Market Experience

Systematic Sampling
Back to Blog

What Is Systematic Sampling?

By: The InMoment Team

Data runs the business world these days. It’s great to always use data to back everything from major business decisions to website tweaks. But data is only as good as the survey that pumped it out. If you put bad information into your survey, your data isn’t reliable to base your business decisions off of. How do you prevent this from happening? After all, you don’t want to have bad data at the helm of your decisions. 

One way researchers try to ensure their information is great is to use random sampling, specifically systematic sampling. By adding the element of randomness, results are more representative of the population you’re trying to study. Handpicking participants gives you skewed data, but random sampling can give you a real look at your population. But there are a few different ways to go about sampling randomly. One way is to use systematic sampling. Read on to learn all about systematic sampling as a way to boost your survey methods. 

What Is Systematic Sampling? 

Systematic sampling is a type of probability sampling that uses a specific interval to select participants. Probability sampling is when every member of the population (the entire group you want to study) has an equal chance of being selected. It’s the foundation of good data collection. But with systematic sampling you choose a regular interval and select your participants that way. 

Imagine you have a list of 100 people in your population, and you want to use systematic sampling to select your sample. You decide on an interval of five. The best way to use systematic sampling is then to choose a random place to start on your list. Maybe you start at the second name listed. From there, you would choose every fifth name to be a participant. That’s systematic sampling. 

The key features of systematic sampling are that it’s probability based and that there’s a specific number interval used to select your sample. 

Types of Systematic Sampling

The basics of systematic sampling are the same, but there are a few ways you can perform a systematic sample. Here are three types of systematic sampling and how each one works. 

Systematic Random Sampling

Systematic random sampling is the classic way to use systematic sampling. It works exactly as described earlier: a particular interval is used to randomly select participants. But how do researchers choose effective intervals? Most use their population size and figure out how many they want in a sample. For example, if you have 100 people in your population, and you know you want to survey 20 of them, you know your interval will be 5. 

Circular Systematic Sampling

Circular systematic sampling is most useful if you know you want to sample your entire population, but you still want the element of randomness in your sampling methods. Circular systematic sampling works the same as classic systematic sampling at first. But instead of stopping selection after you reach the end of the population list, you start again and keep selecting using your numeric interval until you’ve sampled everyone in your population. 

For example, let’s return to our list of 100 people. You choose the interval of 5 for your sampling and randomly select starting on the fourth name. You sample every fourth name until you reach the end of the list. But instead of stopping there, circular systematic sampling has you keep sampling every fourth name until you’ve gone through the whole list. It’s a great way to continue to select randomly while sampling your whole population. Circular systematic sampling isn’t a great choice if you have a very large population, and you really only need a small sample and a way to whittle the list down. 

Linear Systematic Sampling

Linear systematic sampling is another variation, but it’s different from circular sampling. Linear systematic sampling doesn’t repeat and continue until the whole population is sampled. Instead, linear sampling uses a form of skip logic to select. Skip logic is something you might use to send participants in a survey to a different spot in the survey based on their answers. The researcher uses skip logic to select where to start on the survey and the interval to use. If you think of the list of 100 population members, here you would use skip logic to determine where the sampling starts and who is chosen, and it doesn’t repeat at the end. 

When Is Systematic Sampling Used? 

When do researchers choose to use systematic sampling? Systematic sampling provides a unique way to use random sampling without having to have a lot of details on your population or on a tight budget or timeline. These are some of the scenarios when systematic sampling is commonly used: 

  • Budget or timing restrictions: If you have an upcoming deadline or a small budget for sampling, systematic sampling is simple to implement and quick for picking a sample under a time crunch. You can very quickly number a population list and randomly select an interval and starting point and choose participants quickly. This same process also requires few resources, and you don’t have to know much about your population to get started with systematic sampling. 
  • Simple outcomes: Systematic sampling is a simple way to choose a sample, so it’s best when used when the outcomes are simple. A complicated survey isn’t the place for a simple systematic sample. 
  • Absence of data patterns: Systematic sampling is used when the data aren’t arranged or have an obvious pattern or opportunity for data manipulation. That could lead to problems. But without that, systematic sampling is a great choice. 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Systematic Sampling

As with most things in sampling, there are advantages and disadvantages to using systematic sampling. There are times when it’s particularly valuable to use systematic sampling, and there are weak points with the method that are important to watch for and mitigate as much as possible. 

Advantages:

There are some of the major advantages of systematic sampling: 

  • Simple to understand: Not every method of sampling randomly is easy for researchers to understand—especially not with an extensive background in statistics. Systematic sampling is easy to grasp and easy to get started with.
  • Easy to implement: Nothing’s worse than having extremely difficult sampling requirements to grapple with that take forever to actually get started. Systematic sampling avoids that. Instead, it’s easy to get started with quickly. 
  • Organized method of sampling: Organization with your data is key to making analysis simple and doable down the road. Systematic sampling is exactly what it sounds like: systematic. And systematic is organized and can help you keep track of what’s going on. 
  • Low risk for bias or contamination when done well: Data contamination and bias can leave you with bad results and bad data to base your decisions off of. Systematic sampling can be a way to combat that. So long as the population list can be ordered randomly, there’s a low risk for bias or data contamination when you use this sampling method. 

Disadvantages:

There are also a few disadvantages that researchers have to plan for and make sure to avoid when using systematic sampling: 

  • Risk of bias: While there’s a low risk of bias, there’s still a risk that has to be managed. The list of population members must be ordered randomly, or there’s sampling bias. That’s easy when you have a list of names and can order that randomly but could be complicated for other populations.
  • Risk of data manipulation: When you use systematic sampling, you’re setting up a system to use. There’s a risk that researchers might set up a system to intentionally give them the results they want, introducing a world of problems into their data. 
  • Requires population size: The other risks can be controlled for, but this disadvantage is an inherent one. To effectively use systematic sampling, you have to be able to number your population. That means you have to know your population size exactly before you can sample. It might be easy when you’re sampling the employees at your company, but it might be more difficult when you have a potentially massive population that you aren’t sure what it entails.  

The Bottom Line

Overall, systematic sampling is a form of probability sampling and can be incredibly valuable on a tight timeline or budget with simple populations. The key is to make sure you’re using the right sampling method for your surveys. InMoment has special CX software that’s designed to help you make the most of your surveys—from sampling methods to analysis. Schedule a demo to see how InMoment can help you optimize the results  from your CX surveys. 

Voluntary Response Bias
Back to Blog

Voluntary Response Bias in Sampling

By: The InMoment Team

If you received an invitation to take a survey, you would probably be more likely to actually participate if the topic of the survey interested you. That’s the heart of voluntary response sampling. Like all other methods of sampling, voluntary surveys have their pros and cons. It’s one of the easiest ways to sample quickly and get responses, but it can also result in voluntary response bias. Read on to learn more about voluntary response sampling. 

What Is a Voluntary Response? 

Voluntary response is when someone volunteers to be a part of your sample. When you’re surveying, you have a population or the whole group of people you want to learn about. But most of the time, you can’t survey the entire population, so you select a smaller group, and that’s your sample. Voluntary response sampling is when you select that sample by letting your population volunteer to be in it. 

So what is voluntary response bias? Voluntary response bias is referring to how allowing your sample to self-select skews your data, and you don’t actually get results that are representative of your whole population. Voluntary response bias isn’t always inherently bad; it’s not considered the worst of the biases that could arise in your sampling. But it can lead to more extreme results than would actually be true for your population as a whole. 

Why Is Voluntary Response Sampling Biased? 

When you create a survey, you want to get results that are representative of your population, so you can make the right decisions based on the data. If you’re allowing your sample to self select, you’re not getting data that shows your entire population. You’re only getting data that reflects your sample. That leaves you with results that aren’t generalizable, and generalizing them anyway is where bias becomes a real problem. 

