Customer research can take many forms: NPS, after-sales feedback, service experience, product satisfaction, loyalty studies and more. However, before we even discuss scores, questionnaires or methodologies, we might want to answer a very basic question:

Are we doing customer research the right way?

The Velvet Glove approach

When customer satisfaction research is conducted by CATI, the interviewer becomes a direct point of contact with the customer. The way the call is introduced, how objections are handled and how the interviewer reacts to hesitation or refusal all matter.

When we’re interviewing the customers of a company, we’re not contacting just another target audience.

The respondent on the other side of the call is a person who already has a commercial relationship with the sponsor, and this relationship must not be affected by our call.

This is why we use something that we call The Velvet Glove approach.

Interviewers go through a special briefing where they learn how to handle these respondents with the utmost care. Their tone needs to be respectful, the introduction must be clear and professional, and finally, there should never be any pressure if someone does not want to participate.

There can be no pushing; no aggressive callbacks; and definitely no trying to turn a clear “no” into a reluctant “yes.”

CATI works best when the interviewer understands that the objective is to invite, not convince. If the timing is bad, we can offer to call back. If the customer is not interested, we respect that. If they do participate, the interviewer gives them the space to explain their experience properly.

The research matters, but not more than the customer relationship.

Who is the customer?

This may be the most important question, as customer research can be quite different when comparing B2C to B2B research.

When running a B2C study, the buyer is most often the user of the product or service.

In B2B, the buyer and user may be completely different people, and they may also care about completely different aspects of the product or service.

Procurement may care about pricing and contracts. The end user may care about functionality. Operations may focus on reliability. Senior management may simply want to know whether the supplier delivers what was promised.

This is why, before fieldwork starts, we need to be clear on who we should be interviewing – in other words, which aspect of the customer relationship we actually want to understand.

Different products create different experiences

There is a big difference between interviewing someone about their new car, for example, and interviewing someone about new business software.

The car owner may be excited to participate and discuss comfort, reliability, the support they received at the dealership or the service experience afterwards.

A decision-maker involved in the new company software may care more about usability, the implementation process, possible downtime or the technical support received.

In addition to this, it’s important to mention that for some B2B products and services, the buyer, the user or technical evaluator may all have a different experience with the new product.

This is why, before fieldwork starts, there needs to be clarity around the respondent definition, and the questionnaire and interviewer briefing should clearly reflect what we actually want to understand.

A generic approach to customer satisfaction can easily miss what actually matters.

Transactional or relationship-driven?

Customer satisfaction studies can also be structured very differently depending on what we want to measure.

Transactional CSS studies are usually ongoing and linked to a specific customer event: a purchase, delivery, installation, service interaction, repair or after-sales experience. These studies are often run continuously or in regular monthly waves so feedback is collected while the experience is still relatively fresh.

Relationship CSS, on the other hand, looks at the broader customer relationship rather than one specific interaction. This is more often conducted as a yearly or periodic wave, with the objective of understanding how customers feel about the company, brand or supplier overall.

These two approaches answer different questions, so the timing, respondent selection and questionnaire need to reflect that.

The score is only part of the story

When running NPS studies, for example, whether someone gives an NPS score of 4, 7 or 10, the real value often comes from understanding what actually sits behind that score.

I’d say it’s probably the most important thing to find out.

Was it the product, the service, support, delivery, price or something completely unexpected?

This is how we actually know where changes need to happen and what affects our customers’ opinions the most.

This is why, sometimes, the most valuable part of the interview begins after the score has been given.

Good customer research protects the relationship, the reputation and the data

Ultimately, the essence of customer research is to help companies understand what works and what doesn’t, what needs more attention, and how the relationship can be improved.

When customers are contacted directly on behalf of a company, its reputation is also in our hands. A poorly handled call, excessive callbacks or an interviewer who is too pushy can easily turn research that was meant to measure the customer experience into part of the problem itself.

However, the way the research is conducted matters too.

We need to be talking to the right customer, asking the right questions, and they need to feel comfortable and respected each step of the way.

At the end of the day, in customer research, the respondent is not just another respondent.

They are still your customer, and we’re sure you’d like to keep it that way.

At GDCC, we support international customer satisfaction, NPS, after-sales, brand and Voice of Customer research across B2B and B2C audiences through CATI and mixed-mode approaches.

If you are planning a customer study and want to make sure you are speaking to the right people, asking the right questions and protecting the relationship and reputation along the way, get in touch.