White Papers      Webinars  Search

Register for our newsletter:

it was a recording of Rod Stewart repeatedly interrupted every 20 seconds with a message “Your call is important to us…..” I waited five minutes and then gave up. And I even used to like Rod Stewart!

As soon as you place a computerised response or even a bureaucratic form between you and the customer you risk eroding the relationship.

Customer relationship management means having a genuine relationship with your customers. It does not mean having a relationship with a robotic Kim, Kevin or Gary who merely mouth programmed responses from the call centre manual. Sitting four hundred miles away from you Kim, Kevin or Gary do not even see you as a human being but more as a tiresome 6 minute call slowing down their race to get 12 calls in every hour and thus win brownie points. They are more interested in their targets than your problem.

Despite what you read about the internet and the fashionable world of globalisation and e-commerce we are actually social animals who have an intrinsic need for the stimulus of human contact – even when we are buying things and especially when we want problems resolved!

Research I have undertaken recently for a new book reveals that too many companies are becoming increasingly remote from their customers and as a result are losing touch with the way they think and feel.

There is no substitute for the stimulus of personal contact in developing relationships with customers and determining what they really think and feel about your company, its products and the services provided. In future customers will place a premium on face-to-face contact and equally companies should place a premium on such contact.

This is of fundamental importance to the way a company conducts market research. Those companies that rely on surveying high volumes of customers with questionnaires or intrusive telephone interviewing might be achieving a degree of efficiency in collecting a mass of superficial and meaningless data.

Questionnaires are the least effective method of determining the opinions of your customers. Using a prize-draw to bribe a customer to tick fifty multi-choice questions yields limited and frequently misleading information (and I have yet to meet anyone who has won such a prize-draw). Completed questionnaires rarely reveal the true extent of a customer’s thinking.

Telephone interviewing can be a little more productive but risks railroading customers straight down lines of thinking which by-pass the critical issues influencing the choices they make. Such interviews are often structured around priorities and values, which the company, as opposed the customer, determines. As a result the customer is unable to express what he or she really feels about the company, its products and services.

From my own personal experience of conducting customer research for a number of clients including public sector organisations and commercial companies the most effective way of discovering what customers really think and feel is through face-to-face contact using focus groups. Such interaction provides an important stimulus to the articulation of valuable experiences and opinions which would never be expressed by way of formulaic surveys, questionnaires and telephone interviewing.

In setting up focus groups there are TEN practical questions that must be answered to maximise the probability of an effective and useful response. The answers to these questions will vary depending on the nature of the marketplace and the industry sector the company is it. Even so it is worth listing the questions. These follow:


TEN PRACTICAL QUESTIONS

1. What is the purpose of the focus group?

Are you looking for customer feedback on specific topics or seeking the overall perception of customers about the company, its products and services? Do you want the research report to produce quantitative or qualitative data, or both?

2. Should a structured or an unstructured approach be used?

A structured approach would involved leading the customers participating in the focus group through a structured set of questions whereas an unstructured approach effectively gives those present a ‘blank sheet’ upon which to air their opinions. My own company has developed a unique ‘three-tier technique’ which combines the best of each to probe deeply into customer thinking and produce incredibly helpful feedback

3. Should you use an independent person to facilitate each focus group?

Many companies try to save money by using in-house people to conduct the focus groups. Facilitation is a deceptive skill and far less easy than many people think. The key is to ensure the person conducting each focus group is a genuine expert in facilitation as opposed to a casual amateur. The initial responses of participants are often very general and it requires an immense amount of skill to probe the inner reaches of customer thinking and determine what really influences customer choice. Furthermore participants invariably feel much freer in expressing themselves to an independent person rather than a company person who they will perceive as being an indirect party to any bad experience they have had. On balance I would always recommend investing in an independent expert to conduct the focus group.

4. What is the best time of day to run focus groups?

My clients and I have experimented with various types of scheduling with surprising results. Certain time-slots which we thought would be unappealing have proved quite popular whilst the reverse has also been true. There are many factors which influence whether or not a customer is prepared to come along at a specific time of day and these will vary depending on the company and the venue. Experience from initial trial and error will reveal, in due course, the best times of day to run your focus groups. A related question is how long should each focus group run for? For example if you have 15 people present and the focus group runs for 90 minutes then each participant will effectively only have 6 minutes of ‘air-time’. Given that most focus groups start late and time has to be allowed for introductions and conclusions this 6 minutes ‘air-time’ can be effectively reduced to 5 minutes.