Voluntary response also opens your survey up to the possibility of favoring more extreme results than your population actually experiences. Think about it this way: respondents are more likely to volunteer for a survey if they’re passionate about the topic. The passionate responses can skew your results. You’ll have the customers that loved your product the most (or had a terrible experience) responding instead of your average customer. That could lead to bias problems. You could end up making decisions on products and services that are slightly skewed by voluntary response bias. 

What Is an Example of Voluntary Response Sampling? 

The classic example of voluntary response sampling is the call-in survey. A company runs an ad to call in with thoughts on a product or service, and they use that data to tweak the product or service. The customers who feel most strongly about the product—whether positively or negatively—are the ones who call in. While those respondents can still give great feedback, they are the ones who felt most passionately, which doesn’t necessarily represent the entire population of customers. 

Most commonly, companies run across voluntary response bias when they send out surveys to all their customers and then rely on the ones who respond to be the entire sample. Let’s say a company puts out a new line of shoes, and they email every person who bought the shoes with a survey link. The customers who respond are those who most likely have something to say about the shoes, and that could potentially skew the data. 

For example, let’s say most of the respondents were those who had a bad experience, and the company decides to modify the entire product based on the survey. Maybe that is the right decision, but maybe the majority of customers were fine with the shoes, but they didn’t respond to the survey. That’s where problems with voluntary responses happen. A random sample is a more reliable and accurate way to learn about a population. By randomly selecting a sample, you get more accurate and more generalizable results that you can more confidently use to make decisions for your company and products. 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Voluntary Response Sampling

Voluntary response sampling has some very obvious disadvantages. Using voluntary responses can allow bias to creep in on the results and skew data. Voluntary response also can introduce undercoverage bias. Your population could potentially be a complex and diverse group of people. When you use voluntary response, only those who are inclined to respond are represented in the results. That means you could be undercovering your population and missing out on key trends that are important to note. 

But there is a major advantage to using voluntary responses. Randomly selecting a population and getting those chosen to participate in the survey can be difficult, time consuming, and expensive. Voluntary response bias can eliminate that. You aren’t spending time tracking down participants and designing your survey since your sample is just those who are already willing to participate in your survey. 

Still, using voluntary response sampling to save time and resources can be risky. There is always the high risk for introducing voluntary response bias that could have a negative effect on your research. It’s important to keep that in mind when weighing the benefits and risks of voluntary responses. Vital surveys that may influence key business decisions might benefit from random sampling rather than voluntary sampling to make sure the results are as accurate to the population as possible. 

The Bottom Line

Voluntary response bias is a real risk researchers face when using voluntary response sampling. But considering what voluntary response bias does to a survey also opens up a discussion of the larger challenges with surveying. Choosing methods and creating accurate, simple, and powerful surveys is important, but it’s difficult to do—especially on a deadline or on a tight budget. 
That’s what InMoment strives to relieve. InMoment is here to help you collect good data to create beautiful surveys that give you the data power to guide your business decisions. Easily gather the information you need with InMoment. Get started with InMoment to create the surveys you need.

Simple Random Sampling
Back to Blog

Simple Random Sampling: Definition and Method Guide

By: The InMoment Team

If you are an organization with thousands of customers, surveying your entire customer base can seem like a daunting task. The likelihood of all of your customers (whether they number in the thousands or in the hundreds) answering a survey is slim to none. But, customer feedback is critical to driving Experience Improvement and growing your CX program. So, with such slim odds, how are you supposed to trust the customer feedback you do get? 

Simple random sampling is the perfect solution to this problem. Sampling methods such as simple random sampling allow businesses to get the data they need to make decisions without having to go through any unnecessary work. The goal of using simple random sampling is to get a small group that is unbiased representative of a larger population.

What is Simple Random Sampling and Why Is It Important?

A simple random sample is a selection of participants from a population. What makes this sampling method different is that each participant has an equal probability of being selected.   

Simple random sampling is important for many reasons. First, the subgroups from your population will be unbiased. Since they were chosen at random, they do not have any predisposed bias as participants, and they do not suffer from researcher bias. 

It is also important because these unbiased groups allow businesses to get data that is reflective of the entire population, without actually having to survey the entire population. 

What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Simple Random Sampling?

Many businesses prefer simple random sampling for its simplicity and lack of bias. It is also the easiest form of sampling. You don’t need to be a data analyst in order to perform this sampling method; and the data you receive can be applied to the whole population. 

The biggest disadvantage to be aware of is researcher bias. Researcher bias occurs when the researcher conducting the sampling selects participants to be in a subgroup based on their personal biases. This can be easily avoided by including multiple forms of random selection in your sampling. 

How Do You Perform Simple Random Sampling?

Simple random sampling is the perfect tool for a company looking to get an idea of how its entire customer base feels about a certain subject. Let’s say that you work for a nationwide retailer, and are interested in finding out how your loyalty members feel about a new selection of loyalty perks that you are considering to develop. 

You could go into the database that has a list of all of your loyalty members or, in this case, the list of your population. After assigning each member a number, you could use a random number generator to randomly select the number of participants you have chosen for your sample size. 

This subgroup of members, chosen at random, can now be surveyed. Their responses can be analyzed and can also be viewed as being representative of your entire member base. 

Sampling With InMoment

If you’re interested in understanding your customer base without having to survey each and every customer, then simple random sampling may be your answer. But understanding that data, what it means, and what to do with it moving forward can be difficult. 

InMoment, the leader in people-oriented text analytics, can help. Built on industry-recognized metrics and real-time intelligence, InMoment provides the tools and support you need to find hidden insights in your data. For more information on data gathering and analysis, visit our Learning Hub and look at how our data studios can be beneficial to your business. 

Cluster Analysis
Back to Blog

CX 101: What Is a Cluster Analysis? 

By: The InMoment Team

Math and numbers are the ultimate in ‘exact science.’ When we work within the confines of mathematics, we can expect absolute precision in our results. In data analysis terms, this can be a real advantage, giving us clear, definite numbers on which to base future decisions. Unfortunately, sometimes the real world being represented by the data is anything but exact. And when it comes to grouping objects based on a somewhat nebulous idea of similarity, traditional statistical tools may fall short. 

Cluster analysis is an answer to this problem. With cluster analysis, data analysts can construct data groups (or clusters) based on a range of similarities and differences. The end goal is to distinguish data points in such a way that those within a group are as similar as possible and completely distinct from the data points belonging to separate groups.

Here, we take a closer look at cluster analysis, how to perform one, how to interpret the data, and what potential disadvantages you should be aware of before you get started. But first, let’s define the term itself.

What Is Cluster Analysis?

At its most basic, cluster analysis is a statistical methodology designed to allow analysts to process data by organizing individual objects into groups defined by their similarity or association. Also called segmentation analysis or taxonomy analysis, cluster analysis exists to help identify homogenous groups with a range of items when the grouping is not already known or defined. In other words, cluster analysis is exploratory; data scientists who apply cluster analysis don’t begin with any predefined classes or expectations.

Instead, cluster analysis takes a collection of data items and attempts to organize them based on how closely associated each one is with the others. Visually, this is often represented using a multi-axis graph to more accurately identify which data points are similar and which are not.

One common example of clustering is the arrangement of items within a grocery store—products are classified and grouped based on how similar they are in purpose.

Cluster analysis is an essential aspect of modern artificial intelligence (AI) and data mining, and businesses often rely on clustering to segment customer populations into different marketing or user groups. Cluster analysis may be used in a range of business and non-business applications.

Steps for Making a Cluster Analysis

There are nearly as many ways to cluster data points as there are groups to segment them into. As such, there is no single process that represents the standard mechanism of cluster analysis. The following process, however, is a reliable set of steps you can use when clustering data:

1. Confirm the Metricality of the Data

For effective clustering, your data needs to have actual numerical values. This is because you will need to define the ‘distance’ between data points. So even if you are working with non-metric data (such as people’s names), you still need to define the similarities in a numerical way (such as by saying that individuals with the same name have a distance defined as 0 and those with different names have a distance defined as 1). 

