey templates, automated system distribution and collection of evaluations, custom branding and control over evaluation variables.

Grapevine is offering a free trial package to the frist 500 Corporate users who try the service. Sign up here.

Read more at the Grapevine Surveys web site.

Jared Heyman, president of Infosurv, recently published a white paper to Knowledgestorm.com entitled "The Benefits of Hiring a Full-Service Online Research Firm — Software vs. Online Research Firms," in which he pretty much "proves" that survey software should only be used for very simple, unimportant polls that don’t require a thoughtful methodology or unbiased execution. He says:

Online survey software is well-suited for "quick and dirty" type surveys where  directional quantitative or qualitative is needed. These surveys often run very short, with 20 or less items, and do not require the statistical accuracy that a full-service research firm can assure. An example may include a survey of twenty PTA parents to see what they would like the school to accomplish that year for their children, where only a rough tally of program preferences is required. Such surveys also do not require complex response validation, piping, or branching logic.

Although I agree with Jared on some points, I do think some of his assumptions don’t necessarily reflect the reality of today’s online survey software (many packages make it quite easy to validate responses or branch from question to question) and doesn’t take into consideration the access that many companies now have to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of customer e-mail addresses, along with the demographic data necessary to pull a meaningful, relevant sample. Sure — if you have no idea what to ask or if you don’t feel comfortable formulating questions — or even if you don’t have access to a good respondent pool — then it definitely makes sense to work with a professional agency.

I wonder if there isn’t some middle ground for companies and organizations who have the in-house know-how to write acceptable questions but need some help analyzing the data; or maybe the analytical capabilities are in-house but a broad-based response panel is still needed because the in-house list isn’t adequate. In other words, given the current economic environment where companies can’t afford to do a lot of research if there isn’t a sizable market out there for research firms that are willing so sell their surveys a-la-carte at reasonable prices…as far as I know there are a few companies who will do this, and then there is always www.guru.com.

Jared’s article is an interesting (albeit a little biased) read and covers many of the issues that you will have to think about when you conduct research yourself instead of hiring a firm.

Read the white paper at KnowledgeStorm (registration required). 

Zoomerang recently announced the creation of a new "Education Resource Center" which will provide practical tips and best practices to educators interested in revitalizing their academic initiatives. The program, which is closely integrated with Zoomerang’s online survey service, is designed to give educators the tools they need to use survey research to drive curriculum decisions and increase student performance; incorporate faculty imput into the decision-making process while increasing teacher satisfaction; and eliminate cumbersome paper processing allowing educators to spend more time on classrom development.

Visit the Zoomerang Education Research Center

Read the full press release at Yahoo Business

Amae Software has updated their post-call IVR survey system, Amae CI Suite to include a massive library of survey questions across a number of industry boundaries.

"We’ve completed an extensive set of questions across many industries that can be copied or customized to any desired business objective," noted Gerald Wluka, co-founder of Amae Software, "our customers receive all of the required professional assistance for successful survey/question design and deployment as a part of system implementation."

Read more at the Amae Software web site.

MarketTools announced today the introduction of MarketTools Mobile, an integrated solution that allows researchers to use mobile phones as a live data collection tool. The system includes everything needed to recruit mobile panelists, deploy surveys, and monitor collected results via a web-based portal. The MarketTools "ZoomPanel" is specifically optimized for collecting data related to shopping, in-home usage, mobile phones, TV viewing opinion, movies, event satisfaction and travel.

Learn more at the MarketTools web site.

In a recent article posted on TMCNet entitled "Effective Customer Service Requires not Just Knowledge, But Insight," Bruce Pollock identifies some of the criteria he uses when selecting a survey took specifically for use by customer service representatives and call center agents. He suggests that the tool you select should be "agent anonymous" (the customer service agents shouldn’t be able to influence the results); interactive (survey should be easy); time-efficient (the survey should be fast); it should offer both qualitative and quantitative results (scores are good, but comments can provide the most insight); and it should provide real-time access to results.

Read the full article at TMCNet.

Article found at CustomersAreAlways.

Susan Abbott of Customer Experience Crossroads has made available an interesting and useful decision tree to help you select the qualitative research methodology most appropriate to your project. You decide whether you need group interaction or no group interaction, synchronous discussion among group members or asynchronous discussion (such as via a blog or a bulletin board) and it helps you choose among 18 different options.

Susan also offers some perspective of how she prices research and how much you should spend.

Read the full story and view the chart at Customer Experience Crossroads.

Better Business Blogging discusses a recent BusinessWeek article about the trend among high profile companies such as GSK, Kraft and Hewlett Packard of using online communities to research the perception of thier brands and the development of new products.

Read the full post at Better Business Blogging.

Germany-based MediaAnalyzer, whose unique AttentionTracking methodology combines survey research and eye tracking to monitor and understand the effectiveness of print advertising creative, web-page design and online ad effectiveness (as well as advertising via TV, direct mail, outdoor and other communications vehicles) announced Thursday that thy would be opening a New York office under the leadership of Charles Boyar.

For the full press release, visit PRWeb.

Phil and Ken Berry of BayaSoft recently gave a presentation at the 2006 American Marketing Association Research Conference designed to "equip market researchers with the tools and knowledge to design questionnaire documents that can be easily converted into online surveys, with minimal pitfalls." If you’re working on surveys and would like a little guideance to help you improve your communications with your programmers, it’s worth a read.

The presentation is available at the BayaSoft web site.

TiVo and Information Resources Inc. have announced a new service that will link consumer DVR viewing patterns to purchase decisions. The service, called "IRI TiVo Consumer Insights Suite," will identify the DVR sales impact for individual products and brands based on the viewership of an opt-in panel of TiVo households. Another element of the service will allow advertisers to test specific advertising creative in a highly-controlled, split-test environment.

Read the full press release at PR News Wire.