Whether you own a restaurant, a retail store, or even just a gas station, your customers have certain expectations about you and what they want from you. Based on the research we have done for our retail customers, these are five common expectations that most customers share.

"Scan It" self-checkout kiosk at Giant Food store in Wheaton, Maryland. Customers use this kiosk to scan their bonuscard and then collect a scanner and bags. Bagging is done as the customer scans it in the store. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• It’s about the experience, not just the product. In this day and age, you can buy just about anything, sometimes even cheaper, on the Internet. But part of the reason people go to stores particularly local stores and specialty stores is to have the shopping experience. They want it to be clean, well-lit, and pleasant. If you can enhance the experience and give the customer a great feeling as they walk back out the door, your chances of return business grow exponentially.
• Make it easy to buy. This isn’t limited to “we take Visa, MC, and American Express” it includes everything that touches the customer. From parking, getting in the door, shopping hours, and in-store organization, it has to be easy to fit an interaction with you into their lives. The hassle factor is a huge and it will keep customers out of your store.
• There are many other options out there. Customers come to you for a reason. If the customer is in your door, they’ve already made at least a partial decision to shop with you. They could have gone somewhere else but chose your store instead. Welcome them and make them feel wanted. If you have a niche shop, then your expertise is valuable and will make customers want to come to you, not just because of products or price, but for the transfer of knowledge and help. But you have to make the experience enjoyable for the customer to learn. See our first point above.
• Everything in the retail experience counts. If you own a retail store, and have the best and widest selection available. But a lot of your product are kept in the back of the store, the staff is subpar or unfriendly, customers have to navigate though messy aisles, then it will hamper customers’ motivation to come to you, no matter how good your selection is.
• Customers are not alike. If you own a music shop you need to know that all musicians aren’t the same…a drummer is a different personality than a clarinet player, the rocker is different from the jazz musician. The customers know their own differentiating factors, and if you can learn those differences and adapt and cater to various types of customers, providing them a customized shopping based on their needs, you’ll certainly certainly be one step ahead of your competition..

Understand and follow these five basic customer expectations and you are well on the way to creating a loyal shopping experience where your customers will want to return again and again, and bring their friends.

If you ever decide you need the services of a professional research company, you need to understand the differences among data, information, and insight going into the research process.

And in order to effectively partner with such a research service, you need to be able to understand the data and information the research produces, so you can benefit from its insights.

But in order to be able to understand that, you need to understand the difference between data, information, and insights.

Data is the basic building block in research. These are the cold, hard facts that information and insights are built on. An example of data would be, “our research shows that 32.5% of your sales force reports that if offered a job elsewhere, they would take it.”

As far as data goes, that’s just a number. And depending on your HR knowledge regarding sales force attrition, you might be immediately horrified, or you might think that’s pretty good. But it’s that not knowing that makes data pretty useless. It’s only when the data is placed inside a context — is a 32.5% loss of sales force good or bad? — that turns that data into information.

Information is where things get more interesting and valuable to you as a manager. It’s where you can actually apply what the data means to you. For example, the average percentage of sales force attrition is usually around 33%. Armed with that information, you know your sales team is right on track. And knowing that information can lead to having insights about the research.

Insights are information significant to your organization. This is where the true partnership between you and your research company becomes important. It’s almost a marriage between the two players, with both sides bringing some important knowledge to the relationship. An insight could be that a year ago you implemented a salesforce retention strategy. Based on the earlier score (data) and the comparison to industry average (information) you can conclude that the retention strategy didn’t work.

At IQS, we’re the experts in the research development analysis, but we cannot know the working conditions within every client or posses the industry background of a 20 year veteran. But together, our two organizations can identify some pretty important findings about your company.

To continue with our example, if your sales team is currently lethargic and just not meeting their sales numbers, research might show that only 10% of your sales personnel would consider taking another job (data) which is well under the in the industry average (information). Since that’s below the average, it sounds like people may be complacent. It’s one thing if the sales team was exceeding their numbers, because they wouldn’t want to leave a place where they’re excelling.

But this lack of engagement may represent a toxic level of complacency and laziness within the company. This insight can help you decide if you need to perhaps replace team members or put more or different expectations on them.

From the bricks to the mortar to the design and function, the insights you gain through the use of a professional research team can be well worth the time and effort, because it leads to deeper levels of understanding within your organization.