2. Select Variables

Selecting the right variables is essential to producing relevant, usable cluster data. Perform exploratory research beforehand so that you have a clear idea of which variables to use. 

3. Define Similarities

As with selecting your variables, choosing and defining similarity measures to chart the ‘distances’ between your observations is key to producing a usable cluster analysis. You can define similarities in hundreds of different ways, so be aware of your options as you work with your data. 

4. Visualize Pairwise Distances

With the correct variables in place and your similarities fully defined, you can now begin to visualize your cluster analysis data. You can plot individual attributes as well as the pairwise distances on a histogram chart, with your classes represented as columns on the horizontal axis. Peaks within those columns may represent potential segments.

5. Choose a Method and Number of Segments

Again, there are many different methods one may use to cluster data. You may wish to try a variety of approaches until you find one that clearly represents actionable information in a clear and robust way. Cluster analysis is iterative, so be willing to work with the data until it starts to work for you.

6. Interpret the Segments

With your chosen method and number of segments, your next step is to get a clearer idea of the data points themselves and how they relate to one another. Make note of how the segments differ based on your variables. It can be extremely helpful to visualize these clusters using graphing techniques. 

7. Perform Ongoing Analysis 

With your core data visually represented and your individual data points more fully understood, the final step is to dig down deeper with increasingly robust cluster analysis. This may include subjecting your data to different subsets, distance metrics, segmentation attributes, segmentation methods, or numbers of clusters. By exploring multiple variations, you should be able to see how well your data holds up, how much overlap you have between your clusters, and how similar your segment profiles are across different approaches.

How to Interpret and Measure Clustering

Cluster analysis is based on the assumption that the lower the numerically-represented distance between items, the higher the similarity level—provided that you have a reasonable number of clusters to work with. You can use a silhouette coefficient score to calculate how healthy your clusters are by determining the average silhouette coefficient value of each of the objects in the data set. 

Measuring your clusters also heavily depends on the questions you ask regarding your initial data. Important cluster analysis questions include:

  • How will you measure the similarity between objects?
  • How will similarity variables be weighted?
  • Once similarities are established how will classes be formed?
  • How will clusters be defined?
  • What conclusions can you draw regarding the clusters’ statistical significance?

Advantages and Disadvantages of Cluster Analysis in Sampling

A key application of cluster analysis in cluster sampling. Cluster sampling divides an entire study population into externally homogeneous but internally heterogeneous groups, with each cluster acting as a miniature representation of the whole. The groups must be divided randomly, and then individual groups are randomly selected and every individual in that group is sampled. 

For example, cluster sampling allows researchers to study certain types of communities within the country without having to acquire subjects from hundreds or thousands of different locations. Instead, these communities are divided into similar groups and a random sample of communities is assessed. In this case, the randomly-selected subset represents the whole population. Another example might be an airline that chooses to survey all of the passengers on several randomly-selected flights every day to infer conclusions about their passengers as a whole population. 

Cluster analysis as a sampling methodology offers some clear advantages over more traditional random or stratified sampling. For one, cluster sampling tends to demand fewer resources and is more cost-effective. For another, cluster analysis may be more feasible while still providing a comprehensive view of an entire population. 

That said, there are also certain disadvantages that you should be aware of. Perhaps the biggest drawback is that cluster sampling is prone to higher error rates than many other sampling techniques; the results obtained are not always fully reflective of the population as a whole. Additionally, unconscious biases may seep into this sampling methodology creating biased inferences about the entire population.

Better Analysis with InMoment

If you’re interested in getting a clear picture of the similarities and differences across a data set, then cluster analysis may be the answer. But ensuring that your cluster data accurately represents your sample group and clearly expresses valuable information can be difficult. Understanding cluster analysis and cluster sampling methodologies and how best to interpret the resultant data will provide you with the insight you need to understand the associations between your objects. 

InMoment, the leader in people-oriented text analytics, can help. Built on industry-recognized metrics and real-time intelligence, InMoment provides the tools and support you need to find hidden insights in your data. For more information on data gathering and analysis, visit our Learning Hub.

What is the Difference Between Voice of Customer and Market Research
Back to Blog

What Is the Difference Between Voice of Customer and Market Research?

By: The InMoment Team

A lot of folks believe that voice of customer (VoC) programs and market research mean the same thing—but they’re actually quite different! In fact, each discipline differs in purpose, design, analysis and outcomes.

However, even though they’re different, it’s important to point out that one isn’t necessarily better than the other—and brands need both if they want their customer experience (CX) programs to reach their potential.

So, with that in mind, let’s get into a quick primer!

Breaking Down the Difference Between Voice of Customer & Market Research

What Is the Definition of Voice of Customer (VoC)?

Voice of the Customer (VoC) is the process of gathering vital information regarding what customers think and feel about their experiences with a business.

How Does VoC Fit into Your CX Strategy

VoC programs are an essential part of any CX toolkit. They’re designed to fulfill many critical functions for your overall customer experience program, including, as their name implies, understanding customer needs. They’re also useful for understanding customer expectations, as well as what those individuals may want from you before even they know. This information can then be used to adjust operations, inform marketing efforts, and help your organization create both short- and long-term Experience Improvement (XI).

Not all VoC feedback comes from typical listening methods like surveys and focus groups, either. A lot of it comes from unsolicited feedback (website reviews, social media comments, etc). Unsolicited feedback is helpful because it gives customers a chance to express themselves entirely in their own terms, which may alert brands to problems and journey breakages that they weren’t aware of.

All of this boils down to the ability to not just capture individual and collective customer feedback, but act upon it. Taking action is crucial to Experience Improvement and building connective relationships.

What Is the Definition of Market Research?

Market research explores hidden relationships within industry data, collected by a market research firm, in order to predict and forecast future events and behavior within the market.

What Is the Role of Market Research in Your Business?

While Voice of Customer is all about feedback, market research takes a slightly wider lens by focusing on understanding the trends around your business.

Primary research is useful for testing new communications and services that your company wants to put out there, while secondary research looks at the dynamics and sizing of the marketplace around you. Conducting these types of research can help your company identify your target market, segment your customers, and identify growth opportunities.

Your company can supercharge its market research efforts by defining the population you want to target with a survey, then creating samples that ensure you’ll have a match. We’ve found that surveys like these are most effective when they’re blind, meaning that the customer or individual stays anonymous while taking them, and challenge you to do the same! This method is great for reducing response bias.

The Difference between Voice of Customer (VoC) and Market Research
This handy chart breaks down the differences between these two methods

So, Why Do You Need Both?

VoC and market research aren’t the same, but your CX program and your organization need both in order to truly understand your customers as people. That fundamental, holistic understanding fuels unforgettable experiences that build loyalty while also creating additional revenue! So be bold in your strategy and use both VoC and market research. Your customers will feel heard, your C-suite will be impressed, and the experiences you provide will be meaningfully transformed.

Click here to read our full-length white paper on why your brand needs both VoC and market research. Our very own Eric Smuda has spent decades in both fields and provides an in-depth look not just at why these disciplines are important, but how your organization can wield them effectively.

Declining Survey Response
Back to Blog

How to Overcome Declining Survey Response Rates

By: Jessica Petrie, Senior Strategic Insights Consultant, InMoment

Of all the unicorns that brands and organizations chase with their customer experience (CX) programs, higher survey response rates are one of the best-known… and sometimes the most elusive. This is especially true right now, when survey response rates are declining due to a litany of new and unprecedented causes. Today, we’re going to go through those causes, how their impact goes far beyond surveys, and what brands like yours can do to respond to this continuous drop in numbers.

