Editor’s note: Philip Moore is the market research manager for Glen Allen, Va.-based CarMax, the automotive retailing division of Circuit City.
For an individual research vendor, I am a nightmare. Yet for this industry, people like me - the know-it-all client - are a blessing. While many research suppliers now enjoy "strategic relationships"with their clients, a few of us must keep a diligent watch to avoid the proverbial fox-in-the-hen-house scenario. Unfortunately, my cynicism springs from experience rather than a personality disorder.
In brief, my history includes supervision of a college research phone lab, statistical computing user support in graduate school, managing a small research department for a Houston radio station, project management for a Top-100 research vendor, and now management of market research for a chain of auto superstores with over $1B in annual sales. I’ve trained and supervised dozens of telephone field workers, interpreted and reported hundreds of research projects, and now manage an annual research budget too quickly approaching $1M.
Every day I review proposals from research vendors vying to provide the myriad of services we require. I buy exit interviews, low-incidence random phone surveying, mystery shops, Web surveys, focus groups, central location tests, and mall intercepts. The pitch in most of the proposals I get is high gloss/low guts. If you, as a research vendor, are truly interested in giving me, your customer, what I want, read on.
Vise grip
I empathize with you, caught in the vise grip hold of an economic paradox. Research departments, oft pared or eliminated in lean times, are now swollen. Yet, the same conditions contributing to this demand simultaneously suck away your most important production input. With downward pressure on the prices you can charge exerted by expanding technology, you must also pay more to retain your most productive employees.
These conditions will inevitably impact data quality. One research vendor whom I know well has a 20 percent monthly turnover in the field. This means every fifth interviewer has less than a month on the job. In a city approaching full employment, they simply cannot keep good people and consequently are too hesitant to rid themselves of the bad. Green interviewers increase the burden on supervisory and quality control staff with detrimental effects on data integrity.
If you are dealing with these issues effectively, it is your problem. If you aren’t, then it is my problem. The proposals I receive do not address these issues. They should. If you want to establish a level of trust with me that will lead to "strategic partnership,"then I must have utter confidence in the data you are collecting. Show me the guts of your operation.
Detailed documentation
A proposal to a cynical know-it-all client like me should include detailed descriptive documentation of your field’s tenure. Ideally, you would graph the distribution of longevity, but at a minimum provide mean, range, and standard deviation.
Show me your compensation and incentive structure. Lower base pay with higher production incentives is great for increasing CPH, but also increases the incentive to cheat. And tell me how you monitor for cheating, both during the data collection and when reviewing results.
Your de jure and de facto policies regarding sub-standard work also provide an informative picture. Tell me what your handbook says about open-ended responses and falsifying surveys (de jure), then tell me how many interviewers received warnings or probation and how many have been dismissed in the last three months (de facto).
Focus on quality
We are, undoubtedly, the least pleasant people to work for. Yet, clients who are willing to thoroughly judge research suppliers on criteria in addition to price force a focus on the quality measures necessary to maintain our industry’s growing status.
Which of the following statements best describes your reaction to this article?
1) What an exciting challenge to work with an experienced researcher.
2) What a jerk. I hate guys like him.
3) What does he mean by quality control staff?
If you answered 1), add the described info to your company documentation and send it to me.
If you answered 2), keep searching for "strategic relationships"with Buffy, the market research manager.
If you answered 3), go back to telemarketing credit card insurance.
P.S. My apologies to Buffy for giving in to the cliché.