Each year Quirk’s publishes the Q Report, a survey of corporate researchers that looks into their world, covering everything from the daily challenges to job satisfaction and compensation. While the findings of this year’s survey will be published in September, we thought it would be fun to give readers a sneak peek.
One of the open-ended questions in our 2019 survey asked Quirk’s researchers, “What are the key metrics against which your marketing research and insight function is judged?” Respondents shared a variety of answers, over 3,300 words worth of verbatims to this question alone, which is quite the feat given a number of respondents summed it up with one word, “None.” Other one-word responses included NPS, ROI and speed.
Those who went into more detail made it clear that for many departments, the metrics are quite vague. Some respondents shared the struggles of determining criteria, while others pointed to the subjectivity of management or sales as determining factors.
Unclear
“It's all subjective.”
“No exact metrics. Subjective value of work.”
“Partially financial, partially impossible to tell.”
“None! Executives and leaders throughout the org. like us & use us, and we've not been asked to quantify our value with specific metrics (Yet!!! Dreading the day it comes.).”
“Our group is very highly thought of and we don't really have key measures we're trying to hit. We make up some things to have goals, but people love what we do for them and they heavily rely on us.”
“Unclear. I'm a new hire and metrics are unclear.”
“That's the problem – there aren't key metrics against which our function is judged. “
“Nothing as of now.”
“Rarely judged.”
Challenging to define
“We have annual goals that are just getting established for 2019 (and it's mid-June)! We don't have any established way to track or measure ROI as yet.”
“We actually really struggle to answer this question since the number of projects and objectives/goals differ all the time. It's really hard to measure how well we are doing. We are not sure the best way to approach, but we measure which departments within the organization we are working with and make sure that we are working across all business lines and truly supporting the organization as a whole.”
“The idea is to base it off of product ideas/improvements/insights that actually influence a change in product development. However this is hard to measure and control with multiple teams [having] input and control over the product process.”
“This is tough; leadership wants to see ROI but I am a cost center for the organization. The research conducted has positive influence on our future products however those aren't often seen immediately – so it becomes hard for leadership to see why we should spend.”
“We are debating that issue now – it has to be more than dollars spent.”
“This is a tough question. The function is judged based on the performance of individuals to support business objectives of their specific categories. We might also be judged on our ability to work cross-functionally, to collaborate, to be a proactive and engaged strategic thinker – but I'm not sure of the metric for that. It tends to show up in individual performance reviews as best I can tell.”
Management-driven
“We do an annual review of our impact with our CEO and COO.”
“Buy-in from our CMO.”
“In the past it has seemed that often the main thing we are judged on is whether management likes the results of our research, which is very demoralizing as we refuse to sugar coat our research results. This may be changing, but at this company the perceived ‘value’ of the insights department is still far too dependent upon the ability (or lack thereof) of having a close relationship with certain executives.”
“Often judged just with the most visible project (which is NPS tracking study) by executives. It's just a tracking study (due to a strong preference of our CEO) which is not designed to uncover a lot of insights.”
NPS and storytelling
“Delivering 'aha' moments telling a cohesive story; pulling together info/data from multiple studies or sources, including strong recommendations (not just findings); understanding the political landscape.”
“The biggest one that our company rallies around is the Net Promoter Score because it fits well with our culture and how we want to grow our business. (We do ask follow up questions so we are not relying solely on that.) We have also added some metrics this year pertaining to an important internal customer experience initiative to ensure that staff are executing on what is being trained and expected of them.”
Sales-driven 
“How quickly we respond to sales. That we set up tests quickly and efficiently ...”
“Sadly, sales. Not a good metric of measurement to show our value we provide. Delay between research and sales can be years.”
“Accuracy between what the results say will happen in-market and what actually happens. If research indicates a product launch will be successful then it better damn well be successful. If research states that a package redesign will boost sales then it better damn boost sales.”
“Ability to provide accurate recommendations and actionable items. Corrective actions relate to increased sales.”
“Accurately forecasting new product success and the size of new markets.”
“Growth opportunities identified.”
Really pretty
As is often the case with open-ended questions, we received a few colorful responses, a favorite being,
“We really only get feedback like, ‘This report looks really pretty!’ Really.” While we agree that attractive, engaging research reports are important when looking for internal buy-in, it’s likely not a good metric for an entire insights department to be judged!