5. What is the optimum size for each focus group?

The number of customers participating in each group is critically important in optimising the effectiveness of the response. With too many participants there is the risk of dilution and distortion as certain customer dumb down whilst others attempt to dominate. Conversely with too few participants there is a risk of drying up and repetition. When the optimum is achieved a focus group will ‘flow’ and various participants will spark valuable responses from others. For example frequently I have encountered situations where one customer has said something that has prompted another person to recall of a forgotten experience. When this ‘flow’ occurs patterns of responses begin to emerge that prove incredibly useful.

6. What estimate should you make for ‘no-shows’?

Not once in all my experience of conducting focus groups has there ever been a 100% attendance. There is always number of customers who agree to participate and then fail to show up. You should therefore always ‘overbook’ each focus group to ensure you get the number of participants you want. However if you get your overbooking estimate wrong there is the danger that the room will be too small and there will not be enough chairs or conversely that you will have twice as much catering as you need (assuming you provide some form of refreshment). In the latter case it is wise that you along some doggy bags to avoid waste! (There is always a demand for free sausage rolls back at the office!).

7. What approach should you adopt towards gifts, fees and expenses?

When more and more people charging for their time you should think carefully about how you reward customers who give up their time to participate in a focus group. There are a range of options from straight cash, vouchers or gifts that are easy to carry away. Furthermore you will need to have a policy relating to expenses. To reimburse the ‘actual’ expenditure of participants in travelling to and from the venue can prove cumbersome and subject to misunderstandings. Most clients I have worked with have operated on the basis of a flat-rate expense allowance to cover the cost of travel.

8. To what degree should the company actually participate in the focus group?

There are a number of related questions here. If an independent person is to facilitate the focus group should managers or employees of the company commissioning the research actually be present to listen to what is being said. Or should they be hidden behind one-way mirrors? Furthermore should you even reveal the name of the company that has commissioned the research? When you are seeking benchmark information about your competitors as well as your own company it is not always wise to reveal (at least initially) that is your company who is interested in the findings?

9. How should the proceedings be recorded?

Consideration of such basic issues of how to record what customers say at focus groups is often neglected. This can result in much valuable information leaking away without any proper record. In other words should you use flip-charts, tape-recorders, video-recorders or merely simple note-taking? Having experimented with all of these I know my own preference. You will need to decide yours.

10. How do you select the customers who will participate in focus group?

This question is fraught with difficulty. I remember one situation a few years back where an out-of-date customer data base was used and on three occasions the homes of customers who had recently died were rung. The complaints reached the local newspapers. Furthermore in selecting customers it is important to avoid any ‘skew’ or ‘bias’. There is always a risk that those who agree to participate are a vocal minority and will use the focus group as a forum to air their complaints – and then expect the facilitator to pursue these complaints on their behalf. Whilst it is important to receive such feedback it is important to attain a balanced view. Often people who are happy with the company, its products and services feel they have nothing to say and therefore are reluctant to co-operate. Related to this question is the issue of the total sample size. Do you want 50, 100, 250, 500 or a 1,000 customers involved overall in the programme?

As mentioned above there is a danger that you go for ‘overkill’ and run too many focus groups involving too many customers. The programme should therefore be ‘staged’, starting initially with a small number of pilot focus groups and then progressively conducting more until a clear picture emerges. A final question relates to the initial ‘screening’ of customers. If you decide upon a sample size of ‘n’ customers how many do you need to contact before you get ‘n’ customers through the door? Should the initial contact be by way of letter (in which case you might send out a 1,000 letters and get between 10 and 500 responses agreeing to participate when your target is 100) or should it be by telephone (in which case you budget for ‘y’ days of telephoning to make ‘x’ calls to get ‘n’ people through the door).

In posing the above ten questions I have deliberately not attempted to provide answers for the simple reason that there is no one clear set of such answers. The questions should be used as a checklist when developing your strategy and practice for focus groups.

However I would conclude that focus groups, depending as they are on face-to-face interaction, are much effective than any other form of research into what customers really think and feel about your company, its products and services.