The issue of the quantity of customer information is exacerbated by the fact that it is often fragmented due to it being collected from multiple sources and not well defined at the source of data collection.

So what is the solution to this problem? Focus.

“Is that statistically significant?” This question sounds scientific and well-meaning, but is too often misguided and dangerous according to leading statisticians. The popular misconception that being statistically significant is the be-all and end-all of truth has many unintended consequences. The biggest problem is that often what appears to be fact is simply statistical noise, and what may well be fact is sadly ignored.

Over the last 10 years psychology researchers have established that many decisions we make are not rational but based on fast, intuitive and non-conscious thinking. While we might think we are rational beings, we often can’t (or won’t explain) why or how we decide what we do. In 2011, Nobel prize-winning academic Daniel Kahneman brought this idea to the mainstream. His book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ that popularised the phrases ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’ to describe how people think and make decisions.

The path to creating a customer-centric organization is not identical for any two companies. Improving customer experience (CX) can boost an organization’s bottom line, but it can also be incredibly challenging to persuade an entire organization to agree on current customer perceptions and the prioritization of CX and loyalty improvement projects.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty were the centre of the conversation at the recent CX Exchange for Telecoms event. It was great to hear from speakers across the industry talk about the benefits, challenges and various telecom customer experience strategies. They are all working to ensure that their business places the customer at the heart of their decision making.

The success or failure of the insights industry is entirely dependant on the quality of our relationships with the people who complete our surveys. At Maru/Blue we are committed to treating our respondents like people—people willing to share their time, opinions and experiences with us. We recently conducted video interviews with members of our Maru Voice UK community, and asked them what they like and dislike about doing surveys. We also solicited suggestions for improving the survey experience. The results reveal a need to radically change how the industry conducts research and how it treats respondents.

“Why do you say that?” “How important is value to you when choosing which brand of paint to purchase?” These kinds of questions get asked all the time. The answers they elicit are not just useless, they are misleading. They steer us away from the truth and instead provide us with false information that confirms accepted myths.

Customer feedback is vital for brands looking to protect and grow their market share. Understanding customer’s wants, needs and expectations means providers can better service customers through streamlined services, targeted product offerings and improved experiences. And businesses who work to actively improve customer service can, and will, see revenue grow.

Insights professionals today tend to be well versed in the art of the survey, but most researchers are not so familiar with the world of data science. But the reality is, we need to learn about data science—and fast.

Fortunately, a powerful new book entitled Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age, by Princeton professor Matthew J. Salganik, provides a thorough and very readable introduction to the intersection of traditional survey-based methodologies and data analysis. “This book,” he writes “is for social scientists who want to do more data science, data scientists who want to do more social science and anyone who is interested in the hybrid of these two fields.”

The media industry struggles to see things from their consumers’ perspectives, because they vary from their own. We have broadcast networks and cable networks. We have subscription streaming services and transactional streaming services coming through a variety of TVs and plug-in devices. These distinctions matter to those who need media consumption insights, but they don’t make a difference to the viewer. People get channels in their homes and they have no idea who is a broadcaster, who is a cable company, who has subscription streaming vs transactional streaming. And they don’t care.

I received a survey invite from a market research community I had recently joined. Clicking on it, I was sent to an opening page that asked me to enter my age. I was told I qualified for a survey and was sent to a large, well-known survey router service. The landing page told me the survey was 18 minutes long and to click the link to begin the survey. So, I did.

Then I was met with a screen that, after whirling a bit, said “Unfortunately, based on your responses to pre-qualification questions, it looks like your profile isn’t a great fit for the survey we had in mind for you. Hold on while we check to see if we have something better…” At least they let me down gently and promised me another survey.

Sampling is not something people think much about. It gets taken for granted and is often treated like the making of sausages—people don’t necessarily want to know what goes into it. But people ignore the issue of sample quality at their peril, because bad sample can lead to deeply misleading results. And when those misleading results are made public, they undermine the reputation of the entire insights industry—as we’ll see in a cautionary tale from a recent election.

Kellogg’s is a purpose-driven organization, with a core vision of “Nourishing families so they can flourish and thrive.” The growth of snacking in emerging markets represents a key opportunity to continue living out this purpose through introducing healthy, wholesome snacks that deliver on the promise of delivering sustained energy throughout the day.

Visa recently released a report aimed at helping small and medium business (SMB) owners understand how digital commerce can benefit their business. The report is survey-driven and provides an excellent illustration of how research can not just illuminate, but also build growth. Entitled the Digital Transformation of SMBs: The Future of Commerce, it is a textbook example of survey powered content marketing.

As an industry, everything we do hinges on the information we get from people who answer our questions. But we tend to take them for granted, and think of them as just "sample." And we ask a lot of them. We ask them to give us their time, put up with our obscure and often boring questions, work their way through long grids, and plow through long, mobile-unfriendly surveys. And then after we're done taking from them, we say thanks and goodbye. We don't ask "was it as good for you as it was for me?"

At Maru/Blue we take great pride in the quality of our market communities. We go to great lengths to ensure they are of the highest quality. We know they are representative and reliable, but it’s great when a respected researcher’s analysis proves it, again.

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website aggregates election polls and makes predictions based on those aggregations. As part of their process, they weight the polls based on their accuracy.

“I wish surveys would be smarter and not ask me the same questions over and over again. That repetitive clicking of how old I am, where I live, what my demographic is, how much money I make. It’s kind of a nuisance.”

“At least it will give us directional information. I mean, how wrong can it be?” I’ve heard those remarks and many like them bantered about when people rationalize using cheap sample sources.

The fact is, bad or “cheap” sample can give you information that is dead wrong. So wrong that the information it provides is directional—it’s just pointing in the wrong direction.