Editor's note: Albert Fitzgerald is director of client services, Answers Research, Solana Beach, California.

We were one of the pioneers in diskette-based survey research several years ago. Over the past few years we have sent out tens of thousands of diskette based surveys on a wide range of business-to-business market studies. We have used diskette based surveys for a wide variety of research topics including customer satisfaction studies, pricing research, positioning research, and for new product development. Diskette based surveys have proven to be an excellent way to reach the over 70 million business professionals who have a personal computer on their desk.

But most researchers assume that diskette-based research (as well as paper based surveys) are only good for collecting quantitative data. We discovered a long time ago how valuable diskette based surveys are for collecting qualitative data.

Focus groups

We often conduct focus groups for clients. They are an excellent tool for collecting qualitative data such as assessing attitudes, understanding problems and issues which are important and how people view issues. But focus groups are not the only way of collecting qualitative data. Let's face it, focus groups are expensive! They typically cost up to $500 per person once recruitment, facility rental, videotaping, moderating and other costs are included. It can also be difficult to recruit the required number of people in a given city. For many industrial, high technology, and business products, it is just not possible to find enough qualified prospects in one area. It can be daunting to fill two focus groups with a client's customers in ANY city especially where our clients have few customers who registered their products or where they sell high ticket items (mini computers for example) that do not sell in very high volumes.

Diskette-based surveys

An alternative approach is to conduct the qualitative portion of a survey by phone or by mail. We use both approaches, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Phone interviewing is more widely understood in the research community. Its strengths being lower cost per completed interview than focus groups and quicker turnaround. However for qualitative issues, it is difficult for telephone interviewers to write down verbatim responses. The resulting comments are typically encapsulated versions of the interviewers perceptions of what the respondent actually said. And the concise phrasing, as written by interviewers often loses all emotions and feelings.

We have found that diskette-based surveys are an excellent method of capturing not only the information but the true feelings of the respondents. We have used diskette based surveys for years to ask open ended responses, but we have recently refined diskette surveys to assess primarily qualitative issues.

The following is an example of the robust and sincere responses that we often get from diskette-based surveys. In this particular instance it was a customer satisfaction survey were we were asking about customer support. We did not edit the comments; they are exactly as they were typed in by the respondents:

"If someone calls in for service, call them back!!! My call was never returned; we played 'phone tag for days, until finally I made 3 or 4 calls over a period of 2 days, which were never returned! My impression - they don't want to help me."

"Call back your customers no matter what....I had data that had to be up-loaded to the mainframe and my 'butt' was on the carpet because of someone else's lack of concern."

"Understand that sometimes the person on the other end of the line is simply a user, not another technical support rep who already knows the answer and is just calling to confirm - we really need help."

Paper versus diskette-based surveys We consistently find, on diskette based surveys, that people are willing to type in several sentences - even paragraphs! When we have asked similar questions on paper surveys we rarely get as many people filling in the answers and we virtually never get full sentences. Apparently, respondents feel more comfortable typing into a computer than they do writing their feeling on paper. With diskette-based surveys people typically write long, elaborate answers. One of the main reasons for this is the novelty of diskette surveys. Few people have ever received a diskette-based survey. Once it is popped into the computer and the survey is on the screen respondents actually like taking them. We have spoken to many disk survey respondents and they give several reasons for preferring disk surveys to paper ones:

- it is fun and a novelty

- prefer to type than to write answers on paper

- cannot tell the length of a diskette based survey; whereas

- many paper surveys appear to be too time consuming

An additional benefit of diskette based surveys over paper surveys is the elimination of keypunch errors. This is especially important if your subject matter is technical or the responses are full of jargon, then keypunching becomes very difficult.

In a recent study, a client wanted to better understand whether it should invest in an automated telephone system to answer customer questions. Other companies have systems that allow you to select a topic from a voice menu and get a recorded message or have information automatically faxed to you. This is a perfect subject to approach with a focus group. However, these systems are relatively new and the incidence of finding someone who has used one of these systems is slim, which makes recruitment virtually impossible. By conducting a national survey by mail using diskettes, our client was able to get several hundred responses and gain a vast amount of information before deciding on how to implement this type of customer support system. The following are actual typed-in responses to a question asking about likes and dislikes of these automated telephone support systems:

"Very useful way to get written information quickly. Everyone should use a similar system!"

"For standard problems it's great. Quick response through fax. However, if there are complications one would need to speak to a technical service representative."

"This type of system is fine for common questions."

"It's great for product information or faxes but for most tech support it's too tedious to go through the automation although it's better than a busy signal."

"I dislike it because you have to listen to an entire menu of selections before you discover there is no selection for your problem, or you dialed the wrong number, redial the correct one and listen to another menu of choices."

"This approach to customer service sucks. When I call Tech support, I am past the simple questions and the automated systems only waste my time."

"This type of system in a technical support environment is very frustrating and time consuming. I feel they are a complete waste of time. They project an image of cost cutting by the company that utilizes them."

Based on these responses, our client designed a system with fairly simple menus which allowed customers to exit the system to speak with a live person easily. Because of the feedback received they also changed their plans to automatically route all incoming calls to this automated system first.

How to phrase questions
A big advantage of diskette-based surveys is their ability to branch and skip questions automatically. As an example, we asked respondents to rate the quality of customer service on a 1 to 5 point scale where 1 was the highest rating. We then asked only those who rated customer service the lowest ratings of 4 or 5 to tell us their reasons. This respects respondents' time and minimizes the length of the survey. Here are some other tips to ensure you get the robust and honest responses you want:

- Be clear in what you want. Ask respondents to supply specifics and details.

- Do not ask questions that don't apply.

- Ask simple qualifying questions first; then ask detail questions only where appropriate.

- Do not ask "why" questions such as "Why did you choose product X?" Instead ask "what" questions such as "What were your reasons for choosing product X?" "What" questions validate respondents feelings and attitudes; whereas "why" questions are often perceived as forcing the respondents to defend their actions.

- Guarantee anonymity to respondents and tell them who will be reading their comments. For example, respondents are more likely to spend time and effort answering a question if they know that the president of the company will read it.

Conclusion

We have successfully used diskette based qualitative surveys to develop new product and feature ideas, to get impressions of product positioning, for feedback on documentation issues and to better understand user needs.

Diskette-based surveys are an excellent tool to cost effectively and efficiently acquire qualitative information from business professionals.