Ray Poynter is in the process of running a survey to look at What makes a great market research conference?

The interim results can be viewed here.

The Market Research Society of New Zealand is having their conference on the 14th of August in Auckland.  I’ll let you know how it stacks up against Ray’s checklist.

A current market research survey being undertaken by NZ Post has caused some concern which has led to the Privacy Commissioner making a statement that people should not feel compelled to complete the survey.

It seems that some people had believed that they survey was compulsory since it was being sent by NZ Post. While I have not seen the survey invitation the story does highlight the valid issue that surveys sent by some state owned enterprises or Government departments may make people concerned due to the perceived authority of the sender. Most survey senders are loathe to stress the point that the respondent does not have to complete the survey (this would do nothing to help survey response rates) but in this instance it would have been worthwhile stating.

What seems to have worried people most is the level of detailed personal data that the survey asked for. While this information is seen by marketers as marketing gold I think the general public has wised up about simply giving away their details to anyone that asks. The risks are too high (i.e. identity theft or just receiving a flood of irritating targeted direct mail) so you should really just ask for what you need, otherwise you risk ending up with a low response rate as well as alienating the people you want to get close too.

Microsoft released Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) on the 24th of April 2009. I quickly installed this and was pretty impressed with some of the new features and fixes.

What I wasn’t aware of was a bug that SP2 brings with it. The issues arises if you try to save a excel sheet or workbook as a pdf and if your workbook features any charts. The result is that any charts featured in your workbook will be severely distorted. To date there is no known fix for this issue and you have two choices to resolve the issue.

They are:

1. Uninstall SP2
2. Uninstall and reinstall Office 2007

Uninstall SP2

Apparently Sp2 is the first service pack which Microsoft has enabled you to actually uninstall. The download required is here Following this process is easier said than done though and while their a number of blogs that provide some detailed instructions on how to accomplish the removal of SP2, it was beyond me and I gave up (after four hours or trying).

Uninstall and reinstall Office 2007

I recommend not wasting too much time trying to uninstall sp2 and just do a complete reinstall of 2007. A repair will not work because as far as office 2007 is concerned there is nothing to repair. I admit that doing a reinstall is not ideal but it does work.

I do wonder two things through, why did Microsoft release SP2 with such serious error and secondly why haven’t they come up with a fix yet. Quite disappointing and quite frustrating.

Beware of SP2

Companies need to put their money where their mouth is the message that Greg Adams is sending in his article You call that market research? and not for the love of it.

The bee in Greg’s bonnet is that a large number of online customer satisfaction surveys invitations he has received come with no incentive i.e prize draw, discount coupon etc.

But what bugs me most is what seems like an increasing expectation from many companies that we’ll do it for nowt. Just offer feedback for the love of it. Last time I checked, this was called market research…and business in its own right, and a multi-billion dollar one at that.

Greg asks where is the incentive and this is the response.

A reply duly pinged back from NZ Post’s representatives. “Hi Greg, Thank you for your email. In regards to any incentive, the feedback and comments that New Zealand Post will be utilising should be a direct benefit to you through improved service and products.”

Just think about it for a minute. Surely asking someone to give their time freely is at best cheeky and at worst, well, bloody cheeky. What’s wrong with some measure of reward? There are plenty of companies that put their hands into their pockets for a prize draw for respondents, a discount coupon, or something like that. Those I’ll help.

But to my mind there seems to be a bit too much of this freeloading going on. So, if you’re asked, just ignore it. That’ll teach them.

I have to say that I agree with Greg’s point. Offering an incentive to your customers is important for a number of reasons. They include;

• Higher response rates.
• A chance to reward your valued customers and create a feel good factor.
• A chance to build business – offer a discount coupon for customers who participate.
• Good PR opportunity – publish the names of prize draw winners.

If you want your customers to help you improve your business, a wee reward for their time and trouble is the least you can do.