Couldn't do a day in retail

For the last couple of months I’ve been working for MaritzCustomer Experience, an international market research firm. I’m glad to have the chance to work at home, doing work that I like. It’s been a little bit of an adjustment, switching from working for a very small firm to working for a very large firm. It’s been more of an adjustment in the topics I interview people about.

When I worked for Saperstein Associates I did polling about local politics and interviewed educators about educational materials. We moved from project to project. I’ve worked on the same project at Maritz since I started at the end of March. I interview people about their customer service experience after they’ve visited one of the client’s stores.

Respondents often tell me that I did a good job interviewing them, but that doesn’t always make me feel good. That’s because I remember getting a call as a supervisor from a respondent who told me that she appreciated that one of the interviewers I supervised did a good job explaining the questions. In case you don’t know, an interviewer should never explain questions to a respondent. It introduces bias to the survey.

Interviewing respondents about their customer service experience often reminds me of the time that I made a comment about one of Saperstein’s clients that “She couldn’t do a day in retail.” Those words taught me a hard lesson on the words of Jesus, when he said, “For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matthew 7:2, KJV)

I like to keep this verse in mind when I interview cantankerous respondents who give low ratings to the people who work in the client’s stores. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to be the one to sell something to the cantankerous respondents, or deal with their problems.

If you apply to Maritz, please be sure to tell them that I referred you.

Pretesting Surveys

A regular client asked me to do a couple of pretests in the last few months. Pretesting used to be much more common among polling organizations than it is now. The idea is to do about a dozen interviews using the final draft of the questionnaire. We time each interview to calculate the average length. The client expects me to report any errors in language or logic of the questionnaire. They also expect me to report any problems with the sample.

I feel fortunate that I have a client who thinks of not pretesting as a penny-wise and pound-foolish proposition. Even if he does not need to rewrite questions, he finds pretest data helpful for accurate proposals and budgets.  We always learn something from a pretest.

One thing I like about getting on the phone to do a pretest is that we often learn about hot-button issues we didn’t know about. Surveying people about a school levy, park levy or library levy sounds dry, but questions on a questionnaire sometimes provoke excited responses on educational policy  or environmental issues. When this happens, a pretest provides a good excuse to let a respondent go off topic. Doing so can illuminate issues that have not been addressed by either side of a levy issue.

Pretesting also provides an opportunity for me to evaluate my interviewing skills. Respondents let me know pretty quickly if I read questions too quickly or too slowly.  The better I get at listening, the earlier I learn which probes yield useful information for the client.

I would be glad to have a chance to help other opinion research or market research organizations with pretests, if there are any that still do. If so, please let me know.

John C. Stevens

voice.communicator@gmail.com

(614) 772-2332