Why Survey Rates Fall

There are a myriad of reasons why you may be experiencing declining survey response rates. One of the more common ones we see when working with clients is that their transactional surveys, which are meant to be quite short, are considered too long by too many customers, leading to high rates of survey abandonment. Another factor that comes into play here with fair frequency is the client’s survey invitation design, which can repel customers from your survey altogether. 

However, while these problems frequently pop up in survey design, the good news for brands that encounter them is that survey length and invitation design are fairly addressable challenges. An Experience Improvement (XI) platform that can digest unstructured data for actionable sentiments will let you know more about your customers’ survey preferences. You can then apply those insights to your survey design and see a bump in response rates.

Many organizations have spent years putting their experience programs to great use fixing superficial problems like these, but a few trends have emerged in recent years that take more than a freshened up survey invite to address. The most prominent of these trends and a chief cause of declining survey completion rates is Generation Z shoppers’ reluctance to complete them. This problem has become more pronounced as more of this generation becomes old enough to independently shop, and it creates a few blind spots that brands can’t illuminate through surveys alone.

Left in the Dark

While the problem of declining survey rates is most pronounced with this younger demographic of shoppers, a few other survey shortcomings became apparent as brands scrambled to remedy this completion shortage. Namely, that as customer needs and expectations have grown more complex, so too has the amount of disparate data sources that organizations need in order to truly understand not ‘just’ why their customers shop with them, but also why customers visit competitors and enact the purchasing trends they do.

None of this is to say that surveys have become irrelevant or unimportant. They remain a vital tool for gathering feedback and the time brands invest to continuously improve them is well spent. That’s where those other data sources come into play—they exist outside of surveys, but are just as needed for creating true Experience Improvement (XI). They include:

  1. Location-tracking data
  2. Purchasing data
  3. Web search data
  4. Social media & online reviews

Painting a Full Picture

These four sources of information aren’t just nice-to-haves; they’ve become essential to completing a profile of your customer and creating a holistic, 360-degree view of their preferences, their journey with your brand, and who they are as people. These more fundamental aspects of the customer experience are essential for meaningfully improving all of your experiences, which means that it’s essential you set yourself up for data collection success if you haven’t already.

Click here to read my full-length point of view document on data sources and to take the next step in your data collection journey. I go in-depth about what each data source is, why it matters, and how best to capitalize on it to create bold, human experiences for your customers and employees. Good luck!

Primary Research
Back to Blog

CX 101: What Is Primary Research?

By: The InMoment Team

If you want to get to know someone, the best way to get an accurate assessment is to ask them questions yourself. You may want to know what they like and don’t like, what makes them happy, sad, or angry, how they feel about specific topics, or anything else that gives you greater insight into their personality.

The same is true when you’re trying to understand market research; having an accurate assessment of your audience and their buying patterns will make all the difference when it comes to customer satisfaction and business sales. You need to know what makes them excited or frustrated, how they respond to specific issues or perspectives, and topics that are relevant to them, all so that you can better understand and help them. This also provides a better grasp of industry trends and challenges so that organizations can offer memorable and fulfilling content, experiences, and products.

The best way to get accurate data, though, is to gather it yourself whenever possible. That’s where primary research comes in. This guide will cover everything you need to know about primary research and how you can capitalize on the many opportunities it provides.

What Is Primary Research?

Primary research is a methodology of research that requires you to collect data yourself (or commission someone else to conduct the research), meaning you are not using someone else’s research or data. From detailed surveys to intensive focus groups, primary research allows you to directly examine, explore, and record how your audience responds to or feels about certain subjects.

Businesses use primary research for a variety of reasons, such as discovering what their clients or customers need from their product or the kind of language that speaks to their target audience. Organizations also use this kind of primary research to improve the experience of both customers and employees and optimize their service. 

Primary Research Methods and Examples

The more accurate data you can gather, the better prepared you will be for the data-driven world that businesses run on. Here are some methods of primary research to help you discover the kind of data you want to gather and how you should go about your research.

Surveys

Surveys are versatile and, when well-made, incredibly useful ways to gather quantitative information. They are a quick way to get honest opinions or preferences from both customers and employees without demanding too much work from them. Plus, online and automated surveys make it extra easy for both the participants and the researchers—they can be conveniently sent via email and accessed on all sorts of devices.

Surveys should have a variety of open-ended and closed questions so that participants have the opportunity to give greater details for their answers while also providing more numerical data. You want to keep your survey short and focused. That said, you can use a rating scale, multiple choice, ranking, and drop-down questions, among many other types of questions.

Make sure you have a predetermined theme that you can tie each question back to, as well as a target audience that will give you the most relevant responses. For example, let’s say you just launched a new navigation layout on your online store website and want to know how it’s being received. You would need to create questions all related to the usability, convenience, and flow of the navigation. You could do this by sending the survey to someone who just made a purchase and asking them to rate their experience or specific elements of your online store.

Interviews

Interviews are a much broader way to collect information, and unlike the quantitative nature of most surveys, interviews are more qualitative since they are usually created with open-ended questions. You can do interviews in person and face-to-face, or you can do them over the phone. You can usually get more in-depth answers with interviews depending on the interviewer and their experience with interviewing. Great interviewers can especially get great results for in-person interviews.

If you need large amounts of information for a relatively short list of participants, interviewers are an excellent option. They can last 10-30 minutes or sometimes longer depending on the nature of the work you’re doing. Just know that in-person interviews can influence the comfort level and the responses of interviewees, so an expert interviewer will be able to create the right environment and read the room to accurately record the responses.

An example of a good interview opportunity would be if you need to gather information about a certain subject from experts. Imagine a company that develops equipment for a specific medical condition and needs to improve its current model. This company could interview both the specialists and doctors who assist patients as well as the patients themselves to get concrete answers directly from the source.

Observations

If you need to collect data but don’t want to directly interact with “respondents” in order to protect the accuracy of the data, then observations may be the best route for you. While it can be difficult to create these scenarios, observation primary research is a method where there is no direct interaction between the researcher and the person being observed. All the researcher does is observe and record how the target group or person reacts or responds.

There are usually either trained specialists who know what to look for while observing or people who use cameras to document the experience. This is especially good for removing as much bias as possible.

Let’s say a restaurant offers customers a complimentary appetizer if they have to wait longer than an hour. That restaurant could install cameras and study how many people wait, how long they last if they decide to leave, the size of groups that are willing to wait, etc.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are small groups of people, usually no larger than 6-10 individuals, who come together and discuss questions that are provided by a moderator. This is ideal for a group of experts who can discuss a topic at length or even a group of customers who can offer greater insight into your product. This is a good opportunity to identify pain points, niche parts of an industry, or how well people respond to a new idea or product.

Maybe you want to improve your employee incentive program—you could put together a small focus group within the company to start a discussion about potential benefits and see what people react well to. Or, let’s say you’re launching a new product but aren’t sure how your target audience will receive it. A small focus group could interact with or use your product and then offer feedback in a focus group.

Research Services & Data Analysis

It’s one thing to conduct a survey or an interview, but it’s another thing to process, analyze, and act upon that data you gather. Even putting an effective research project together can be overwhelming for businesses, which is why research services are another method of primary research. You can hire a team of experts or find a program that quickly compiles your data into usable statistics.

This is also best if you need help with data analysis, which is the process of inspecting and screening your reports for objective, accurate, and insightful data. This can be a huge project, which is why experts who know how to categorize and analyze data are particularly helpful for businesses and organizations.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Primary Research

Here are some major benefits of primary research as well as certain challenges to be aware of.

