Keys to Customer Experience Research Success – Start with the Objectives

How do you make research actionable?

With the advent of do-it-yourself survey tools, there is a trend away from professional research design processes. One can search on line for a questionnaire, grab it off the internet, and field it on the cheap with a do-it-yourself survey tool with no consideration of the research needs at hand. This, in effect, hands research design over to an anonymous author on the Internet who has given no consideration to your specific needs.

Defining research objectives prior to making any other decisions about the program is by far the most effective way to make sure your program stays on track, on budget, and produces results that drive business success. It sounds very simple, and for the most part it is, however, I’m always surprised when I ask potential clients what their research objectives are how many cannot list anything other than the most general of objectives.

Defining research objectives is a fairly simple process. First, generate a list of everything you want to know as a result of the research.

For example, you may come up with the following list:

• How satisfied are our customers?
• Which key factors drive satisfaction among our customers?
• What are the causes of customer dissatisfaction?
• How can we measure customer satisfaction over time?
• Which business processes can most improve customer satisfaction and increase our financial returns?
• How can we measure the relationships between customer satisfaction, profitability and purchase or retention behavior?
• How can we evaluate our customers’ referral activity?
• How can we measure the value of our customers’ purchasing behavior?
• How can we identify changes in our customers’ purchasing or referral behaviors over time?

Note, these are not survey questions; they are questions to which you want answers. This is what you want to know.

Once you have developed a list of what you want to know as a result of the research, the next step is to map each of your questions to a specific research objective. For each question you should write a clear objective starting with a verb such as: determine, identify, track, link, measure, etc. Starting with verbs is excellent way to make sure you can take action on the results.

So, continuing with the example, the above list of questions may map into the following set of research objectives:

Once a clear set of research objectives is defined, you now have a road map to inform all subsequent decisions about sample frame, data collection, survey instrument, and analysis plan. Each of these issues deserves more attention than can be addressed in what is intended to be a brief blog post. In future posts, we will look into each of these issues individually.