CMI: Are You Guilty of Survey Malpractice?
Posted by Ted Hopton on May 29, 2008
Dr. Jodie Monger knows surveys, and in this Customer Management Insight (CMI) article, “Are You Guilty of Survey Malpractice?,” she explains what NOT to do on your customer satisfaction surveys.
Measurement programs must meet certain scientific criteria to be statistically valid with an acceptable confidence level and level of precision or tolerated error. Without these considerations, you are guilty of Survey Malpractice. To defend your program with “it has always been this way” or “we were told to do a survey” is not sufficient. Research laws adhered to in academia apply to the business world. A deficient survey yields inaccurate data and results in invalid conclusions no matter who conducts it.
How hard is it to come up with a bunch of questions and create a survey? That’s what most of us think, and if you just want some quick and informal feedback, that’s fine. But your customer satisfaction measurements are another story altogether. Jodie explains seven warning signs of “survey malpractice”:
- Measuring too many things
- Not measuring enough things
- Measuring questions with an unreliable scale
- Measuring the wrong things or the right things the wrong way
- Asking for an evaluation after memory has degraded
- Accuracy and credibility of service providers and product vendors
- Wiggle room via correction factors
(See the article for the explanation associated with each.)
