It's no secret that to be a successful player in the market, a company needs to conduct market research and get feedback from potential consumers.
To do this, it is required to select for the study respondents, survey participants who will be able to express and share their opinions about the product and about the experience of using competitors' products, having this information, the company will be able to quickly make decisions on changing or improving its product, without waiting for a decline in sales.
If you want to conduct the research on your own, then you need to pay special attention to the respondents. The question is how to make the research as comfortable as possible for the respondent.
When planning a survey, care should be taken to make the survey as comfortable as possible for the respondent. It should be noted that in a stressful situation even the most sociable person “turns on” the blocking of the perception of incoming information. To prevent this from happening, you should take the place of the consumer and feel what possible factors will embarrass him during the interview. These factors can be additional requirements, such as being sociable or active in participating in a discussion. Also, do not forget that the interview moderator plays an important role, the purpose of which is to make the person talk, to convey to him the information that there are no correct or incorrect answers. When testing, think about yourself as a consumer, what would help you to relax and feel confident. This does not require special psychological education, it is enough just to be more attentive to the little things that make up successful communications with people.
It should also be borne in mind that a person who has been working in one position for more than 6 years is more susceptible to the tendency of a blurry eye when he is no longer able to objectively assess a particular situation, this is a kind of flaws in professional experience and therefore, it is often possible to be biassed towards one or another a different situation when communicating with the respondent.
When conducting a study, do not forget one more important point - with what attitude the respondent (your potential consumer) will leave you, because, in turn, he can broadcast his attitude to the masses, which can also be a plus or a minus for your product.
A method of collecting feedback has proven itself well, where it is necessary to contact the respondent and clarify several questions: what he liked, what he disliked during the research, what difficulties arose, was the employee conducting the research friendly with him. This feedback gives excellent results and shows that the company strives for customer focus in everything and translates the European level of work with the consumer.
Based on the results of participation in the research, this method of interaction with respondents has already been successfully implemented by one of our esteemed clients, a large Russian company, which was one of the first to independently conduct usability testing using the in-house method.
What possible risks can we face if we do not apply feedback from respondents:
We will not be able to understand what specifically the respondent did not like during the research, which can indirectly provoke data output with an error.
We will not understand how competently the moderator conducted his work, conducting a conversation or testing with a respondent. How comfortable it was for the respondent to interact with this company representative.
What difficulties of the organizational plan the respondent found during the study, these may be: a delay in the start of the study, an unfinished product that should not be tested yet, and other issues.
And finally, the most important risk that the respondent will broadcast to the masses by leaving our survey because this also builds the company's image.
Practical example:
The company conducted a study of a new product using the usability testing method, respondents came to the office of this company, the moderator conducting the test was reluctant to communicate with these people, did not give detailed explanations on interaction with the product and constantly tried to defend the unfinished version as soon as someone from of respondents tried to give a list of the weaknesses of this product.
At the exit, the moderator added his own subjective opinion about several respondents who, in his opinion, were overly sociable, that is, in this situation, the manager could not accept a neutral position, abstract himself and listen to the opinion of consumers, as a result, the company received bad feedback from respondents and testing later time had to be spent again, again allocating additional budget for this.
Key tasks for conducting research in order to obtain high-quality feedback:
It is necessary to create comfortable conditions for conducting research.
Pay due attention to the high-quality selection of respondents; we talked about the risks of saving on recruiting in our previous articles.
It is important to get feedback from respondents after completing the survey, so that, based on the results of work on the next projects, we can create even more favorable conditions for passing the survey.
A moderator conducting testing or research should at this moment abstract as much as possible and focus on the respondent's experience interacting with the product.