Silversea Water Cooler: Welcome! Part Two

[UKCruiseJeff]

J....you have made some excellent observations! Of course, with any survey on any topic, the questions and the options for response can skew the results. Even national statistical agencies have this problem with the surveys they conduct. They tend to have a large team of methodologists working to minimize that. There may be huge flaws in the methodology with the survey in question and self-reporting has its own issues. Wise to take the data with a salt shaker to hand! :)

 

 

That was why we started the satisfaction research agency ....:D

 

The most important question you can ask customers is how satisfied they are (were) compared with "what they expected". That is a completely different question to "How satisfied are you" which to me means pretty much nothing at all.

 

:)

 

Jeff

[mysty]

Agreed! Another issue that sometimes comes into play relates to screening questions used to determine the appropriateness of the survey respondent. For example, in the survey you identified as having suspect data, were respondents first asked whether they had tried both land and sea options? If not, the suitability of the respondent to this survey would also skew the data. Lots of ways to muck with data!

[spinnaker2]

Watching football streaming live from London...

Wish I could be there.

They showed pictures from the eye, looks sunny and Thames looked gorgeous.

[UKCruiseJeff]

Agreed! Another issue that sometimes comes into play relates to screening questions used to determine the appropriateness of the survey respondent. For example, in the survey you identified as having suspect data, were respondents first asked whether they had tried both land and sea options? If not, the suitability of the respondent to this survey would also skew the data. Lots of ways to muck with data!

 

 

You're becoming an expert now .... :D

 

Self-selection and asking the wrong questions about stuff has always been the issue and I worked for an organisation whose customer satisfaction was apparently increasing as it market share decreased. That was the main reason I left and started the agency.

 

You can prove anything you wish to if you form the survey "correctly" and you can interpret the results any way you want.

 

I have had a load of fun with it.

 

:)

 

Jeff

[UKCruiseJeff]

Watching football streaming live from London...

Wish I could be there.

They showed pictures from the eye, looks sunny and Thames looked gorgeous.

 

 

Today is a lovely autumnal day here in Blighty. It was crisp last night .... down to 3c .... and we're about to have a few days of changeable stuff. Had a lovely walk this morning ... everything is brown and getting ready for the winter slumber.

 

Jeff

[mysty]

You're becoming an expert now .... :D

 

Self-selection and asking the wrong questions about stuff has always been the issue and I worked for an organisation whose customer satisfaction was apparently increasing as it market share decreased. That was the main reason I left and started the agency.

 

You can prove anything you wish to if you form the survey "correctly" and you can interpret the results any way you want.

 

I have had a load of fun with it.

 

:)

 

Jeff

J..... I did spend 20 years working for our national statistical agency. :) I was a data analyst/statistician. I actually designed a course for the layman/laywoman on the basics of conducting a survey. I really should be punished for that sin! Surveys have become the bane of our existence with everyone and his/her uncle asking for ratings/opinions/perceptions on everything under the sun. Shop online and you are pestered to provide a review of the shop and product. Nowhere is safe! :(

[UKCruiseJeff]

J..... I did spend 20 years working for our national statistical agency. :) I was a data analyst/statistician. I actually designed a course for the layman/laywoman on the basics of conducting a survey. I really should be punished for that sin! Surveys have become the bane of our existence with everyone and his/her uncle asking for ratings/opinions/perceptions on everything under the sun. Shop online and you are pestered to provide a review of the shop and product. Nowhere is safe! :(

 

 

I wish I knew you when I started. I had no stats background at all .... and in fact I am still clueless ... as you can tell. :(

 

We broke loads of rules. Attirbution which was against all the research agencies professional bodies rules. Everything had to be non-attributable whereas anyone who took part in our stuff knew they might have someone contact them to put stuff right. My thing was what is the point of having bad results from high value relationships if you can't put it right. Secondly was pinning blame on VPs/Directors to ONLY create expectations that they can fund fulfill and deliver.

 

Back to kids to really learn things and go back to basics.

 

If you gave your kid a Lego set for Christmas and they looked a little uncertain and you asked "How satisfied are you with your Lego set?" they might give you high marks and say "The lego set is really good". You'd feel great, learn nothing and make the same mistake next Christmas and your kid would still be dissapointed and you would never know. In fact because you got such a high score, you'd buy Lego again next Christmas.

