A tsunami of surveys washes over consumers

Wells Fargo, which completes more than 50,000 customer surveys each month through its bank branches, has used customers' comments to institute more stringent new wait-time standards intended to improve customer satisfaction, according to a company spokeswoman in San Francisco.

While most researchers agree that such surveys provide some insight into the customer mindset, others believe the instruments are inherently flawed, and that their rapid proliferation may be contributing to the "survey burnout" that can lead to an overall drop in response rates.

"It's becoming more difficult to engage with people in a traditional way, by asking a question and getting an answer," says Laurent Florès, CEO of CRM Metrix, a market-research firm in Secaucus, N.J.

"The more surveys people have completed, the less likely it is that they will be willing to accept doing yet another one," adds Priya Raghubir, an associate professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "The problem is that you're trying to get them to respond to something they're not particularly interested in. So you wind up hearing from a tiny cross-section of people who either love you or hate you, as opposed to the large chunk of people in the middle."

To secure a wider range of customer participation, companies should approach consumers only occasionally and keep questionnaires short and simple, she says.

"There is an art associated with how you draw people into your data-collection efforts, just as there is an art to advertising," Ms. Raghubir says. "As long as a company is doing it right, they will get good responses, just like good ads do."

Companies in a wide variety of industries are using surveys to get you to put in your two cents. But what do you get out of the arrangement?

Some companies, including Gap Inc. and Jack in the Box Inc., offer incentives for completing surveys, such as coupons for discount merchandise or the chance to win a cash prize. But such offers typically don't adequately compensate consumers for their time, says Priya Raghubir, associate professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "You're constantly battling with making the benefit for the respondent higher than the potential cost," she says.

If the rewards are mostly unremarkable, the risks are not. Earlier this year, an e-mail "phishing" scam targeting Chase bank customers offered an opportunity to claim $20 in exchange for participating in a phony survey whose true intent was to get people to disclose personal information with the potential to facilitate identity theft.

Less nefarious, but still unethical, are schemes that use a survey as a backdoor means of raising funds or selling a product or service. "There are people out there who do sales and fundraising under the guise of research," says Elyse Gammer, operations officer for the Marketing Research Association. "They pretend it's a poll. But this is strictly forbidden by legitimate marketing researchers.

"If anyone calls you without your having contacted them and asks you for personal information, it's not a legitimate survey. And if they're selling something, it's not a legitimate survey," Ms. Gammer says.

In 2003, the Council of Better Business Bureaus in Arlington, Va., received a number of complaints about telemarketers who were posing as pollsters, says Steve Cox, spokesman for the group.

"We tell people that if they're asked to participate in a phone survey, they should ask three questions," Mr. Cox says: " 'Are you selling something?' 'Will my participation in this survey result in my being contacted by someone who will try and sell me something?' And, 'Will my name and personal information be sold to anyone who may then contact me to sell me something?' "

Page: 1 | 2