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Ready for a fresh take on participant engagement? We thought so! That’s why we invited Annie Pettit, an industry expert in data quality and participant engagement, to share her insights. Whether you’re here for practical tips or thought-provoking ideas, this post will get you thinking. Enjoy!
Creating engaging customer experiences is so important that nearly every retail and customer group has prepared extensive guidelines on how to do so. Among thousands of other guidebooks, manuals, and compendiums, the AMA has a Customer Engagement Playbook and Workbook, Hubspot has its “Ultimate Guide to Customer Engagement in 2024,” and Forbes has its “Customer Engagement in 2024: The Ultimate Guide.”
Retailers, marketers, and stakeholders put a lot of effort into creating engaging experiences for their consumers, constituents, and employees for good reason. According to Gallup, increasing customer engagement can lead to a 10% increase in profits, 66% higher sales growth, and 25% higher customer loyalty.
Because they spend so much time researching it, market researchers have deep insights into what exceptional customer experiences really are and how important it is. They also realize that participating in social and marketing research has the potential to be an intensely engaging and personally satisfying experience as well.
Why, then, does the research experience seem to be such a transactional exchange? Researchers write surveys. Participants give answers. Participant experiences decline. Response rates decline. Repeat.
It’s time for research and marketing leaders to apply what they’ve learned about the customer experience to the survey experience. Let’s consider a few ways of creating intensely engaging research experiences for participants that will ultimately benefit stakeholders and elevate the ROI research.
When we think about creating an engaging research experience, most of us turn to creating a more fun and entertaining experience. In addition to creating simply better quality questions, we do this by:
However, incentives and fun questions are table stakes. Participants look for and expect to see these things in every research study. If your research doesn’t already incorporate these things, it’s time to demand better.
Perhaps more importantly, though, are intrinsically engaging experiences. Many people like participating in the research experience because they value being heard and keeping informed about new products and services. There are, however, much more significant opportunities for personal growth. For example:
Let’s return for a moment to the customer experience. When marketers present new products or services to customers, they explain the benefits clearly. People expect to learn what is new or fun or intriguing about a product they are considering purchasing.
The research experience should be no different. Researchers need to help participants understand how they will benefit from participating. Among many others, here are a few ways we can do this.
Remember, offering these benefits must always be offered upon consent.
It’s fun to joke about online algorithms that serve us weeks of advertisements for vacuum cleaners after we’ve just bought one that should last twenty years. But in the research space, it’s a different story.
After we’ve bought that vacuum cleaner (or soap or beer), we do want to talk about it for weeks. We want to ensure that other people benefit from our experience. We want to share our opinions, offer advice, and shape new innovations. It feels good to help other people make decisions that are right for them.
By participating in research, people don’t simply help others buy a better vacuum cleaner. Sharing experiences with new products and services helps brands build products that enable people to eat healthier, have more fun, become more self-sufficient, access essential social services, and improve life itself. Research improves lives and can even save lives.
As before, we can’t simply assume that people will know the benefits of participating in research. Just as marketers tell people that this vacuum cleaner has the best suction, researchers should tell people how research helps the broader community. How do we action this?
Naturally, it’s important not to jeopardize the research goals so ensure any specifics are left to the end of the research.
It’s so easy to pull out a survey template, change the brand names, add a couple new questions, and launch it. We’ve got decades of experience doing just that. But it’s time to say no to the templates we’ve relied on for years and built a new, and better template. One that prioritizes the survey experience just as marketers, companies, and organization have prioritized the customer and employee experience.
With a more engaging and personally fulfilling survey at hand, research participants will find it far easier to truly engage in the content, think deeply about their answers, and provide richer, more accurate data. Ultimately, investing in the survey experience translates to unlocking better quality insights, more informed decisions, and happier customers.
If happy customers are important to you, please get in touch with our survey experts. They’d love to help you collect more valid and reliable data. Talk to a survey expert.
Annie Pettit - Educator and author of the book “People Aren't Robots: A Practical Guide to the Psychology and Technique of Questionnaire Design”, Annie is a seasoned Market Research Methodologist & strategist. Her works offer fun & practical insights into market research, social research, customer experience, and survey research.
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