28. Get Smart: Talk to Your Customers

Research studies have proven that an organization can only learn about 30 percent of what customers need, want, and expect through normal business interaction. The other 70 percent must be revealed by targeted research, ongoing communication, and constructive feedback.

Primary research typically focuses on specific information you want to directly ask customers, or potential customers, in order to help you understand buyer needs and preferences. This information will be very valuable as you evaluate a business idea, new product, or service concept, channel buying preferences, assess media and marketing likes and dislikes, or come across other issues you will use to refine your strategies.

Primary research can also be used to refine messaging and communications and provide valuable insight about the ways a product can be positioned and sold. Several years ago, Arm and Hammer watched as baking soda lost market share as a prime ingredient in baking. They conducted research that analyzed their customers’ tastes and lifestyle. They learned that women had less time and inclination to bake from scratch. Arm and Hammer repositioned baking soda as a cleanser and refrigerator deodorizer. A year later, 33 million refrigerators in the U.S. had baking soda in them.

Several methods are used to conduct primary research, including focus groups, interviews, surveys, and observational studies. If you have not done primary research before, you may want to use professional researchers who can help you design, administer, and compile results. If you wish to try it on your own, it’s a process you can learn, and there are many technology solutions to streamline the process for you to do so.

If you want to use an online survey, it’s best to stick to quantitative questions. Responses to open-ended questions are often brief and ambiguous, and answers can be misleading. Qualitative questions are excellent for interviews and focus groups because you can dig deeper into responses and increase your understanding of the issues. See Table 28.1 for more information about the use and application of qualitative and quantitative research methods.¹

Table 29.1 Primary Research Methods

Source: Sharon Brant

Ken Blanchard, well known co-author of the One Minute Manager series, is famous for saying, “Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions.” This is the goal of primary research: To get feedback from the people who use your products and services and are therefore in the best position to tell you what they really think. Your job is to ask, listen, and respond to the feedback. Notice I didn’t say “react.” If a customer gives you some tough feedback, look at it as a gift. You may not agree with the comments, but it would be wise to step back and consider the comments and suggestions carefully in order to better understand the needs of your customers, and hopefully gain new insight about how you can improve what you offer to customers.

If primary research is new to you, the first few projects present you with a learning curve, but you will quickly learn that Blanchard’s quote has a new, richer meaning to you. Feedback is indeed a gift, and I can guarantee that once you begin to implement your customer strategies, you will find that ongoing feedback becomes a healthy addiction. You will look for new and varied ways to learn more about your customers’ preferences. As information is accumulated in your database and you can retrieve and study it, you will be able to better anticipate and respond to changes in purchase needs and behaviors.

Developing Your Primary Research Plan

A research process is comprised of five major steps:

Define the Problem and Objectives: Focus on what you really need and want to know that will make a difference in your go-to-market strategy. Possible topics are new product/service offerings or enhancements, pricing, media preferences, purchase decision drivers, buying habits, and many other topics.

Develop a Plan: Define the research method to be used and the questions you want to ask. Choose the tool(s) you will use to implement the research (online survey, phone interviews, mall intercept interviews, focus groups, in-person interviews, and so on). Determine how much the research will cost.

Execute: Determine how long it will take and how much it would cost to administer and collect the data.

Analyze Results: Collect the data so it can be presented to decision makers who can act on the data. What did you learn? What recommendations will you make?

Decide and Take Action: Make decisions based on the research. What actions will you take based upon what you learned? Concisely summarize the information and enter the results and decisions into your marketing plan. Create a plan for integrating the results into your plan.

Using these five steps, create a primary research plan. Review the results of the exercises you have completed throughout this section. Your research may focus on new concept testing and market sizing, or you may choose to learn about customer needs and preferences using a voice of the customer (VOC) method. If you choose VOC research, consider measuring customer satisfaction (delight) of existing products and services, understanding customer needs, and why customers buy. The last two areas of research will tell you if customer needs are met or not and give you insight into what drives purchasing decisions, which can be used in messaging, positioning, and marketing programs.

Tips for Creating a Customer Survey

1. Define the purpose of the primary research. What do you want to learn from it?

2. Who is your audience? Is it current customers and/or potential customers? Decision makers, influencers, and/or users?

3. Keep it short, simple and easy to interpret. A common mistake is unclear directions. If you ask a person to rank their preferences in terms of importance on a scale of one to five, make sure you tell them which is the most important: one or five. Another common mistake is asking a person to circle all potential attributes that are important to them rather asking them to RANK them. You need a ranking of prioritized items to draw good conclusions.

4. Keep the questionnaire to one or two pages, and 10–12 questions.

5. Make sure that you send the survey out to a large-enough sample size to be statistically valid based on the size of your target market.

6. Qualitative questions used in VOC research invites customers to elaborate on answers, and you will get a more precise understanding of customer needs. For surveys, quantitative data is best because qualitative questions may be harder to interpret.

7. Be sure to ask the “Ultimate Question:” “Based upon your experience with our company, would you recommend (your business name) to others?”

8. Set a short timeframe for customers to fill out the questionnaire and return it.

9. Consider offering an incentive for filling out the survey.

10. Share the results with your customers.

This last point is important. If your market is a group of influential C-Level executives, you may wish to summarize the anonymous responses to the survey and distribute them to participants. If people are taking time out of their busy schedule to share their perspective with you, it’s important that they know it was worthwhile and valued. Send a note summarizing what you learned and the action you plan to take.

Online Survey Tools

Internet-based survey tools have made it easy for anyone to design and launch their own questionnaire to customers and prospective customers. There are several reasons to consider using online tools versus more traditional survey instruments. Speed and lower cost are among the top two reasons people prefer to go online. Here are others:

• Surveys can be delivered in hours versus days, allowing you to respond much faster.

• Internet-based surveys generally cost 20 to 50 percent less than conventional surveys, especially if postage is involved.

• Online surveys can generate up to a 50 percent higher response rate.

• A broader audience can be reached on the Internet; however, not all target markets can be reached via the Internet.

• Interactive graphics can show products to customers, and audio can be incorporated into a survey.

• Many customers today prefer to respond online versus mailing in a survey or responding to a phone call.

• Several reports state that people tend to be more honest online than they would be otherwise.

One of the most important aspects of your research is asking the right questions. You can hire a marketing consultant who specializes in research to develop, administer, and analyze the research for you, or you can learn to do it yourself. Many books and articles have been written on the topic. If you study the basic research protocol guidelines, you can learn the process. Additional information and resources can be found on the MarketSmarter Web site.

Zoomerang was one of the first Internet survey tools, and you can test the service with a free 30-day trial. Zoomerang also maintains a panel of over 3 million consumers that can be used (for a fee) to field your survey if you don’t have a customer base to select from. SurveyMonkey is another popular tool. It allows you to choose from several different types of service plans and select from several styles of questions, template designs, and reporting tools as well. Learning from your customers has never been easier—so no more excuses!