Articles and Publications

Customer Satisfaction

Dewey Beats Truman! (Good Survey Sampling)
When you read about a reader poll in the newspaper or on your favorite web site, you can't count on the results being accurate. The title of this article goes back to a famous case from the 1940s that is often used to "prove" that surveys or polls are not accurate. The title is the headline on a newspaper the morning after the presidential election in the US. In fact, Truman held it up after he won the election!. More...

Keeping Your Customers
Let me ask you a question. What is it that makes your customer decide to purchase from you? I hope you know the answer, it will be different for each of you and it's something every business needs to understand in order to flourish. More...

Why Measure Customer Satisfaction?
Most companies say they believe in great customer service, but few set up a system to insure that they provide it. Delivering great service takes both understanding what your customers want and a way to see that they receive it. Many firms put effort and expense into areas that clients don't care about. Those areas that customers rate low and have high impact on customers are where you will show the biggest gains in improvement. More...

Employee Feedback, Job Satisfaction, Organizational Climate

Creating a Balanced Scorecard
In a perfect world, employers would understand exactly what each employee needs to excel at their job, know how to save the company lots of money, and be able to forecast the future. Unfortunately, that perfect world doesn't exist; instead, we have employee feedback. More...

Focus on Feedback
In a perfect world, employers would understand exactly what each employee needs to excel at their job, know how to save the company lots of money, and be able to forecast the future. Unfortunately, that perfect world doesn't exist; instead, we have employee feedback. More...

Legal Profession

Automating Results for Mock Trials and Focus Juries
Attorneys use mock trials and focus juries when determining relevant case issues and themes the actually jury may bring to the case. Mock trials and focus groups provide feedback as to persuasive themes. More...

Using Jury Surveys and Questionnaires
District courts across the nation use automated procedures for selecting prospective jurors from drivers' license and voters' records. State specified software selects prospective jury pools from these database records on a random basis. More...

Market Research

Add Value to Your Market Research Project Results Via Web-Based Surveys - Without Adding a Lot of Cost to Your Market Research Project
Market research provides business owners, managers and planners with insights into the needs, preferences and buying patterns of their customers and potential customers. More...

Do Crucial Market Research For Free, On Your Own
Is market research only for big corporations with deep pockets? No, actually, any business can put simple market research into place, and get about 80% of the benefit of the big, complex, expensive methods, without paying a penny. More...

Do Your Research - The $10 Billion Lesson
One of the most important challenges for large companies is to stay in touch with their customers and markets. NTL was one of many companies since the late nineties to fail that challenge and pay a heavy price. Only by converting $10.9 billion of debt into equity has it emerged from Chapter 11 and won a second chance. So what are the lessons?. More...

Low-Cost, Hosted Online Surveys Open up Opportunities for Businesses to Quickly Gain Insights into and Be Responsive to Their Market Needs
Hosted web survey companies have emerged over the past several years to provide business owners, managers, and professionals with the ability to quickly conduct their market research surveys via the Web. More...

Marketing to the Empowered Consumer
Over the last twenty years or so, marketing has evolved just like everything else, as technology has become more and more pervasive, both in business and in the lives of the consumers those businesses are trying to reach. More...

Online Market Research and Real-time Feedback
A half-century after telephone surveys became commonplace, another market research channel is making waves. Online research is growing an impressive 50 percent annually. An Acorn study for IIR revealed that 75 percent of research decision makers in the U.S. have now tried online research and expect to use it again in the future. More...

Six Ways to Boost Response on Your Surveys and Gain More Useful Information
So you spend time and effort putting together a survey, so you can have real information about what your customers and prospects are actually looking for. And you send the survey to your in-house list, but the flood of responses You're expecting is only a trickle. More...

Membership Associations

Ask and It Shall Be Given: Member Association Surveys
Member Associations, while extremely diverse in the make-up of their memberships, share one common goal: attracting new members and retaining present members. Associations truly serving members constantly strive for awareness of the concerns and issues faced by membership, as well as ways for strengthening values of members and guiding members' development. But, how does an association promote membership if management lacks understanding about what the members want?. More...

Performance Improvement

Seeking Initiative and Innovation? - Reward Failure!
Prevailing in the face of intense competition requires companies to be nimble and innovative. An innovative and high-initiative culture helps an organization respond better to market signals. It can better exploit opportunities, get new products and services to market more quickly and more often capture first-mover advantage. More...

Use of Online Surveys for HR Continue to Grow
No longer confined to paper-based surveys, HR departments and companies are using new technologies to conduct increasingly more sophisticated surveys online. These surveys include employee satisfaction, upward or "360" evaluations, and the performance review process. More...

Using Surveys and Assessments to Guide Performance Improvement
The balance of the current labor market is currently tipped in favor of the corporate and industrial world. In March 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (1) announced that there were 8.4 million unemployed people in the USA a rate of 5.8%. There is a good deal of qualified personnel available. More...

Sales and Marketing

7-Steps To Killer Ad Copy (Including 25 Question "Client-Questionaire")
First, you won't get any fluff, airy theory, or re-hash of old concepts that don't work any more. There's already too much of that floating around these days. More...

SPIN Selling
The best salespeople are like expert detectives searching to find the exact needs of their customers and prospects. These needs are not exactly clear, so the detective looks for clues and puts the pieces together to better uncover the potential customer's hot buttons and close the sale. More...