 

If you asked instead "How happy were you with your Lego set compared with what you expected?" you might get much less marks this year but then learn something really useful instead like "I was hoping for a scooter". You then might have spent your cash on a scooter instead of the Lego and used your cash better. Then both they and you would be more likely to be delighted next Christmas. That was at the heart of what I tried to do for corporations. Really simple. Both sides benefit and your cash is targetted to what is really important not what you presume is important. To me this seems really obvious and I really don't see much evidence of understanding this simple concepts more widely.

 

Giving a process by which corporations only created expectations they could fullfil, pinning responsibility for putting it right on identifiable line VPs/Directors - and hiring, firing and rewarding them on the results - and then spend cash on what customers wanted rather than what they thought or presumed they wanted. That was why we originally at one point worked with SS. :rolleyes:

 

Jeff

Edited October 25, 2015 by UKCruiseJeff

[mysty]

J.....you are obviously not clueless with regard to data! You raised excellent points about the "quality" of the data used in the results I posted from the article on cruising numbers. In order for customer surveys to be useful for the parties paying to have them done, there has to be some way for respondents to indicate if they want follow-up in regard to their responses while at the same time preserving the confidentiality of respondents who don't want any follow-up. Answers to questions relating to customer satisfaction depend largely on expectations. And like everything else, expectations can be unreasonable. So to somewhat "qualify" satisfaction versus expectation, questions need to address both. Open-ended questions provide the best detail but require much more work to analyze the responses. Obviously you managed to find a way to get the data you needed otherwise your company would not have been successful! :) So definitely not clueless!

[UKCruiseJeff]

J.....you are obviously not clueless with regard to data! You raised excellent points about the "quality" of the data used in the results I posted from the article on cruising numbers. In order for customer surveys to be useful for the parties paying to have them done, there has to be some way for respondents to indicate if they want follow-up in regard to their responses while at the same time preserving the confidentiality of respondents who don't want any follow-up. Answers to questions relating to customer satisfaction depend largely on expectations. And like everything else, expectations can be unreasonable. So to somewhat "qualify" satisfaction versus expectation, questions need to address both. Open-ended questions provide the best detail but require much more work to analyze the responses. Obviously you managed to find a way to get the data you needed otherwise your company would not have been successful! :) So definitely not clueless!

 

I actually did something really simple.

 

I convinced clients that it was counter productive in the longer term to create expectations you couldn't fulfil. A single booking does not make a long-term relationship. Marketing isn't productive to the long term brand if it turns out to be telling lies. If you as a business owner or CEO agree with that and you employ expenisive and competent VP's, then you give them complete and sole responsibility for only creating expectations for the areas for which they are responsible, and that they CAN deliver. So they are responsible for both the expectations that they have created and then what they work hard to manage through their team to deliver. If they cannot deliver, then they reduce what they promise is on offer or argue with their boss that it isn't deliverable and argue and compete for more resources. It is a simple either / or. Only promise what you can do or don't promise at all. You will not lose business. People are clever, but they do want to trust and feel confidence. They genuinely want to gve their cash - but want to feel confident they won't be dissapointed. In time your customers will trust you and know what to expect. They will be forgiving if you never promised it. If customers then are dissapointed with what they received you can reasonably and quite easily establish whether you "over promised" (cheated) or your customer presumed incorrectly they'd get something you hadn't. You need to then work out whether they had misunderstood or you had promised too much through "advertising puff". Customers are better to keep than spending too mucgh on gaining new temporary ones.

 

In the philosophy I agreed generally with all clients - including SS- a target of around 95% of customers should feel that what they received either met or exceed what they expected.

 

Jeff

Edited October 25, 2015 by UKCruiseJeff

[mysty]

Makes sense to me! Did most of your clients buy into your philosophy? It seems at least one of them has strayed to a certain extent. :) At least it seems that way based on self-reporting here.

[UKCruiseJeff]

Makes sense to me! Did most of your clients buy into your philosophy? It seems at least one of them has strayed to a certain extent. :) At least it seems that way based on self-reporting here.

