Customer Crossroads

End the survey torture now - write better surveys.

I decided it was time to stop complaining and invest some time in a solution. There are just so many bad surveys out there.

So I decided to write a nice focused e-book  for the people who need it most. Not research professionals (who do sometimes write terrible surveys, of course, but should know better). I wrote it for all those people who are not in the survey business, but find themselves needing to do a survey anyway.

Consultants, mostly. But also facilitators, coaches, speakers, trainers. Volunteers on association committees and boards. Association executives. Analysts who haven't been sent on training yet. Managers outside the research function who find themselves doing a survey. In short, all those folks who have surveys thrust upon them and would like to do a better job at them.

There's lots more about the book here, including the table of contents. You can buy the e-book for immediate download using any credit card you want, from Gumroad, a nice simple service that just does this one thing very well. No excuses, it's seriously good value.

Research Tools for Consultants: The Survey

Think of it as buying us both a really large latte, and me telling you everything I know for about two or three hours. Well, as much as I could put into 42 pages, anyway, and still keep it readable, fast, and focused.

So please. Be part of the solution. Stop the survey torture. Read the book. Follow the simple rules and checklists. (And don't embarass yourself with any more awful surveys.)

Why it's so hard to build a service culture

Recent forays from my home office have left me shaking my head some days. People cut you off in traffic, they roll through stop signs, they don't make way on the sidewalk. Simple stuff, but the rudeness index seems to be running high these days.

And we wonder why we don't get the polite, responsive, and proactive service we would like. If you are a manager, you probably wonder why your staff can't deliver the helpful proactive service you want.

Well, we live in a culture where there often seems to be little consideration for others. Or is that my imagination? Are we just more sensitized to that problem now?

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Wishing life could be more like a video game ... wait a sec, it already is.

Are car dealers over-investing in nice facilities?

Apparently car dealers are objecting to the cost of building car merchandising palaces. And who can blame them, with an typical investment reported at $8 million!

Usually, it is the first movers that reap the rewards from this kind of investment, IMHO. They create a better retail experience, and they reap the rewards from image and perceived brand value.

Everyone else has to decide whether or not to keep up. Keeping up does not always generate a big payoff. The problem is, that NOT keeping up can cause your sales to suffer.

Similar situations:

- investing in color printing technology for your office. If other consultants are doing it, you probably have to do it, too. But don't expect some kind of ROI

- offering better coffee in your hotel. When the quality of coffee is going up everywhere, people get ticked if they can't get a decent cup of coffee at meetings and conferences. So you are hurt if you don't keep up, but don't necessarily benefit if you do

- a great many technology gains seem to follow this pattern. Banks are still processing cash, still processing cheques, but also processing debit, credit, online, e-mail, and now Twitter and Facebook transactions! Is the whole revenue pie bigger as a result -- doubtful.

I do feel sorry for the dealers. But thankful.

But I am so thankful for a carpeted showroom. I am so thankful for office designs that don't make me feel trapped in a sales guy's office. I am so thankful for a service area that I'm not afraid to sit down in, or even put my handbag down!  So thank you for the glass palaces.I'm sorry it hasn't been good for you. But it sure has been good for me!

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You're only as good as your front line staff

Why you need to use all your plugs: innovating with your current capabilities

Do you have a tangle of cables and cords piled all over your desk? I sure do. My desktop now has two screens, but no built-in webcam, so there's a webcam velcro'd to the top of the screen. Which is used mostly for the mic for Skype calls, so is occupying a USB port.

My current desktop does not have a memory card reader, so I have one of those plugged in much of the time, for camera photos, digital audio, and digital video cards. But I frequently use a Flipcam, which also needs a USB slot.

My three iPad/pod/nano devices use two different cables, both needing a USB port.

But the key one is my beloved Plantronics ear-piece, which is in daily use. And of course needs a USB port! I usually have to unplug something else to charge it.

[I'm coming to the innovation thing... hang on a sec.]

So here's the crazy thing. My monitors have four USB ports, but only two of them are conveniently located on the side. So I never use the ones on the bottom. I had capabilities I could have been using, but wasn't.

A behaviorist might say this is due to the availability heuristic -- we are more likely to notice/use things that are easily accessible in memory. In other words, out of sight, out of mind.

My solution: plug the cable in to the inaccessible port, and leave it plugged in. So I notice the end of the cable. [Ed.: Gawd, Susan, that is so simple, surely you are not sharing this with us as an example of innovation?? Feeble indeed.]

Actually we all have -- either personally, or in our organization -- underutilized resources and capabilities. It might be people, or it might be an empty parking lot, or it might be USB ports. 

What resources and capabilities are lying fallow in your organization? How can you solve your problems by using things that are just out of sight?

Gathering customer feedback: the good, the bad, the ugly

I wanted to boost the usefulness of my iPad with a Bluetooth Keyboard, and ultimately got the sleek and delightful Logitech Ultrathin last weekend.

The Good

As it happens, I used BestBuy Canada's online option that allowed me to reserve the item for in-store pickup. You don't have to pay in advance, but you do have to provide basic contact info, including your e-mail address.

The purchase itself was uneventful. Go to store, pick up item, pay for item, head home. Worked well, I would do it again, except...

The Bad

Yesterday, five days after the purchase, I started receiving requests for feedback via e-mail.

On Thursday, I deleted 15 such requests. This morning, I see there are 11 more in my e-mail. EEK!

In self-defense, I decided I should answer the darn thing, provided by ForSee.

The Ugly Deconstruction of the Survey

The e-mail promises a 5 minute survey. This in itself seems crazy to me. It should be more like a 30 second survey, with about 3 questions. But wait till you see it.

There are 34 questions, and 32 of them are marked * meaning you can't finish the questionnaire unless they are answered. This is an odious practice in itself, because it's so one-sided. I might be willing to answer a few questions, but these questions are silly.

They've decided there's a model involving a lot of factors, and they're going to make me answer every question in the model.

Naturally, I am not going to get a thing for investing my time in this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought perhaps there would be a place for open-ended comments, which there is. However, the survey makes it clear that no one will follow up on my comments.

I love the part that says "If you would like us to contact you about your feedback... visit the contact us part of the web site."

There are several links at the bottom of the page, but none of them go directly to a contact page, or even better, spawn an e-mail or contact form.

Interestingly, as soon as I clicked through to the Forsee site, YET ANOTHER survey opened up!!

Yesterday, I posted a Tweet to @BestBuy about the multiple survey invites arriving. They actually did respond, and copied their response to @BestBuyCanada.

For the record: I am not answering your hideous questionnaire. And if you loved your customers, you wouldn't ask them to do this.It's a hideous process, even if it was working correctly.