Mathematical Analysis (Photo credit: Websteria)

Companies are notoriously bad at doing their own research. Even if they truly understand how to design a survey instrument, conduct the data collections, perform the mathematical analysis and compile the findings, they still have to account for numerous pitfalls along the way that will make the data inaccurate and the conclusions misleading.

Let’s say your company president decides the company is going to have a town hall-style meeting, because he wants to know why sales numbers have been dropping over the last three quarters. You know exactly why the sales team hasn’t been performing, and it has directly to do with the president’s decision to put a certain consultant in a pivotal position who really doesn’t understand the business process and has been causing no end of trouble. But the president is putting all his eggs in this consultant’s basket and believes she is going to revolutionize the company.

So what do you do? Should you be honest and tell him just what the problem is? Or are you more concerned with keeping the peace so you can keep your job? Just how difficult is it to be honest?

This difficulty is part of why companies shouldn’t do their own market research. There’s the intimidation factor at being honest with people you know. It’s one thing if a complete stranger is asking for your employees’ critiques. Then they get to be anonymous and protect themselves. But it’s quite another when their boss, or boss’ boss, or even a colleague is asking directly.

The emotional factor rises high here…employees can be scared away from brutal but vital honesty because of the fear of stepping on the wrong toes or being pegged a troublemaker. This is where a neutral third-party anonymous questioner is beneficial. They can protect and account for that emotional, fearful reaction, and you can be sure that you are getting unadulterated input.

The other side of that situation is the “friendship factor.” If clients and vendors are the sources of information, especially when they’re being asked by members of the company, there’s really no motivation to say anything that might rock the boat. If there is a problem that’s somewhat manageable, maybe they don’t want to get anyone in trouble or hurt a contact’s feelings because of their personal/professional relationships.

Again, in this case, a professional market research team can help the company get the whole truth and work around the fear factors that exist. This lets management get the crucial information they really need to make the best decisions.

Including getting rid of the incompetent consultant.

When should companies do their own research, and when should they leave it to the pros?

This is a common question and fortunately, there is a pretty simple three-step litmus test that can answer this for you. Basically, you can do some simple market research yourself if you truly know what it is you need to know, if the information you’re trying to gather is marginally or unimportant, and if there’s very low risk if you get your decision wrong.

Let’s say you’re considering opening a new branch office. You have three cities you’re considering in the region, and you need to pick the one that will bring in the most business. The expansion is going to cost the company $2,000,000, so you can’t afford to make the wrong choice.

There is certainly information about the different cities you are not aware of, and there’s quite a risk if you choose poorly — job loss, financial liability, and even a possible fatal blow to the company. This is definitely something you need the help of a professional research company to decide. The cost of the research and analysis will be substantially less than the cost if the project fails.

On the other hand, there are many internal decisions unique to your organization and office that could easily be decided by doing your own market research. For example, if you’re planning to remodel or add a break room, you don’t need to invest in professional research to determine whether you need two microwaves or three, if you need a bigger refrigerator, or what kind of chairs to use. This is the kind of thing that a brief employee survey or basic discussions could easily answer for you because the importance level is so low. If you make the wrong choice, there’s little to no consequence. If you needed three microwaves but only got two, then get another one later, or if you bought one too many, there’s $70 lost, which is minimal.

So very simply, if what you need to know will have a major impact on your business then you need to hire a research company that has the skills, experience, and expertise to perform major business research that can connect the dots between several different data points and help you get the insights you need to make the right decision.

Employee engagement can be gauged in many ways, but it all revolves around effort. But is that accurate enough?

Effort itself can be measured in various ways. Effort of time, effort of creativity, effort in going the extra mile. One way to get a pulse on how engaged your employees are is to walk around the hallways at around 5:15 p.m. and see who’s still hanging around.

Ignoring the clock is certainly one measure of engagement, but there are all kinds of other ways employees express their engagement when it comes to investing their time into their work. Maybe they are willing to come in early or take shorter lunches. Or maybe they volunteer for cross training in a related area of the department or for extra projects to expand their knowledge.

A significant sign of employee engagement is when an employee comes up with ideas or creative ways to enhance their jobs. Maybe a person’s job is to make widgets, but they spend extra time figuring out ways to improve the process of making their widgets. Engagement is about adding to the business; it’s about improving what can be improved, and frankly, it’s about caring.

It’s almost easier to measure the lack of engagement sometimes. Employees who sit and watch the clock starting 4:49 p.m. so they can bolt out the door or those who don’t make it to meetings consistently or maybe who do whatever they can to get out of training or project assignment (are visions of Office Space flying through your mind?) are all indications of a lack of engagement.

