The Power of Conversational Research for Customer Insights

Priscilla McKinney: Hello and welcome to Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing Company podcast. I'm Priscilla McKinney, mama bird and CEO over here with you as always. And I bring all my friends on this show and we have these amazing conversations about what we're thinking about, how we're challenged, where we're pivoting.

What our actual clients need, what's frustrating them and what's changing in this industry. You are going to love the guest I have on today. Jennifer Reed has been on before because we're oldie goldies friends in this industry and she's a thought leader. She is this co-CEO and the chief methodologist at Rival Group.

And let me tell you, they are redefining how brands engage with consumers through mobile first communities and conversational research. I think we all know just intuitively that this need to make things feel more organic in order to get really great insights is just at the forefront of the conversation. But this is nothing new to her. She is a pioneer in research innovation.

She helped build Canada's first online research panel at Angus Reed Group way back in the 90s.

Jennifer Reid: We're back in the nubbies!

Priscilla McKinney: I love it. I love it. But it really is one of those things where you see that she helped shape the foundation of really what's going on in insights and really how companies understand how to build communities because that established best practices that are still widely used. So we are not talking to someone Johnny come lately here.

This is going to be a very expert conversation with Jennifer. So Jennifer, thank you for joining me today.

Jennifer Reid: That's a lovely introduction. Thank you so much, Priscilla. I'm happy to be here.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, I just enjoy the conversations I have with you. I feel like you have also maybe you haven't realized it, but you've mentored me a bit in this industry. And it's just so fun that you're just so free with your knowledge. And I think that's one thing that is really important about making sure that we are heading the right direction, even with the people we're competing with. And that's one thing I appreciate about you.

Jennifer Reid: You know, it's a rising tide floats all boats. I think that is a really important lesson in research that absolutely as we, as a practice, as we modernize, as we stay relevant to the brands that we work with, sharing information back and forth is kind of how we all get there.

Priscilla McKinney: I love it. I love it. Well, it shows and thank you so much. So if I ever forgot to tell you, thank you. There you go. So let's kind of dive in right into the crux of what you guys do because we all know as just humans before we come sit down and be a marketer, we come sit down and be a researcher.

We know that if we get a survey through a text message, it just feels different, right? And we are constantly having back and forth conversation in our own lives. Tell me a little bit what you're thinking though about what is happening psychologically that makes people just open up so much more than they would in a traditional survey.

Jennifer Reid: Yeah, I mean, I think that you started it with this idea that it is the means that we use conversationally to talk to our friends and family all the time. And so I think in research, constantly trying to move into that space has been something we've spent the last definitely 26 years trying to kind of always find. I think we found that the beauty of the mobile device is it's your mobile device.

Psychologically is a very personal, private device. Our relationship with our phones is different than our relationship with our computers. And that gives us, you're already sort of, it's that sort of intimate and personal space. And so because we're entering into that space on your mobile device, that psychologically we do get this sort of more robust kind of answer and people that are willing to share things.

I think that maybe they don't when we get into that sort of traditional horizontal kind of questionnaire. It's a screen, it's a next, it's a screen, it's a next, it's a screen, it's a next, versus what we're trying to do is kind of make the survey more vertically focused, which mimics more the kinds of conversations that we have. So one is I think just our relationship with the device itself, that that technology is different.

But I think also it feels more like an everyday conversation. When we say conversational research, what does that mean? That is about really challenging our research consultants to think about writing their questionnaires in a way that feels a little bit more natural. So it's both the technology and the approach to design.

I recently did a session on how to conversationalize a survey. And really when you step back, it's not, there's nothing really complicated about it. It's really just getting out of the way we were taught. We were all taught that a grid looks like this and questions sound like that. And if you really challenge that notion, no matter whose platform you're using, in what format, I think we can all make the design of our questionnaires a little bit better.

And I do want to make sure that, I think sometimes there's a misconception when we say that it's text-based mobile first. The feeling is that you're actually texting questions back and forth. We're using SMS to send out the invitation. That's a really high visibility channel. If you think about when you get a text message versus when you get the 700th email that you get in a day.

So that's kind of giving us better response. But from there, we're using a mobile web page. And that has really allowed us to be really creative with what we do inside of that space. So it looks like messaging. It's that sort of idea of kind of thought bubbles that go back and forth. But it allows us inside to have that kind of structured quantitative tool set that you would want to have within a survey and then also be able to have the visual representation of that be really modern.

Not to get too techy, but using things like the new liquid glass that allows you to really have the frame of that questionnaire look appealing and using some images, the ability to use video, all of those things kind of come together in order to make the experience really highly engaging, which is what we see over and over.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah, well, you're so right about our phones. I mean, do you go anywhere without your phone? I mean, my kids take them into the bathroom. I'm like, why are you taking that into the bathroom? I'm like, you can be without that. They're like, no, I can't. Maybe that's a different podcast. But I do like that. I think it is true. It's human psyche, but it's also this human relationship that is so it feels so intimate immediately.

