First Impressions - Google Consumer Surveys

Wow! That was easy...and cheap. I just launched a short (2 question) survey using Google Consumer Surveys. With my coupon, it cost me $30. It's been up for less than an hour and I have partial data back (about 200 responses).

From a research provider perspective, seems a little scary. Even though the tool has many, many limitations (types of questions, space and character limitations, etc.) these are going to be fairly easy to overcome. Clients will soon be able to get pretty good information on their own for a fraction of their current costs. 

What's the upside for research professionals? Cheap and easy tends to breed sloppiness. As I looked back on my questions, I wished I would have spent a bit more time creating them...but for $30, I just threw it out there. That is the risk. What happens when you start relying on this information, rather than playing with it? When it becomes super easy to get feedback, when data becomes never ending, do we get complacent? It used to be that feedback and data were scarce resources and we treated it as such. We took our time to ask the right questions, look at data carefully. Now, there is so much data and tools like Google Consumer Surveys make it so easy to ask questions, that - in my opinion- we are probably making decisions without a lot of thought.

I'm not some luddite that longs for the days of 13 TV channels, but I think its important to step back and say, are we thinking about what things mean or are we just reacting to the flow of information? 

More is not always better...

Why should I trust you?

When a potential client first talks with you, how confident do you make them feel? I'm sitting in my basement in a few inches of water dealing with a cesspool problem. Made a number of calls to potential contractors. How did I decide? The one that knew my system before I told him, based upon where I live. The one who explained best/worst case scenario as opposed to giving me a price list of everything that might be involved. The one who answered his own phone (pretty easy to do that these days) instead of having someone with no hands on experience give me prices.

Probably not the cheapest, but he sounds like he's done this before. He made me feel confident. That is sales.

Are you IN or OUT?

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

-Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part III

Are you working on your business or in your business...is a question that I recently asked as a way of getting you to focus on your strategy and building your business as opposed to relying on your work to be the primary product. Sometimes the line between IN and ON becomes very blurry.

Successful firms often get to a size where leadership determines that to effectively work ON the business, they need support. This is the point where organizations start adding competencies that exist solely to manage the business (HR, legal, finance, facilities, admin). Along with these support systems, comes processes, and meetings to discuss processes, and meetings to get ready for meetings to discuss processes, and structures, and meetings to discuss structures...

Soon, leadership spends most of their time working with these support teams. The danger - and its very real - is that leaders begin to truly believe that all of these activities mean that they are working ON the business, but in fact they are not...they are back to working IN the business - they are now an administrator.

When you spend more than 50% of your time working with your support staff to help make things run, you’ve crossed the line to mediocrity. You hired support people to help run the firm - let them. Go out and spend your time with your employees, customers, and shareholders. Ensure that you are doing everything in your power to meet their needs and let your support team do what they are supposed to do - support that effort!

Good to Great...to lousy, back to pretty good...

Finally read Good to Great, by Jim Collins (yes, I know that I'm a bit behind in my reading, but just never seemed to get around to this one). I thought it was good (not great) in that it didn't really tell me anything that wasn't pretty obvious. Furthermore, there is a lot of peril in identifying "great" companies that then go on to stumble (Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Pitney Bowes). I know that Collins would say that these companies stopped following those things that made them great, but that brings up an interesting point in my eyes. Is a company ever truly "great" or is it all relative? Relative to competitive comparisons, relative to timeframe, etc. 

Companies can only be measured as great at the moment you are looking at them and that greatness is rarely projectable to the future? 

Why? Lets look at some of Collins' key points - those elements that allow a company to go from Good to Great:

• Level 5 Leadership - This is a big one. I don't think you can have any of the rest of the items on this list if your leadership can't or won't make it happen.
• The "right" employees.
• A management team that is comfortable and seeks out the truth
• A simple focus - knowing what you are good at - "Hedgehog Concept" - and making sure everyone knows what this concept is.
• Discipline to stick to the concept - don't go off buying ancillary businesses.
• Uses technology to support the hedgehog concept, don't make technology the hedgehog concept (I guess unless it is your hedgehog concept).
• Doesn't expect to break through to success with a magical short-term strategy - believe in continuous improvement.

Greatness isn't projectable because so much of the list above is dependent upon people, and in reality they are dependent on the whims of very few people at the top. Change your CEO from one at Level 5 to one at Level 4 and look out below!

I firmly believe that success starts and ends with leadership - and the best companies I've worked with and for have actually had many of the above factors, because they had great management. Most, if not all, couldn't maintain the greatness and those that did often stumbled for a time and regained it (usually after a management change or after managment got "religion").

Corporations are like people (in fact, isn't that how the tax code sees them?). They have good days and bad days...they get moody sometimes...they go through difficult patches...they sometimes succeed and even surprise...but in the end, they all die. During their lives, they often get caught up in their own personal dramas, which gets them off course.

The value in books like Good to Great, and almost any business book I've read, is to remind companies of what they already know, but forgot. These are the self-help books that we all read when we're in a personal down cycle. They can be inspiring and can get us back on track...but soon enough, we need to read a new one. 

