In 2008 I wrote a series on “conducting surveys”.  This series was written from the point of view of an absolute neophyte in the survey research industry.  Everything that I have learned since then has been from Organizational Psychologists and experts in related fields; experts such as Dr. Jan Stringer, Dr. Ken West, and Dr. Terrie Nolinske. 

Today I am happy to announce that we are starting a new article series, this time written by Dr. Nolinske.  We will be featuring a new article every Friday.  Dr. Nolinske’s articles will describe the benefits and pitfalls of conducting your customer or employee survey.  I am confident that you will find her postings extremely entertaining and very informative.

We welcome your comments and questions and hope you enjoy the article series.  Suggestions for future series’ are also welcome.   Dr. Nolinske’s first article is below.

Colleagues in the exhibition department at a local museum met to review the list of traveling exhibitions available for rent in the next three years. After a rousing discussion, they decided to seek input from museum members, finding out what traveling exhibition topics were of interest to them. Staff put together a short checklist of known exhibitions, asking members to identify those they would pay a separate admission fee to come see, and added two open-ended questions. Once complete, the exhibits director gave the questionnaire to the membership department for distribution to members in an upcoming member survey.

As the membership coordinator looked at the questions, she thought, as long as we’re asking for member feedback, let me add several questions on issues of interest to the membership. She printed a draft and left for a meeting. As a manager of education was making copies of a program handout, he noticed the questionnaire in the copier. What a great opportunity to get member input on educational program planning, he thought! So, he generated seven questions and added them to the questionnaire.

Needless to say, when member feedback was collated and reviewed, the exhibits director was not only surprised by the inclusion of information related to membership and education, but disappointed by the lackluster responses to the questionnaire; few meaningful responses were obtained to any of the questions.

I live in an area of the country that rarely sees snow. As I am writing this it is the early part of winter and the holidays are only a few weeks behind us. For quite some time before Christmas, a chief meteorologist on a major network kept saying “There is absolutely no way we will have a white Christmas.” The odds were in his favor. There had been no white Christmas in the area in 83 years. Since the National Weather Service began keeping records in 1898, there had never been measurable snow here on Christmas Eve—flurries that amounted to a trace of snow—yes, but never any measurable snow. The National Weather Service defines a white Christmas as any December 25th with at least an inch of snow on the ground. It had been seven years since we had even seen a snowflake on Christmas Eve and prior to that, brief flurries had occurred only two other times on December 24th. So, when the chief meteorologist said that a white Christmas was impossible, I believed him.

We were both wrong.

A friend’s elderly mother purchased a new car. She opened the owner’s manual to figure out how to set her favorite radio stations before driving home. Imagine her surprise to find that the sales person had already programmed the radio stations in the new car from her old one! A friend stopped on her way home from a manicure, saying she just had to tell someone about the experience she had with her manicurist, who not only walked her to her car and opened the door but put the key in the ignition and started the car so my friend wouldn’t muss up her nail polish.

Did my friends talk about the new car and the fabulous manicure or the value added service they received? Certainly both, but the value added services led the conversation in every telling!

We feel satisfied when we get something that we need or want because our desires are fulfilled. We know that a customer can be anyone who receives something they perceive to be of value, a product or a service, from an individual or organization. Customers are both internal and external to the organization, each with his or her needs, wants and desires.

Customer service standards are on the rise. When customers deal with you, they compare you to anyone else from whom they’ve received (great) service, not just someone from the same industry.

Have you ever watched a baby take its first steps? It is quite a sight to see. The baby may wobble back and forth as she or he tries to stand upright and maintain balance. Then a parent coaxes the child to step forward. The child, often while gazing intently at the parent, takes that first tentative step...and then another...and another. The child precariously spans the divide between self and parent. For other children, only one step is taken before falling on their diapered bottoms. Even this minimal success may be followed by cheers from the parent and squeals of delight from the baby. But before long children master the art of walking and the parents face a new challenge...how to keep the child walking in the right direction. Toward the sofa...toward mom or dad—Good! Toward the street—Bad!

It is crucial to move in the right direction. Failure to do so can have tragic, even fatal, results. On a recent morning I was watching the news and learned that overnight three fatal car accidents had occurred in my metropolitan area overnight. Two were the result of vehicles going the wrong way on the highway. It is likely that at the moment these vehicles moved into the lane that took them onto the highway, they believed they were headed in the right direction. It was late, dark, and there was not a lot of traffic on the highway. But it probably did not take too long for the error to be realized as the drivers looked up and saw one or more vehicles headed toward them with headlights blaring in the darkness. Unfortunately, sometimes businesses make changes they think will take them in the right direction. However, what makes sense intuitively sometimes takes us in the wrong direction. The good news? This can easily be avoided. The only way to know for sure what direction to go in is to be well informed. You need to be aware of internal and external forces that may impact the success of your business. One sure means of empowerment is to gain knowledge of the right direction by conducting employee and customer surveys.