If you think you have engaged employees, but they exhibit some of these behaviors, then they are probably not quite as engaged as you think they are. They might be satisfied in their jobs, but engagement is whole other level of care and dedication that is observable and that feels and looks like investment…and actually is.

Here is a question: is the Voice of the Customer the same thing as the customers’ voice?

Absolutely not.

The Voice of the Customer is a specific research industry phrase that refers to a formal customer feedback program that systematically gathers feedback from a company’s customers. Most large and medium sized companies have these in place to one degree or another.

It’s a scheduled, defined process that seeks out input from customersor a scientifically based sampling of customers. And given that this is a random sampling process (meaning scientifically random, not just arbitrary), the companies are surveying a variety of types of customers.

Voice of the Customer versus Customer Voice (Photo credit: Ewan McIntosh)

They will get everything from those who are apathetic to super pleased to those ready to leave, which provides for more honest, well-rounded, accurate responses that will benefit the company immensely in deciding what kinds of changes need to be put into place to keep customers satisfied and referring.

A big point of misunderstanding that comes up when discussing Voice of the Customer programs is that often managers and business owners will say, “Why do I need some scientific study? I listen to my customers, and believe me, if they’re unhappy, they let us know!”

There is a deep-seated fallacy in this line of thinking.

For one, customer voice or customer complaint is not the same thing as a Voice of the Customer study. Not that listening to and fixing customers issues with your company is a bad idea; quite the contrary, you need to listen when a customer approaches you. But it will never garner the deeper, truly affecting information that you need to know. Mainly because of one axiom…when you have one customer who complains to you, you can guarantee there are exponentially more who feel the same way who don’t complain and perhaps just leave.  Also complaining customers typically represent only one type of all of the customers you serve.

Responding to complaints, while needed, isn’t reflective of the true silhouette of the problems your company might be having. You might have a couple of customers who live to complain and will complain no matter what the situation. Their complaints represent nothing except perhaps a deeper problem that needs to be addressed within those customers. But the cold fact is that most people or customers don’t complain at all; they just head to a competitor, and you’ll never know.

The beauty of a Voice of the Customer study or program is that it’s not a one-off hit-or-miss complaint department activity. It’s systematic, executed process that will unearth what really needs your attention in your company’s relationship with its customers.

Suburbs of New Orleans, LA. View from over Kenner, Louisiana, looking east to Metarie, Louisiana. Veterans Boulevard is the major street running into distance on center/right; Interstate 10 to left. Shore of Lake Pontchartrain seen at top left. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First, a working definition: psychogeographic barriers are mental or emotional obstacles that keep people from entering a given area for business. As a market research company,we look at these factors for many companies.

It might be a busy street or a perception of an area not being “my area” of town, or even as simple as your boss’ office threshold. The key ingredient here is that there’s nothing physical keeping people from coming to your business, not a wall or a barricade, but only thought barriers, which often can be more powerful than real walls.

The initial thing to do when you are suspicious that your business might be a victim of a psychogeographic barrier is to seek out the help of a professional research company to identify what hose barriers are and why they exist. The presence and location of a barrier are usually easy to identify but accurately identifying the cause can be much more elusive.

By understanding the causes of the barrier it is easier to enact the changes necessary, obliterate those mental barriers and get more traffic to your business.

We helped a doctor’s office break through their a psychogeographic barrier surrounding their practice. Their office sat just on the edge of what was considered the suburb area adjacent to downtown. The pediatrician’s office had no problem attracting parents from the suburban area, but it was as if their sphere of influence was shaped more like half a pie. They weren’t getting patients from the downtown area because of “territorial” psychogeographic issues.

Downtown people do things downtown; suburbanites conduct business in the suburbs, but in this case the doctor’s office was on the border and could really serve both and could even be a bridge between the two worlds. The key was reach out to the people in the city and engage with them around the benefits of this office.

In this case the office was able to simply sent out some mailings targeted to this geographic area telling the recipients how easy it was to get there, how functional and cost effective the parking was compared to dealing with meters and parking garages, and how much they really wanted their business.

In the end, they saw an increase in the size of the pie and, with little investment, overcame the psychogeographic barrier that seemed insurmountable. All it took was accurately identifying and tackling that barrier and then implementing sometimes very simple fixes, and the “walls” come tumbling down.