Advantages

  • Accuracy and Relevance: When you conduct the research yourself, you don’t have to worry about the work or bias of other researchers—you account for everything, which means you gather exactly what you need. 
  • Control: Every step of your primary research is intentional, meaning you have more control over the kind of results you get. Decisions are made at your own discretion, and you don’t have to worry about citations or relying on other sources.
  • Up to date: You don’t have to rely on outdated sources or statistics. Instead, you get just what you need for your specific goals at the time you need it.
  • Improved customer experiences: Primary research is also particularly beneficial for your customers and clients since you are directly improving their experience with your business offering. You can conduct market surveys in-house by using the InMoment platform to make the most of your survey analysis.

Disadvantages

  • Resources: Not everyone has the time or the money to conduct their own research. Planning, executing, reporting, and analyzing the data you gather is expensive and demanding. This can prevent both the quality and the accuracy of work if you use poor resources, cut corners, or rush the process. 
  • Feasibility: Especially when poorly designed, not all primary research projects are realistic. Interviewing every member of your staff of 500, for example, isn’t a reasonable goal.
  • Research Bias: Even though you get to customize your research, you also have to be especially careful when it comes to objectivity. Your opinions, assumptions, and preferences must not get in the way of accurate research, which isn’t always easy. Sometimes, an unbiased third party can help businesses accurately gather and analyze their data.

Primary Research Vs. Secondary Research

There are two core types of research: primary and secondary. Primary research is a powerful tool for businesses; however, secondary research, which is research that you don’t conduct yourself but gather from other sources, shouldn’t be dismissed. In fact, the best scholars and businesses use a combination of primary and secondary research to round out their perspectives.

Using both primary and secondary research is what gives you a comprehensive report of your findings—the more reliable sources that support your findings, the more credible and usable your data is. Sometimes, primary research is mainly done to supplement or confirm findings done in secondary research.

For example, a tech company may want to update its work-from-home policy. They may find secondary research that offers some insight into what employees prefer, but they could also do their own primary research to get specific information from their own employees that is accurate and up to date.

The bottom line is that primary research and secondary research are both more rewarding and useful when used in conjunction with each other, not in competition. Primary research will give you data or information specific to your concerns, company, customers, industry, etc. Secondary research may offer applicable insights into your questions and concerns as well, though there are limits to how directly the information relates to your niche goals.

Primary Research with InMoment

If you want to be competitive in your field, encourage honesty and authenticity among your employees, and produce effective market research, it’s time to use InMoment. You don’t have to be an analyst, a scholar, or a mathematician to do your own primary research—you can trust the expertise and advanced technology of InMoment platforms to simply but powerfully compile your needed data and take your business to the next level.

Primary research is invaluable when it comes to market research and giving customers the best possible experience with your brand. Learn how InMoment can help you gain the most insight out of your primary research surveys!

Sampling Methods
Back to Blog

CX 101: Sampling Methods

By: The InMoment Team

When you want to get information from customers, it might seem nice to be able to ask every single customer. To make that happen, you would need every customer to agree to be surveyed, and it would take an extreme amount of time, effort, and money to then ask every customer your survey questions. Even then, you would have an inordinate amount of data to sift through. It’s true that you could definitively make claims about what your customers are saying, but it’s not actually necessary to go through this level of work. In fact, most likely, it’s not possible to survey every single customer.

Instead of surveying every single person you want feedback from, most people use a concept called sampling instead and rely on sampling methods to research a group. Sampling allows you to get information from a group of people, and when done correctly, the information is also generalizable and usable. We’ll walk you through sampling, types of sampling methods, and how to begin using some of these techniques. 

What Is Sampling?

Sampling is using a group of your population to understand the population as a whole. Think of sampling as you would with sampling a cake. To see if a whole cake is delicious, you can usually tell by eating a slice of the cake. That slice of the cake can tell you a lot about the taste, texture, consistency, and overall balance of the cake—and it’s much easier to eat just a slice instead of an entire cake. Sampling for surveys works much the same way. 

You take a group of your population and survey just them. It’s typically much more manageable and affordable to do so when you’re doing large scale research. From there, your data team will be able to analyze the data from the sample—which is typically a smaller amount that’s easier to glean important insights from. The insights from sampling—if your sampling is done correctly—can then tell you about the whole group you’re researching. And it can help you gather these insights at a fraction of the cost and much less effort than it would take to survey the entire group. 

Difference Between Population and Sample

To better understand sampling methods, it’s important to distinguish between the population and the sample. The population is the entire group of people you want to learn about and to be able to draw conclusions about. For example, if you wanted to determine how your customers felt about a new product, your population would be every single customer that’s purchased the new product from you. If you wanted to research the grocery shopping habits of single mothers, your population would be every single mother. 

The sample is a representative group of your population that will be participating in your research or survey. The key is that the sample has to be an accurate representation of your population. For example, if you were researching the grocery shopping habits of single mothers, you couldn’t go to a local grocery store and survey every person who walked in. You would get data, but it wouldn’t be data about the population you’re trying to study. As with the cake analogy, the sample or slice has to accurately represent the entire cake. 

It’s important to remember that population doesn’t necessarily mean “big” and sample means “small.” Populations can be defined by so many factors: geography, age, gender, income, and so many more factors. You can have a tiny population of just a particular set of customers or a large population like the entire adult population of North America. The larger, more dispersed, or more diverse your population is, the harder it will be to sample. 

What Are Sampling Methods?

When you want to do a survey or perform research, you’ll need to use sampling methods to determine who will be a part of your sample and how it will be related to your population. Carefully consider how you will select a sample that is as representative of your population as possible. In general, there are two categories of sampling methods: probability sampling and non-probability sampling. 

Probability sampling is when each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected to be included in the sample. The sample participants are chosen randomly, and the results from the survey are generalizable to the population as a whole. Probability sampling methods are typically more accurate than others, but they are also more time consuming and expensive to make possible. 

On the other hand, non-probability sampling is when each member of the population does not have a chance of being selected. With these sampling methods, you could choose your sample based on convenience or other limiting criteria that make it so that every person isn’t eligible to be selected.

For example, if you wanted to study all of your customers, it would be a non-probability approach to then just select a sample of customers who have subscribed to an email list. In this situation, you would be limiting who could be selected to those on a list, which may or may not be accurate to your entire population. With non-probability sampling, it’s generally much more affordable and easier to do research, but you do run the risk of accumulating higher amounts of sampling error and reducing the likelihood of having a generalizable sample. 

Probability Sampling Methods

To perform a probability sampling survey, there are several methods that are commonly used. These are some of the most commonly used probability sampling methods: 

Simple Random Sampling

Simple random sampling is the simplest way to get a sample where every member of the population had an equal chance of being selected. To do a simple random sample, you will choose a way to randomly select a certain number of people from your population to survey. Some common methods include using a random number generator, drawing a name out of a hat or bowl, or any other type of chance. 

For example, you could number each customer you’ve had and use a random number generator to determine who will be a part of your sample. You could use a list generator to select certain customers from a list of names or emails. However you do it, the key is that it’s random. 

Systematic Sampling

Using simple random sampling can be extremely time consuming with a large population, so many will instead use systematic sampling. Systematic sampling is using some sort of designated system to choose randomly. For example, you could number all of your customers and choose the tenth individual. Choosing systematically saves you time and effort but still provides you with a random sample. 

Stratified Sampling

Stratified sampling is most useful when you have groups of people who should be sampled from equally. First, you divide your population into groups that don’t overlap (i.e. people from one group can’t be in another group). From there, you’ll randomly select a sample from each group. 

For example, if you were looking at your customers, you might want to break them up by annual income to see if that affects what you’re researching. Your stratified groups would then be done by income, and you would select a small sample from within each group. 

Cluster Sampling

Cluster sampling also involves splitting your population into groups, but these groups should be split randomly if possible. Then, instead of selecting from each group, you will randomly select groups and sample everyone in the group. For example, an airline might randomly select a certain number of flights each day and survey every passenger on those flights. 

