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Respondent Anonymity & Customer Satisfaction

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The market-research codes of conduct are all quite clear:

• "Respondents' anonymity must be strictly preserved..." - ICC/ESOMAR International Code of Marketing and Social Research Practice, paragraph 4
• "Protect the rights and privacy of respondents. Respondent cooperation is dependent upon their expectations that their privacy will not be violated..." - The Code of Marketing Research Standards [MRA], paragraph 4
• "Respondents' Rights to Anonymity Should Be Safeguarded. Unless respondents give their verifiable informed consent to allow themselves to be identified with the information they are providing, opinion and marketing research companies should ensure that the respondents' anonymity is safeguarded." - Use of the Internet for Conducting Opinion & Marketing Research [IMRO]

It is in the industry's long-term interests to preserve respondent anonymity. Consumers need to trust market research if they are going to provide candid and thorough survey information without fear of it being misused to sell to them (called sugging). The market-research industry itself wants to escape more onerous regulations, such as those required for direct marketing. As a result, respondent anonymity is the gold standard for scientific market research.

But what to do when the standard is gold, as in making more of it?

Customer satisfaction studies pose a particular challenge. Many general studies protect respondent anonymity, such as research carried out by the University of Michigan (the ACSI) and by Forrester (the CxPi) where information is being collected on dozens of different companies. Corporations often conduct general research anonymously to understand consumer satisfaction with their brand in general.

On the other hand, major-account studies and transactional surveys are all about intervening to improve satisfaction: identifying that a customer is unhappy and immediately taking action to fix it. Yes, you are concerned about monitoring and measuring overall service levels, but you want to do something about it on a case-by-case basis. Is that a violation of the market-research code?

Yes it is, in Europe at least. From an industry and legal standpoint, it's not market research but direct marketing. If you are conducting research in Europe, refer to the ESOMAR World Research Codes & Guidelines for Customer Satisfaction Studies for a description of the issues that you need to be concerned with.

For research in the United States, be clear with respondents about your use of their answers. The MRA code, paragraph 18, explicitly disqualifies customer-satisfaction surveys from certain compliance requirements: "Nor does it refer to Customer Satisfaction Research where the express, expected result of all parties is that the client or client's agent will receive the information for follow-up." The situation is actually easier for the organization doing its own research; third-party market research agencies doing such research have stricter rules to follow.

Here we have a disconnect between the customer intimacy desired by Voice of the Customer (VOC) and Customer Experience Management programs and the traditional distance from respondents required for scientific market research. Three tips for VOC customer-sat programs:

1. Blast through any expectation of anonymity by extensively personalizing the survey invitation. "Dear Opus, we want to ask you about your level of satisfaction with last Tuesday's warranty repair request for 12 Ronco Tomato Twaddlers." 
2. Spell out how the information will be used in the invitation, especially if it will be used for survey alerts (email messages designed to trigger followup). "A customer service representative may contact you to resolve any outstanding issues."
3. Alternatively, explicitly ask for permission to follow up in the survey itself. "May we contact you by email about this issue?" 

For those of you who engage in customer satisfaction research with respondent identification, what other steps do you take to bridge this divide between customer research and customer service?