And I know that when you talk to researchers, they are constantly concerned with research survey fatigue and whether or not people just go, they may finish the survey, but did they finish it? Like they just kind of just fell off a cliff somewhere. And so tell me about what you're experiencing with this technology and how you're using it that gets people to maybe lean in a little bit more to the survey as opposed to checking out of it.

Jennifer Reid: I think sometimes, so we've done a bunch of research on research where we've done sort of parallel surveys, and then at the end we've asked questions about sort of the satisfaction of the survey itself. And I think one of the things that it's really telling is that when I ask at the end of a conversational, a mobile conversational survey that's done on our platform, you know, how did you feel about the length of this survey? We get a sort of significantly higher rate of people with satisfaction.

Like the length was great and it was engaging and it was kind of fun, those kinds of measures is where we really see that lift. When you look at the actual amount of time it took to take, on average for people to take the survey, often the mobile surveys actually took a little bit longer. So that really tells you about that notion of the perceived difference and the feeling of fatigue that maybe the traditional way only took me five minutes and the mobile way took me seven minutes.

Those seven minutes I was more engaged and so it felt shorter. And so there's like this funny mismatch that happens and I think that's of anything is the stat that really tells you kind of how that engagement goes through. It's sort of tied to what I was talking about before in terms of the ability to make it visually engaging, that idea of the vertical scroll that we're comfortable with.

But it's little things like conversational feedback. I always say when I'm teaching people how to write a survey in this way, it's as simple as saying, let's say you're asking about satisfaction. And if somebody says I was extremely satisfied, I was very satisfied, it's appropriate then to respond with, that's really great to hear. If they say I was extremely dissatisfied, it's appropriate to respond with, I'm really sorry to hear that.

I'm so glad you're talking to me today. I really want to unpack where that dissatisfaction is coming from. It's that little bit of conversational piece that you're putting into how you think about the back and forth that happens in a survey or in a survey conversation as we think about it.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah. I mean, there's so much tech out there that's clunky. And as soon as it gets clunky, we just, I'm sorry, but it's just like, at this point, we're all so impatient. We're all so disgusted with things. So like we have such a low tolerance for badly performing tech. It's pretty insane.

Let me talk a little bit about a big issue of where conversational research started, because the research industry really thought about conversational and SMS enabled survey when brands were trying to crack the code on the young consumer, know, kids these days, right? But tell me a little bit about what you really are seeing because I know for me, my parents are 85 and they are very tech savvy.

So tell me what you're seeing and how you kind of deal with this. Maybe it's almost now a misunderstanding of who is using text or how good they are at it.

Jennifer Reid: I would say that sort of pre 2020, I never had a conversation with a client or prospect or brand that I was talking to, where they weren't immediately concerned about, I get that this makes sense for me for 20 year olds, but is this going to work for 60 year olds? The pandemic kind of gave us this gift in a way for those of us it was it gave and it took away for sure.

But one of the gifts that we sort of got in a time where we couldn't meet face to face is it really got everyone on a pretty level playing field. I mean, I don't know about your kids, but my kids, they talk to their grandparents on FaceTime all the time. They text with my parents all the time, and my parents are in their late 70s. And that's not technology that is sort of concerning for my parents, my friends' parents, or the older respondents that we see at all.

Certainly, it works better for young people. I see that over and over again. But the use of QR codes, we all know how to use those now.

Priscilla McKinney: You mean they stopped actually taking pictures of them. Right, right. Yeah, but my mom sends my kids Insta reels. So she obviously knows how to use this phone.

Jennifer Reid: Right, exactly. So we're not seeing any fallback among older people whatsoever with respect to using this approach. And I have some communities that skew older. I have one particular community that is for a cruise line that sort of focused on people that regularly take cruises to gamble. And they have the best video feedback, I think, of any community that we have.

Maybe older people don't care so much about exactly how they look or being sort of perfect. You kind of get over a certain age and you stop caring what people think of you. I have some great videos of one particular older gentleman talking about, you know, I just I can't be bothered to like text this all out. So thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to answer this question with a video because it's just actually so much easier.

So we see not only the same kind of engagement among an older demographic, in some cases we even see elevated engagement.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah. I think that just has to be set out loud because it's still, I think maybe your gut kind of is like, yeah, technology is for kids. No, that's just not the way it is anymore. Okay. Well let's shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about a pretty tough issue.

The research industry right now is in the middle of what a lot of people maybe quietly are calling a fraud crisis. Some people are saying it pretty loudly. So it just depends who you're talking to, but it's a lot of things. It's bots, it's click farms, it's aggregation of different panels. It's people gaming the system. So real people gaming the system for rewards.

So in light of all of that, what made Rival Group decide that the answer was to build your own panel. This was very shocking to me this year to learn that you were going to start from the beginning in a time when most people, most companies that you go to do not own their own panel. So you've decided to create your own panel, which is a heavy lift and work around this problem through other means. What are you guys thinking over there?