Non-Probability Sampling Methods

Since probability sampling can be time consuming, some people will use non-probability sampling methods instead. These methods are generally not generalizable to the whole population as they may or may not be an accurate representation of the population. 

Convenience Sampling

Convenience sampling is choosing a sample based on ease of access. Instead of choosing from a population randomly, you choose from a population based on who is easy to communicate with. For example, standing in front of a grocery store and surveying everyone who walks past is convenience sampling. Not every member of your population has an equal chance to be chosen, and your data will only represent one day at one grocery store.

Choosing customers based on being subscribed to newsletters or who follow your company on Instagram could also be convenience sampling (if your population is larger than just “those who follow us on Instagram”) because it’s all about ease of access. 

Voluntary Response Sampling

Voluntary response sampling is when you select a sample based on who wants to be a part of the sample. The individuals can voluntarily choose to respond or not respond based on a general call for responses. For example, you could send out an email to every customer and ask them to join the study. Those with strong opinions or interest would be the most likely to join, which could mean your population isn’t representative. 

Purposive sampling

Purposive sampling selects a sample based on what a researcher decides. Essentially a researcher will be the one to determine if someone is in the sample or not. For example, you could put out a survey, and the researcher would then only look at the surveys for people who they decided met a certain criteria: like having purchased the most recent product. 

Snowball Sampling

Snowball sampling is used when a population is hard to reach. For example, if your research requires data from shelterless people, you may have a hard time reaching them for a survey. Snowball sampling is when you use just a few individuals you can find from this group or even choose participants based on whose family or associates you can contact. While snowball sampling isn’t random, it can be useful for certain populations that you may not be able to survey in another way. 

The Bottom Line

Overall, there are many sampling methods to choose from when planning your surveys. The end goal is to try to get your sample to be as representative as possible of your overall population, so you can use the results to generalize about the population and make conclusions. Poor sampling will give poor results. After all, as we all know, if we put crappy data in, we get crappy results, which don’t benefit anyone. Choose a representative sample instead for beneficial results. 
See how InMoment can help you with your sampling and survey efforts to help you choose the right sampling methods to get a representative sample.

What Is Brand Equity?
Back to Blog

What is Brand Equity? The Benefits and How to Build It

By: The InMoment Team

When customers are looking for a solution to a problem, they will often turn to a company they trust. Sometimes, they will choose that company even if the product is slightly more expensive because they recognize and trust the name. For example, if a customer is looking for a quick OTC pain reliever, they may turn to Tylenol over a drugstore generic alternative because they know the brand and trust it. That is the essence of brand equity. 

What is Brand Equity?

Brand equity is the measure of the perceived worth of a brand’s product, especially when compared to a generic equivalent product. Essentially, brand equity is a measurement of how much customers trust your brand’s product over another similar product, which can indicate how much more likely a customer is to pick your product over others. The better your brand equity, theoretically the better your company will perform in sales and public perception in relation to other brands. If your brand consistently impresses customers and reaches their expectations, your brand equity will be positively affected. If your brand fails to satisfy your customers because of negative experiences or perceptions, your brand equity will be negatively affected. 

It can be difficult to definitively measure your brand equity, but there are a few ways to gain further insight into how your brand is doing. These are some of the quantitative methods that reflect your brand equity: 

  • Profit margins
  • Price sensitivity 
  • Profitability
  • Growth rate
  • Market share percentage
  • Purchasing frequency

Interviews, social media presence, and customer feedback surveys are another way to gauge how your brand equity is performing. 

Brand equity can help increase your profit margins and how customers view your brand, so it’s an important aspect of your business to nurture. We’ll walk you through the important aspects of brand equity, how to build good brand equity, and why it matters to help you get started nurturing your brand equity. 

Elements of Brand Equity

What is brand equity made up of? Good brand equity comprises several elements. Nurturing each of these elements will help create a full and balanced brand equity that can reach customers and improve public perception of your brand. 

Brand Perception

Brand perception is how customers view and regard a product or service. This is separate from what a company is saying about its own product. Essentially, brand perception is what a customer believes your product or service does—not what a marketing department publishes about the product. While it’s completely possible that brand perception of a product lines up with how a company discusses its own product, it’s not a given. 

There are two sub-stages of brand perception can happen in: brand recognition and brand awareness. Brand recognition is when products are identifiable as belonging to a particular brand. Basically, if a customer sees a product from your company, they would easily be able to identify that it belongs to your brand. Logos and jingles can all be a part of brand recognition. Brand recognition can help your brand become a household name and improve your brand equity. 

Brand awareness is knowing what a brand stands for. While brand recognition means customers recognize your brand, brand awareness shows they understand your brand. Brand awareness is about knowledge, values, and beliefs. A way to think about brand awareness is to think about a customer choosing which brand of laptop to buy. If a customer has a lot of knowledge about how a company crafts their laptops, they have brand awareness for that company. That brand awareness may sway their choice of which laptop to buy, potentially over something like price. Because while one laptop may be cheaper, the customer may be more likely to buy the laptop they feel they understand better and can trust. 

Customer Experience

Customers that have a positive experience with your company are more likely to trust your brand, which can increase your brand equity. Any time a customer comes into contact with your brand is an opportunity to improve their experience and ultimately their perception of your brand. That quality experience with your brand can create a positive impression of your company—and hopefully improve brand equity. The reverse can also be true. Bad experiences with a company can create a negative association with the brand. Doing what you can to improve your customer experience can go a long way with brand equity. 

Quality

Your brand is associated with more than just a product. Brands are also associated with the supply chain, reputation, and trust. Quality across all of these parts of your brand can affect your brand equity. For example, a company that is effective at shipping quickly, restocking, and supplying vendors could increase the quality of its brand equity. In addition, a company with strong leadership, good financial performance, and excellent innovation will also have brand quality—ultimately creating more brand equity. 

Customer Preference

Customers have preferences of brands they buy from, and that can come into play with your brand equity. For example, customers that grew up on a certain brand of cereal are more likely to choose that brand of cereal even as an adult. They simply have a preference for it—as well as more trust and experience with the brand. The same can be said for any brand in any industry. Working with customer preferences as part of your brand equity can help draw and keep customers in the long run. 

How to Build Good Brand Equity

Actively investing in each component of brand equity can improve your brand equity. Refining customer experience, improving quality, and working with customer preferences can help build good brand equity. In addition, building brand awareness, emphasizing positive associations, and forming good relationships with customers are also important to building good brand equity. 

Build Brand Awareness

It’s hard to have positive brand equity when potential customers aren’t sure what your brand is or what it stands for. When customers understand your brand and your products, they are more likely to consider buying them—even when there’s a price difference. You can build brand awareness with strong advertising and marketing, as well as making your brand’s values very clear and visible. 

Emphasize Positive Associations 

Making sure your brand is associated with positive things is an important part of improving your brand equity. To do this, ensure that your business is using responsible and ethical business practices. Those go a long way in giving your company a positive association for customers. In addition, emphasize any time your brand comes into contact with something positive or makes a positive connection or collaboration with an influential organization or person. 

Form Good Relationships

In the end, good relationships with customers are what will truly strengthen your brand equity. Stay in touch with your customers on social media and through any other viable channels. In addition, provide them with excellent customer service through every step of the customer journey. Keep track of negative feedback and use it to smooth out problems in your customers’ experiences with your brand. Ultimately, be authentic with your customers and foster those relationships. 

Benefits of Brand Equity

Brand equity can have a meaningful impact on your company. While it’s obvious that brand equity improves public perception and recognition, there are several other benefits of nurturing brand equity that can really help your company. 

Dedicated Customers

One great benefit of improved brand equity is that you have the opportunity to develop a strong base of dedicated customers. At the end of the day, dedicated customers who support your brand are one of the most important factors for your business future. Loyal customers tend to spend more on average than new customers, and they become advocates for your brand and products. Strong positive experiences with your brand and products through brand equity can help your company reach this. 

