Rethinking the Role of the Market Research Department
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Tue, Jan 27, 2009
Many of our prospects for enterprise feedback management come to us after discovering, in horror, how terrible they are as an organization at surveying their customers. They survey all of their customers instead of taking a random sample. They send out surveys that are far too long. They send out surveys on topics that the organization has already researched. But, most of all, they just write bad questionnaires.
Meanwhile, most of these organizations have on staff experts at writing questionnaires, specialists who can tease out key insights from respondents, professional researchers with decades of mastering the survey process: experts who aren't available to their coworkers. In fact, that's how many of the organizations got into this jam in the first place: the market research department, which typically manages only the highest profile, most strategic research, was - by definition of its role - unavailable to assist coworkers with tactical surveys. As a result, those coworkers bought survey software and did the project themselves.
It's time for market research departments to rethink their mission. They should not simply be project managers, overseeing large outside research efforts; they should be mentors to their coworkers, assisting fellow employees with the deployment of surveys. To do this, MR departments need to expand, hiring additional staff with the appropriate research skills and knack for teaching.
How to cost justify this expansion? Quantify the cost of bad research. What decisions are being made on the basis of results from amateur surveys? These surveys can lead the organization astray, often incorporating biased questions or unrepresentative samples. Conduct a feedback assessment to get an accurate view of how pervasive the problem is (it's always a bigger problem than you think!). Your organization is making a significant investment in this research, but it is often a hidden investment: the survey software is being purchased on a credit card or expensed, and no one is tracking how much time employees are spending doing surveys (an expenditure that far exceeds the cost of the technology). Since these are surveys that are worth doing, they are worth doing right.
Too often, the market research department has been disintermediated by the rise of survey software. It is best for your organization if the MR department reintermediates itself-still letting line staff do most of the work for tactical surveys, but reviewing questionnaires and invitation lists before the survey goes live, to provide results that staff can feel comfortable making decisions with.