Customer satisfaction surveys normally ask a whole bunch of questions regarding whether or not the customer liked the service or product they received from the business sending out the survey, and more often than not are designed to measure exactly what their title would indicate. Satisfaction. The problem with this is that while knowing your customers are satisfied is nice, it doesn’t really tell you anything that will help you keep your business moving forward.

If you ask your customer “Are you satisfied and why?” what will you learn? Well you’ll learn whether or not the customer is satisfied, and hopefully the answer is yes, and if they answer the ‘why’ part, you’ll learn what your company does well. Realistically though, you probably already know what your company does well, and the customers reply is probably going to do nothing more than make you feel good about your business. That being said, market research is not about ego boosts. It’s about identifying real opportunities. Asking your customer about their satisfaction level doesn’t do that. Asking them about what they were dis-satisfied with on the other hand, very much will.

“Wait, wait, you want us to ask our customers to let loose on all the aspects of our business they DON’T like? Are you insane?” Sure, framing your business in a negative aspect isn’t something people are used to doing. After all, why would you ever want to encourage customers to focus their minds on the ways your business is lacking? It’s counter-intuitive and in most cases it’s a downright bad idea This is not one of those cases though. Look at it in this frame. Any customer, who is so dissatisfied with your service that they can come up with a mile long list, probably won’t be a customer long any ways. The people who really matter here are the customers who are satisfied…overall. We’ve all had dealings with companies where our overall experience was positive but there were one or two details we would’ve liked to be different. These are the customers that we’re interested in and this is the kind of valuable information that companies should be digging for. Customer satisfaction surveys simply don’t dig up this sort of thing.

If I have an overall positive experience with a company, and they send me a customer satisfaction survey, I might write something like, “Overall I was very satisfied with our transaction because you delivered my order on time, in the proper quantities and your people were very courteous and professional”. What does that tell the company? That they’re awesome? Who cares? On the other hand, if the same company sends me a survey framed more towards aspects of my dissatisfaction, my response might sound something like, “Overall I was very satisfied with our transaction. All the details were correct and your staff was helpful. However I found the online order entry form to be extremely slow and frustrating and the email response times were a little slow.” Now what did they learn? A lot! They’re still awesome, but now they know where improvements could be made that would even further increase their customers satisfaction.

Wait a minute, customer satisfaction? Isn’t that where we started? You bet. Quite simply, companies who are truly interested in increasing the satisfaction levels of their clients don’t send out materials asking all sorts of questions about what they did well, they send out materials asking all kinds of questions about what they could’ve done better. Your best customers, the ones who account for the majority of your revenues, won’t all of a sudden realize you suck and jump ship. What will happen though, is that you’ll find out important information about weaknesses that will eventually strengthen your relationship with your regular customers and ensure that future customers get the best level of service possible.

While it is true that almost all consumers will make knee-jerk judgments based on their initial experience with a product, that doesn’t mean that all eventual purchases are based off of these reactions. There are definitely situations where a consumer will decide to buy based on a first impression alone, but this depends completely on a number of factors present in the overall buying decision, the most important of which is the risk involved.

Risk could take many forms. It could be financial risk where the consumer may stand to lose money if they make a poor buying decision, or it could simply be the risk of nothing more than being unhappy with the product after purchase, but risk is the key factor. For example, if I stop into a store on the way home and I want a magazine or newspaper, I’m not going to spend time researching the different options, carefully scrutinizing the content of each option, comparing several similar substitutes before deciding. I’m going to walk in, look at the covers, maybe flip through one or two, and make a decision based on very minimal information. Why? Because the risk involved in the purchase is very low. If I choose a crappy magazine, I’m out five bucks and a few minutes. Nothing to cry over. Because of this, I’m more than willing to make a purchase on a snap judgment. There are a lot of products that fit into this sort of buying activity but they all have one common factor. Cost.Products that people buy on whims and first impressions are almost always low cost.

For products like these, focus groups likely are a waste of time and money because they won’t truly reflect the way people judge such products in real life. If I’m a company that sells children’s toys, sitting kids or parents down in a room and asking them to thoroughly examine a toy and give me their feedback on it probably won’t give me much information that will relate to whether or not they’d buy that toy when they saw it on the shelf in Toys’R'Us. I’d probably be better off showing them a couple different packaging options for no more than a few minutes and asking them to point out which one they find more attractive. This would be a much better reflection of the actual thought process that person would go through when faced with a buying decision in store.

This does not hold true, however, for high risk purchases. People won’t make their buying decisions so easily in such cases. They’ll still make snap judgments, it’s human nature to do so. But they’ll go deeper than that because they know that if they do choose wrong, it will hurt them in some way, whether it be financially, physically or emotionally. This is where the value of focus groups becomes clear. Products that require a deeper level of thinking on behalf of the consumer are perfect candidates for focus groups as a form of market research.

When someone walks into a car dealership, the odds are one car on the lot will immediately catch their eye. Maybe they like the colour, the shape, the rims, who knows, but something will stand out and they’ll make a snap judgment. They won’t run into the office and sign a contract because of that though. The buying behaviour is completely different than it was with the toy in the toy store. The same customer that bought a $30 toy on a whim will think long and hard about a $30,000 car. Sure the shiny, fast looking red one may catch their eye and become their initial favourite, but upon inspection, they may find that the fuel efficiency is poor, or that their isn’t enough space for them, the kids and the hockey gear, or any other number of factors that will change their minds. There is risk. If they take home that shiny red car and something about it doesn’t work out, they have to live with that $30,000 mistake.

In a situation like this, a focus group is perfect because it will much more closely resemble how a consumer would analyze that product in the real world. If you’re trying to put out a new mini-van, but your focus group says that upon inspection there doesn’t seem to be enough space behind the seat or that they’d strongly prefer it to have this feature or that feature, you’ve just been given valuable insight into the exact thought process that consumer would be going through standing on the lot.

This is the guideline that should be taken when deciding whether or not a focus group is of value to your marketing research. The most important thing you need to determine is the amount of risk that is involved with the purchase of the product you’re researching for, and if it strikes you that the product is something that is either not expensive enough, or not significant enough, to cause a consumer to worry about making the wrong decision, and in turn put in extra thought, then a focus group may very well provide you with a whole bunch of data that does not accurately represent the real world thoughts and feelings of your target market.

What they say in the focus group is one thing, but its what they think in the store that counts. If you hold a focus group for the wrong kind of product, you may find yourself ending up with a whole lot of very expensive lip service.