Loyal Customer Base: Brand Equity Example

So many brands have been use brand equity to cultivate this passionate customer base. For example, Coca-Cola has actively used brand equity to create a strong sense of brand recognition which keeps drawing customers to its company time and time again. With unique marketing campaigns and recognition as one of the top soda companies, Coca-Cola has developed a loyal customer base that understands what the brand stands for and will continue to purchase its products.  

Extending Product Lines

Positive customer experiences with current products not only improve brand equity, but can also give your company the opportunity to extend its product lines. Once customers trust your brand and know what it stands for, they often more likely to trust future products and services your company offers. That gives your company the opportunity to expand product offerings. A good brand equity will win you lifelong customers that are more willing to purchase new products—ultimately making product line expansion beneficial and profitable. 

Product Line Extension – Brand Equity Example

Many brands have used their brand equity to their advantage in extending product lines. One example is Tiffany & Co, famous for high-end jewelry and engagement rings. Because of the success the company has in jewelry, they have expanded its brand to encompass games, home decor, watches, perfumes, and more. Not only does Tiffany & Co have numerous brand extensions because of its brand equity, but they can also charge a premium for every product sold.

More Impact for Good: Brand Equity Example

One example of a company that has used brand equity to increase their influence for good is Foot Locker. Foot Locker, famous for athletic footwear, has collaborated with NBA stars to award scholarships to student athletes and students in need. They have also worked to be inclusive and diversify their customer base through projects and grants aimed at helping people impacted by discrimination. It comes to show that the more brand equity you can create, the more good your company can do.

Great Impact as a Company

When your company has good brand equity, it is able to make better connections that increase your impact as a company. For example, more success as a brand can lead to brand collaborations that benefit your company and bring more recognition. Your company can also find new investment opportunities or supplier rates that allow you to have greater impact. 

Increased ROI

When customers trust your brand, they are more likely to make future purchases from your companies. If customers are continuing to purchase from your company, you are going to see a return on investment for what you put into improving your brand equity. Brand equity isn’t something that will leave your company without visible results. The ROI for your efforts can be seen in product lines. 

Overall, brand equity is an important measurement of the perceived worth of your company’s products and services over generic alternatives. Brand equity can be cultivated through many aspects of your business, including awareness and building relationships. When your company is nurturing brand equity, your brand can extend product lines and see ROI on investments made in brand equity. 

Here at InMoment, we want to help your company build its brand equity and CX reputation. It’s time to start nurturing your brand equity with InMoment.

Request a demo of our CX solution to see how InMoment can help you improve your brand equity.

customer experience research
Back to Blog

3 Ways Market Research Supercharges Experience Programs

By: Jessica Petrie, Senior Strategic Insights Consultant, InMoment

Market research is seen by a lot of companies and organizations as a nice-to-have. The reality, though, is that it’s a necessity. Market research provides the mapping tools you can use to chart your business landscape, understand its various features, and more importantly, get to know the groups and audiences that populate it. 

This goal is especially important within the context of experience programs, especially if you want to achieve real Experience Improvement (XI) for your customers, employees, and overall marketplace. Today’s conversation covers three specific ways market experience (MX) and its research can make a difference for you when it comes to becoming a leader in your vertical:

  1. Identifying Audience Segments
  2. Understanding Unsolicited Data
  3. Identifying Emerging Trends

#1. Identifying Audience Segments

There are many experience vendors out there whose approach revolves around two audience groups: new customers and existing customers. Those two audiences are important, of course, but so too are the litany of other customer and non-customer groups that populate your marketplace landscape. Identifying each segment and the amount of business it does with your brand is key to understanding both your vertical and how to become its leader.

More specifically, MX tools and platforms enable you to identify not ‘just’ your loyal customers, but also non-customers, past customers, and individuals who cross-shop with you and with competitors. You can then use your tools to research why these segments shop with you as often as they do (or don’t) and, more to the point, what you can do to turn them into loyal, invested customers.

#2. Understanding Unsolicited Data

Audience segments aren’t the only experience program element that market experience and market research can dramatically broaden. Another key component of understanding your marketplace is looking for and understanding unsolicited data, which MX tools can also help you achieve. Solicited data is important, but as with audience segments, understanding all of the data out there, solicited and otherwise, is the only way to truly understand your vertical.

As a quick reminder, unsolicited data refers to sources of information like social media and what you can infer from your market research. You can find this data once you’ve identified where the audience segments in your marketplace like to shop, which will lead you to more of the data you need to understand them. In other words, adding unsolicited data to the mix helps turn your picture of your marketplace from a snapshot to a landscape portrait.

#3. Identifying Emerging Trends

One of the secrets to building a truly remarkable customer experience isn’t ‘just’ being able to quickly react to problems or listen intently to your existing customers—it’s the ability to understand what all of your customers and audiences will want before they themselves even know. That’s the true power of market research, and it’s a culmination of understanding your vertical from both an audience segment viewpoint and a data one.

Once you’ve nailed down how to identify and capitalize on emerging trends, you’ll be well on your way to marketplace leadership if you’re not there already. Customers respond to experiences that make them feel seen and known as humans, and an MX-fueled initiative will create that Experience Improvement for them.

Taking a Closer Look

Knowing that these MX tools, methodologies, and possibilities is one thing—what’s the next step for understanding more about them and how to leverage them to your organization’s advantage? Click here to read my full-length Point of View on this subject to learn more about what market experience, market research, and all their tools can accomplish for you!

InMoment Market Research Solution
Back to Blog

InMoment’s Modern Market Research and Data Analytics Approach Ranks in Top 50

By: The InMoment Team

In the latest 2021 Insights Association Top 50 Market Research and Data Analytics report, InMoment ranks in the top 20 established industry reports and market research or market experience (MX) brands, alongside other powerhouse brands such as JD Power, Gartner Research, and Forrester Research Services. 

About InMoment’s Market Research and Data Analytics Approach

With the help of our industry-leading data and research science capabilities, we’re able to help brands go beyond collecting data to reveal actionable intelligence that leads to Experience Improvement (XI). Our “full-service professional CX approach designed to continuously improve the customer experience and deliver business outcomes to an impressive list of clients that includes 90 percent of the world’s automotive companies: 8 out of 10 of the top banks, nearly 20 percent of the top 50 retailers, 40 percent of the top hospitality companies, and 4 out of 5 of the top insurers.”

And this isn’t the first time we’ve been ranked on this list. In fact, InMoment has endured the test of time to be ranked on this report regularly over the past two decades. Here’s why: InMoment goes beyond a traditional approach to pursue what we call modern market research. So what’s the difference and what does it entail? Keep reading to find out.

The Difference Between Traditional & Modern Market Research

The difference between traditional market research and InMoment’s modern approach is that we focus on providing brands with access not only to insights, but to actionable intelligence that opens the door to concrete change. Too often traditional approaches fail to go beyond observing and reporting trends. How can brands expect experiences to improve if the research insights aren’t being used to create actual organizational progress?

How InMoment’s Approach Enables Action

So if part of modern market research is taking action, what does that look like? By focusing on stakeholder engagement and journey mapping, businesses can become more proactive about utilizing their research. Having buy in from your executive boardroom allows research teams to develop projects related to organizational goals and drive their insights into action. And understanding how the customer and employee journeys interrelate can guide that collaborative process into a more honed business strategy.

What Modern Market Research Strategy Looks Like

But what about the research strategy itself? Modern market research combines marketing science and research consultancy to make the most out of data. After journey mapping and capturing customer insights, InMoment supplements that data with financial, operational, employee, social media, etc. data. This new approach means reaching for multiple sources of insights and synthesizing that information to allow organizations to take practical action.

InMoment is dedicated to continuing to be a leader in this space because we believe these initiatives are essential to creating deeper experiences between our clients and their customers. 