For now, I'm inspired to become Great.

Survey Pain

I am a survey researcher and what I just saw should make everyone in my industry a little sick. My wife had a great experience at Toys R Us and therefore decided to take them up on the survey invite attached to the receipt (a little adverse selection). Being curious, I sat through the process with her. 

First of all, she couldn't reach the survey page using Google Chrome, but since she really wanted to take part, we switched over to Internet Explorer. She was asked to input quite a few pieces of information from the receipt, but it was so small and poorly printed, that it was a huge hassle. Still, we carried on. 

She proceeded to go through what seemed like an endless battery of questions on a 10 pt scale, often asking the same question from a number of directions. Very often, the layout was so poor, it was hard to tell where the next question began. Still, we carried on.

Every few questions, she was asked to provide open-ended comments. At one point, when she was about 66% of the way through, her "yes" answer prompted a comment box. This caused her to change her response to "no" to avoid the comment box (UGH!!). 

Question wording...not very straightforward when my wife had to ask me, "what do you think they mean by this?"

The survey continued to roll on, moving her away from questions about the recent store experience to broader questions about shopping habits, competitors, etc. With each subsequent screen, we laughed at how ridiculously long the process was (OMG, another screen! When will this end?).

Soon, a battery of driver questions presented themselves - most of which had already been asked earlier in the survey (the likelihood of conflicting answers was pretty high at this point as she rushed to get finished). 

Finally, after 30 minutes, the end. All so that she could give a little customer love to a very helpful associate - who unfortunately will only be identified by a first name because no employee number was on the receipt.

What are the odds that my wife will take part in another ToysRUs survey...not likely, in fact I bet this experience ruined it for every other retailer who'd like her feedback. What are the odds that my wife's feedback will be helpful? Up to a point, very...but because of the length and poor structure, I'm feeling that her answers aren't too reliable. 

As an industry, we lament the fact that we can't get people to cooperate. Perhaps we should survey some of our respondents and ask them about their survey experience, take a little bit of our own medicine, and make our interface one that invites feedback instead of pushing it away!

I motion that all surveys should be graphically appealing, fun and easy to take part, and last no more than 10 minutes! Who's with me?

No Blackberry, no cry!

The other week, my SIM card in my Blackberry went kaput. Timing was ideal, as I had volunteered to chaperone 13 year olds on a trip to Six Flags…all day with no contact, ugh. Upon returning home, I was anxious as I went to review the days collection of emails…what did I miss? Actually, nothing. After deleting the 30% of emails that were some form of marketing, I saw that most emails didn’t need an instant response and that my team was ably handling most things. The world didn’t end, in fact, it went along just fine without me. 

Now that the BB is back in working order, I’ve shut off the the vibrate that announces each email and hoping that I can be a heck of a lot more productive. First victory is I’m productive enough to write this post.

Adding Humans to a Process (part two)

I was astonished to read this blog post in HBR after my last post on my adventures with the airline mentioned. I agree that firms have become slaves to their metrics and the consequences are incredibly damaging. How often have you worked for a company or consulted with a client where the strategic goals have become the movement of a particular metric ("we need to get our NPS score up") as opposed to using the metric to address and diagnose particular business problems ("how can we increase customer loyalty"). 

Does anyone see this trend reversing?

Adding humans to a process doesn't always make it more human.

Last week, my flight back to NYC was cancelled.

Well, it wasn't cancelled right away...first I had to go through the typical dance of rolling delays until it became so late, that the flight had to be cancelled. Of course, there was no one at the gate that could help, but they conveniently left a stack of little red cards with a phone number that I could use to rebook (how thoughtful!). When I called, there was a human on the other end. I was instructed to give my confirmation # and was told that I could be rebooked the following morning. I asked, "why was the flight cancelled?", and the reply was something along the lines of "not, sure...I can't see that information". I then asked if a hotel voucher was available and was told, "I can't do that...it has to be done by the gate agent, just ask them." When I did find the gate agent, she replied that I couldn't have a hotel voucher and that the customer service agent shouldn't have told me that.."If I give you one, I'd have to give everybody one." She then proceeded to book me on a flight that night, that would take me first to Detroit, and then to NY LaGuardia airport. Unfortunately, my car was at NY JFK. I then asked, would you provide transportation from LGA to JFK? Again, "I can't do that, you have to talk to the people in baggage claim at LGA." Of course, when I got to LGA, being the fact that it was past midnight, there was one harried person working in baggage claim, with a long line of disgruntled passengers waiting to ask about missing luggage. I jumped on the cab line, waited 30 minutes, and took my cab to JFK. Overall a thoroughly frustrating experience.

I travel all of the time and have dealt with delays, and poor responses to delays many, many times. But in this case, I was more frustrated than usual. Why?