 

 

Yes, they all did. They had to be otherwise they wouldn't choose to be clients and spend a packet with us and feel pain doing what the process mandated.

 

The issue has always since then been that people think that it is all about surveys and that surveys are really easy and cheap. We developed from paper surveys to the very first email surveys and then web based surveys. But it was never about surveys. It was about consulancy and working out how to align your limited resources in order to procuctively and cos effectively retain and harvest customers. Surveys plus how from them develop improvement proccesses. When surveys became something you could buy online cheaply and I'd made enough and I decided to shrug and move on.

 

And in answer to the other point. I had been a customer of SS and had always wanted to work with them. I felt I understood the potential and as a customer what I felt we could help better understand and develop. Then one day the right person (M) was in the right business lounge and he recognised me from a cruise as we'd met before. I'd just been to the Cannes Fim Festival and then on to the GP with wifey ... and he is based in Monaco on was on the same flight back to London as us. We chatted. What we then discussed in the lounge and then and as we were on the same flight, wife me, him and his VP over the next couple of hours meant that by the end of the flight we were in principle working with them.

 

His aspitations for the line were absolutely in line with what customers would wish them to be.

 

Jeff

Edited October 25, 2015 by UKCruiseJeff

[mysty]

Isn't it amazing how the universe conspires to put us together with people we should be talking to and interacting with? Every day I marvel about how that works! You obviously make a great first impression J! :) And your discourse is definitely compelling! :)

[UKCruiseJeff]

Isn't it amazing how the universe conspires to put us together with people we should be talking to and interacting with? Every day I marvel about how that works! You obviously make a great first impression J! :) And your discourse is definitely compelling! :)

 

Well, without us researchers and statisticians the world would not know that the average man only has 1.9999999 legs, although no one has yet met that average man ... although I have just cut my toenails so perhaps he is me. People often don't understand that an average person is rarely a typical person. And often an average person doesn't even exist. A crowd of people will always be a group of diverse and different individuals and you only ever misunderstand entirely if you conclude that a single average one of them is representative of all their views. That is where research and those concluding from it so often goes wrong.

 

Or we would not know that 32% of all road accidents are caused by people under the influence of alcohol, thus proving for the drinks lobby that it is the sober drivers who are dangerous as they are causing most of the accidents and therefore people should drink more if they wish to help make the roads statistically safer.

 

On the other point you make, you could equally conclude that the first impression I give is great and then after that everything goes downhill? The reality is that people often do not like what you have to say. We concluded early on that I only ever tell clients what they basically already know, or what they don't want to hear - or even worst .... both. It either makes you very popular or very unpopular. :(

 

Research and the conclusions from it can often prove anything you want! As you well know. :D

 

Jeff

Edited October 25, 2015 by UKCruiseJeff

[mysty]

Once again, agreed! :) And from An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope -

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. "

[spinnaker2]

The fine art of massage.

 

In this case, it's data.

[mysty]

Well said spinnaker2! Magic fingers have the spin doctors! :)

[spinnaker2]

Lies, damned lies and statistics...

 

Ne'er the Twain shall meet, as in Mark my words.

[mysty]

Bravo! :) You are a wit, spinnaker2!

[Mark_K]

Well, without us researchers and statisticians the world would not know that the average man only has 1.9999999 legs

 

Jeff

 

 

I wonder if they included Frank Lentini in their calculations ...

 

[mysty]

Mark, I love your sense of humour! :) Unfortunately he would be considered a statistical anomaly - in essence - an outlier!

[spinnaker2]

Huh...when you march in the military, don't you chant my left, my left, my left, right left?

 

Lentini lead the group who went in circles...

[mysty]

That provoked a laugh out loud moment spinnaker2! :)

[spinnaker2]

Sometimes my neurons actually fire and the transmission jumps the gap.

That lentini was a wonder in Bermuda shorts.

When people saw him, while they may not have said it out loud, the definitely thought something was afoot.

 

Or maybe three.

[mysty]

OK, you're on a roll here spinnaker2! :) Neurons are definitely firing!

[UKCruiseJeff]

Huh...when you march in the military, don't you chant my left, my left, my left, right left?

 

Lentini lead the group who went in circles...