Summary: Unstick your B2C and B2B research projects, or pull in research planned for later in the year, do it remotely now (phone, web), and save 20-30% in research costs while helping individuals and sectors impacted by lost wages.

In the coming weeks, many people will be captive at home either because of quarantine, school closings, work-from-home requirements, and/or reduced travel. Many non-salaried people will lose access to the jobs and projects that pay them (freelancers, building contractors, hourly wage earners, etc.) and many salaried people could be furloughed or laid off, hopefully temporarily.

Use Incentives to Help

While looking for ways to help, we realized that asking our clients to look through their 2020-21 research agenda and research dream list to identify those valuable research projects that can be done remotely – one on one interviews, UX research, concept tests, communication research – is one of the simplest ways to get money flowing to those that are, potentially, losing wages, while also delivering value (in insights and cost savings) to the company.

Delivering Mutual Value

The holy grail of customer experience is delivering mutual value, with ease. Kicking off research in the coming weeks with a plan to field it in April and May provides at least 5 points of mutual value:

  1. Accessing the People You Need: More easily recruit and gain access to hard to reach, or typically expensive, research respondents like small business owners/leaders, freelancers, parents, business executives, workers that are not typically near phones all day, tradespeople, and hourly wage earners.
  2. Helping Your Customers Financially: Contribute to the income streams of your vulnerable customers through incentives, that likely now mean more to them than before, or, if their wages are not impacted, give them a way to donate to those losing wages.
  3. Gather the Insights You Need the Right Way: Due to cost and timing, many companies resort to surveys even when it isn’t the best method for gathering the insights needed. In the coming weeks, consumers and business people will have, unfortunately, more time to give which enables you to use a better method to gather needed insights from your customers, prospects, or suppliers for innovation, experience design, product design, user experience work, win/loss, or behavioral work.
  4. Do it for Less Money and Time than Normal: We estimate a 20-30% cost savings for each project due to easier recruiting, the possibility for lower (but fair) incentives, and improved speed-to-results due to availability and willingness to participate.

We Are Lowering Our Research Rates

At Ceatro Group, we are lowering our research rates and staffing up to support these projects in the hopes of getting incentives flowing into the economy and especially the segments that will need it. We encourage our research/consulting peers to do the same.

Reach out to us if we can help you.