Learn more about the InMoment XI difference and our market research and data analytics solutions here.

Survey Response Rate
Back to Blog

You Ask, We Tell: How Do I Increase Survey Response Rates? Should I Shorten My Survey?

By: Dave Ensing, Ph.D., VP, Research Consulting

I’ve been looking back over my 20+ years of various research consulting roles and during that time, I’ve continuously fielded questions from clients and others within the industry. In this blog, I’m going to focus on one question that continues to come up in conversations with CX practitioners and data analysts and my answer may surprise you.

How Do I Increase Survey Response Rates? Should I Shorten My Survey? 

My first instinct when asked this question is to ask, “are you really interested in only increasing your survey response rate, or are you interested in getting more responses?” Those are two different things. Survey response rates are the percentage of responses you receive from the survey invitations you send out. Responses are the absolute number of responses you receive, regardless of response rates. In many cases, you can actually increase the number of responses you receive while decreasing survey response rates by sending out more invitations.

In most cases survey response rates matter little in terms of your sample providing representation of a population. What’s most important is the absolute number of responses you have. For example, if I’m trying to represent the United States population of approximately 325 million people, I only need a little over 1000 respondents for a confidence level of +/- 3 percentage points. It doesn’t matter if those 1000 respondents are acquired from sending a survey invitation to 5000 people (20% response rate) or 100,000 people (1% response rate). 

The only caveat here is that a lower survey response rate may be an indicator that some sort of response bias is occurring: certain types of people may be responding more in comparison to other types. If that’s the case, it doesn’t matter how many responses you have. Your sample will still not represent the population. If you fear response bias, you should do a response bias study, but that’s a topic for another blog post.

Usually, when I point out to clients that they should be more interested in increasing the absolute number of responses they receive rather than just increasing survey response rates, they agree. 

Begin By Increasing the Number of Outgoing Survey Invitations 

You should begin your efforts to increase responses by deciding if it makes sense to send out more survey invitations. Below, I’ve identified three specific things you can do: 

  1. Consider Doing a Census: Some CX programs still engage in sampling instead of sending survey invitations to all eligible customers. If your program is sampling, consider doing a census. This will both increase the number of responses you receive and give you the opportunity to identify and rescue more at-risk customers.
  1. Scrutinize Your Contact Data: Are a significant portion of your records getting removed because contact information is either missing or wrong? If you obtain customer contact information from business units, such as stores, hotels, dealerships, etc., it’s important to look at sample quality at the unit level. It’s also helpful to examine the amount of sample records received from business units compared to their number of transactions. Units with low samples in proportion to their transactions probably need to focus on better ways to obtain customer contact information.
  1. Invite All Customer Segments: Are you missing some segments of your customer population? Not obtaining contact information for specific customer segments often has to do with information system issues. For instance, in the earlier days of automotive CX research most companies only surveyed warranty-service customers. They didn’t survey customers that went to a dealership and paid for the repair/service themselves (customer-pay events). The reason was simply a system issue. Companies didn’t receive those transaction records from their dealerships. Now, most automotive companies have remedied that issue and they survey both warranty and customer-pay service customers.

Next, Revise Your Survey Invitation

The next step is to look at your survey invitation process and the survey invitation itself. You should look for two general things. First, is there anything that might prohibit customers from receiving the invitation?

  • Are You Triggering Spam Filters? Sending out too many invitations in too short a time frame can trigger spam filters. Sending out too many invitations with invalid email addresses can also trigger spam filters or even get your project’s IP address black-listed by internet service providers. Therefore, make sure to check to see if email addresses are correctly formatted. If you’re really worried about the quality of your contact information, there are services available to pre-identify valid email addresses. 
  • Are You Sending Survey Invitations to the Wrong Customers? Outdated databases can cause you to send surveys to people that are no longer customers. Obviously, these people probably won’t respond to your survey, thus reducing response rates.
  • Are Your Customers Receiving the Invitations but Never Seeing Them: Most email domains use algorithms to sort emails into various folders such as Primary/Inbox, Promotions, and Spam. Keywords in your subject lines and invitation text can affect where your invitations go. Do some testing of your invitations to make sure they end up in the Primary/Inbox folder for the biggest email domains. Also, you need to repeat your tests periodically because sorting algorithms can change unexpectedly. An invitation that goes to the Primary/Inbox folder today will not necessarily go there next week or next year.

Second, is the invitation compelling enough that a customer or prospect will open it and take action?

  • Is the Subject Line of the Email Engaging to the Customer? The subject line is the first thing the customer sees. If it’s not engaging, the customer won’t open the invitation email. It’s helpful to test various versions of the invitation with different subject lines to determine which yields the highest open rates.
  • Does the Invitation Display Well on a Smartphone? Over half of InMoment’s survey respondents are now completing their surveys on smartphones. Make sure your invitation (and the survey itself) displays well on smaller devices. You should also check to see how well your invitation and survey display in all major browsers.
  • Do You Include a Realistic Time Estimate for How Long the Survey Will Take To Complete? This is especially important for shorter surveys, so that potential respondents know there will be only a small time commitment. It’s also a good idea for longer surveys because respondents will know what time commitment they’re getting into and they’ll be less likely to abandon the survey. If you are reluctant to tell the customer how long the survey will take to complete, your survey is probably too long.
  • Is the Response Option Visible? When a customer opens the invitation, is the link or button to respond to the survey visible (front and center) without having to scroll down? Remember, this should be the case on a smartphone as well as on a tablet or computer.
  • Is There a Call to Action? Your invitation should ask customers to respond and tell them why responding is important and what you’ll be doing with the information that will make their world and interaction with your product or service better. 
  • Are You Using Incentives to Increase Your Response Rate? Using incentives is complex and can be a bit tricky. But it’s always worth seeing if it is something that might work for you and your company. If you’re interested in testing it out, learn more about using incentives here.

Last but Not Least, Look at Revising the Survey Itself

Revising the survey itself may help increase responses. However, remember that revising the survey will only increase responses by reducing the number of people who abandon the survey after starting it. Typically, that number is quite small (about 5% for most CX surveys), so reducing abandonment probably won’t lead to a meaningful increase in the absolute number of responses. That being said, some of the things you should look for, in addition to the possibility that your survey is too long, are:

  • Is Your Survey Simple and Easy to Use? You should keep your survey focused on the topic it is intended to measure and avoid “nice to know questions.” In addition, avoid mixing response scales as much as possible, as this can lead to confusion for the respondent.
  • Does Your Survey Look Engaging? Your CX survey represents your brand. It should have the same voice and look and feel you use throughout all customer touch points-physical location, mobile app, website etc.
  • Is the Language in Your Survey Easy for Customers To Understand? Don’t use industry jargon. That turns off respondents and can lead to confusion. Be your brand, upfront with your requests, and transparent.
  • Does Your Survey Follow a Logical Flow to Walk the Customer Through the Experience Being Measured? This not only helps in reducing abandonment, but also helps customers recall the event accurately so they can give more thorough feedback.

When you want to increase the number of responses you receive, you should look beyond increasing your survey response rate and shortening your survey. There are much more effective ways to increase the number of responses that are often overlooked. 

Remember that we’re here with the latest tips and tricks to help you figure out the best way to listen to your customers (via surveys or other feedback channels like social media, websites, apps, reviews etc.), understand customer behaviors and wants and needs, and act upon what customers are saying to create better experiences and ultimately drive business success.

Want to learn more about how you can boost your customer experience survey response rate? Check out these InMoment Assets to learn more:

Change Region

Selecting a different region will change the language and content of inmoment.com

North America
United States/Canada (English)
Europe
DACH (Deutsch) United Kingdom (English) France (français) Italy (Italian)
Asia Pacific
Australia (English) New Zealand (English) Singapore (English)