Upon reflection, my issue was that I interacted with human beings throughout the process, but their response to me was programatic. There were certain pieces of information that they had, and no more. There was a narrow scope of actions that they could take, and no more. It mattered not what I said or did. They could listen, they might even sympathize, but their hands were tied. They could not act in a way that would make me feel like they were trying to solve my problem. They were human, but acted like an automated system...And THAT is why I was so frustrated. 

This airline has, I believe, tried to make their process better by inserting the human element anywhere they could in the customer experience. Unfortunately, they have removed each person's ability to think about a situation and ACT accordingly. While I clearly prefer dealing with humans over automated response systems, my EXPECTATIONS for a human are much higher than for an automated system, and my satisfaction is driven by expectations. I EXPECT a human to hear my issue and help me deal with it. I EXPECT a human to be able to leverage their understanding of their organization...to be able to build on past client interactions to help me. In the end, I would think that if a company has invested the dollars to put a human in a position, they have EMPOWRED them to solve customer problems, not just follow pre-defined steps. I would EXPECT that when there is no variability in a process, the airline would automate the process because it saves me and the airline, time and money.

My lesson learned here is that, perhaps, companies have heard frustration with the shift to more and more automated customer experiences, and have responded by injecting the human element back into the equation. Unfortunately, the frustration people have with automated systems doesn't always have to do with the method of interaction, it is the lack of flexibility in the process, the inability to go "off script" to solve problems. Adding humans back into a process that doesn't allow for human creativity, can potentially be self-defeating.

We're not even talking about real numbers...

"We're not even talking about real numbers..."

How often have you uttered those words? Or had them shot back at you during a meeting? So much of what looks like planning, is really just wishful thinking. So often, our discussions regarding campaigns or even strategies depend upon looking into the crystal ball, to see what cannot be seen. We all want to be viewed as 'forward looking', to believe that we can materially influence outcomes by the sheer majesty of our strategic planning, but is this the best use of our time? 

In sales, especially for a publicly traded company, reps are asked for guidance on what will sell in the current quarter and to estimate a figure for the fiscal year. At some point, reps are asked to assess what next year's revenue will be. How often are these figures merely an educated guess? How often is this process really just a thinly disguised administrative exercise, a "check-the-box" activity?

Well too often, I see organizations overly focused on outcomes. Yes, I believe that outcomes may not be the best metric to focus on if we want to drive success (whatever your definition of success is). People cannot control outcomes...but they can control the activities they undertake that drive outcomes. The reality is we need to understand how our processes impact outcomes. Instead of looking forward, more effort should be placed on looking backward, diagnosing what aspects of our process were responsible for outcomes (and perhaps it is not process, but activity that is the issue - lack of activity or activity that does not follow our process; in fact sometimes it is our lack of process that is responsible for outcomes). 

In sales, looking at and continuously improving the sales process - the inputs - is the key to improving outcomes.

As a market researcher, I see this issue arise in tracking studies (for instance customer satisfaction studies or brand health tracking studies). I often get the feeling that reporting scores/metrics is more about the sport than the improvement. I am always impressed, and gratified, to see organizations that truly want to understand why the metrics moved the way that they did - that is if the rationale for understanding goes beyond having an explanation ready when questioned about "bad numbers". The real, strong organizations use their understanding of the metrics to drive improvement. They take the time to uncover why they get the outcomes they did, and look for ways to change their processes and activities.

Growing organizations are those that have an emphasis on continuous improvement. While continuous improvement is often thought of in the same breath with Six Sigma or Lean Manufacturing (looking to reduce process imperfections, mistakes, or waste), the basic analytical framework (DMAIC) holds true for any organizational process and for any goal, whether that is a reduction of cost or an increase in revenue (or brand awareness or customer satisfaction). 

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The DMAIC Methodology

Improvement teams use the DMAIC methodology to root out and eliminate the causes of defects:

D Define a problem or improvement opportunity.

M Measure process performance.

A Analyze the process to determine the root causes of poor performance; determine whether the process can be improved or should be redesigned.

I Improve the process by attacking root causes.

C Control the improved process to hold the gains.

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The growing use of marketing (and sales) analytics sets the stage for application of approaches like DMAIC to drive success. But, the metrics are not enough. Your organization must be prepared to actually ACT.

5 Questions that should guide every senior manager's work-life.

Just read a great article from McKinsey  on Organizational Health, where I stole this:

Performance and health can be viewed through five frames.

I think the idea of organizational health could not be more timely. Employees are struggling with financial pressures and workload pressures. Managers are hesitant to spend funds, hesitant to hire staff, seemingly cautious about strategy. During times of stress, it seems that managers want to focus on the tangible, and people strategies (the soft stuff) get pushed aside. The reality (at least to me) is that it is the 5 A's discussed above that should be the primary focus of any senior executive. These are the critical guideposts that team members seek. Ensuring that these questions are adequately addressed enables a manager to fully leverage the talents of his/her team. 

As I see it,  sitting in the world of professional services, these 5 A's are even more essential - as it is the people that are your most important, and sometimes only, asset/product.