So it's time to conduct a survey. Let's review the choices you have for getting the job done.

Written, or Paper Surveys, are very inexpensive to conduct, which is their primary, and just about only, advantage.

Most companies operate under the so-called "80/20 Rule", Which states that a relatively small percentage of customers will usually produce the majority of revenues. While it thus makes sense to focus a survey on those top accounts, paper surveys, with average response rates of under 10%, make any kind of targeting impossible.

Worse, low response rates, which tend to draw disproportionate responses from people at the two ends of the opinion spectrum - those who love you, and those who decidedly do not - skew the already untargeted responses. Add in the propensity for patterned responses and lost candor through comparison of current to prior responses, and the results are utterly unreliable for accurately benchmarking customer sentiments.

Telephone Surveys fare better in terms of response rate, but only to the extent that the time required to complete the survey is tightly controlled. Maximum participation is limited to a survey of 5 minutes or less. Any longer, and customer willingness to field questions fades rapidly. Think about the last time you were trapped in a phone survey. If you're like most people, after a few minutes, your only priority was to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Five minutes is about enough time to pose 10-12 questions, assuming no open-ended responses are required or requested. Those few questions are simply inadequate to generate an in-depth view of customer relations or needs.

Then there's the Cassandra Phenomenon which states that "in a survey environment where the respondent believes their identity is known, a strong positive bias filters into responses." In practice, many people have concerns over the possible consequences or ramifications of voicing critical commentary and having their name attached to it. Fear of being confronted with those replies, or being asked to defend or explain them, propels many people to soften their replies. Scores tend to inflate, and the overall results produce a rose-colored view of reality. It's not that people lie; they just stop short of telling you what is really on their mind. (For a more detailed explanation of this issue, click here.)

Internet Surveys are relatively easy and inexpensive to conduct, and properly constructed, produce fairly accurate results. The only problem is, their novelty has worn off and their viability is quickly disappearing.

In 1995, the average response rate to web based surveys was right around 40%. In 2000, that number had dropped to 25%. Today, response rates have sunk to around 20%. As a result, they still represent a small advantage over paper, but the advantage there is fading fast.

InfoQuest was designed to eliminate all of those flaws and weaknesses. The InfoQuest Survey Box (pictured below) drives a one-of-a-kind process that accomplishes the following:

• The highest average response rate in the world - 75% in North America, and just over 74% worldwide - enables you to closely target your top accounts.
• The ability to pose as many as 50-60 questions without loss of response rate.
• Fully attributable results, by account and by individual customer, collected in a manner that eliminates the biases produced by the Cassandra Phenomenon.
• Elimination of patterned responses and compared answers produces highly accurate results.