Jennifer Reid: I mean, I think for us, I feel like it is the bringing together, it's the sum of all of our parts. So last year, we merged the Angus Reid group into the sort of Rival Group family of brands. So we have the Angus Reid Group, we have Reach3, Insights and Rival Technology are the three brands inside of our group now. Angus Reid brought with them the sort of premier panel in Canada.

And so we got this team that already understood how to build panels. And so the natural extension of that is to say, we want to build that in the United States as well. That combined with all of this community building experience that we have really lets us think about panel building more like community building. And they're kind of two sides of the same coin, but in a community you're working a little harder on engagement that is beyond just the points program than maybe we have traditionally in panel.

And so we sort of took this team that we had, this knowledge base that we already had on how to build panels, we're able to sort of take that sort of community experience that we have. And then of course we have this platform and the platform itself gives us this opportunity to have this very modern mobile first kind of panel that I think maybe exists in certain pockets in the industry, but not necessarily where the big sources are.

And as we were just talking about, it's sort of a good segue from the question of younger people and older people and how they react into panel building. This is the third time in my career that I have built a US panel. As you said in my intro, I built what I think was one of the very first online panels in North America at the original Angus Reid Group, which eventually became the Ipsos ISE panel. I also built the panel that we had at Vision Critical, which is the seed that is now the Maru Blue panel.

And never in my career have I been able to recruit young people at a reasonable rate. So we're able to sort of go out and recruit and we're finding that we're getting about a third, a third, a third in terms of sort of under 30, 30 to 45, 45 and older. That is a real advantage to be able to sort of much more easily attract young people to get them engaged, to get them involved in the conversation because of that mobile thing.

So all of those things together and you're right, quality is a challenge. And so the best way for our research consultants to feel comfortable that the quality of the data that they're bringing to their clients is top tier is to be able to use their own source that they know, they can see, they touch, they are involved in the building and how it works.

Priscilla McKinney: You know, you get an interesting little self-selection there when you're recruiting people for Mobile First and for Panel and for communities that are very engaging through the same engaging technology that you're about to use to question them. And I think that that is an extra unclunkiness to the process.

And I can see how that, there are already people who have shown that they're going to answer things through text message, through video that seems to be already their M.O. And so it seems like it naturally follows.

Jennifer Reid: Yeah, and our platform certainly works with email. Email is one of our beliefs, that we want to be able to give a respondent choice about how they're going to respond to us. So email, SMS in some markets, WhatsApp are all sort of choices that they can make. And what we're seeing is about 75% of people are choosing SMS over email.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah, I certainly would, but I understand it is about meeting customers where they are. And to the point what we said at the beginning, whenever someone is in their more natural state, they're in a more organic flow and they're probably going to give you more, better insight, just top of mind kind of thing. So I think that's great.

Let me put this into real terms because this is why we have people on the show to say, yeah, this is all great in theory. What actually happens? And you're just so lovely about the way you really are transparent about how this industry works and how you talk to clients and really what they're facing. But so kind of paint a picture for us. Tell us what it looks like when you're sitting across from a client and they're used to pulling these large established sample providers and then you tell them, we have a fully owned video validated panel. So what does that sound like? What's the conversation? What's the reaction?

Jennifer Reid: Yeah, I mean, I think surprisingly most of our clients assume that we have our own panel. So it's actually been the flip, which has been previously we've had to say, well, when you want to talk to the market, we have partners. Now we're able to say, yes, of course we have our own panel because it sort of makes sense to them, given that we're trying to talk about this particular methodology that we would sort of extend that all the way through to panel.

Our clients, the relationships that we have with our clients have a lot of trust with their research partners on Rival Tech, with their customer success managers. We get a lot of feedback that rolls around of, you guys are like members of our team. And so that trust I think extends into the panel piece of it.

And it really allows us to start having conversations around, like you have a segmentation, well we can run that through the panel so that we already have that ready to go for you. It's really about removing additional friction from that relationship and making the research a lot more efficient. It's funny, we were presenting in Chicago a few weeks ago and our client was on stage and I think she wasn't really planning on saying this piece.

She was a little apologetic about it on stage, but she was talking about a big ad hoc project that she had also done. And she's like, honestly, the ad hoc project was really reasonably priced. She was presenting with John Doerr. She's like, I'm sorry to say that, John. And I was sitting in the audience and I promised myself that I would not interject. And so I didn't, but I thought to myself, you know what, you shouldn't be apologizing for that.

I mean, that is the whole point. The whole point is that when you can one-stop shop your supplier and they have control over the technology, they're bringing you the experienced consultants, and they have control over that audience, it's more efficient, it all kind of pulls together in a way that I think we can really bring our best foot forward.

And so that's really what we're seeing with our clients right now is really they're very much embracing this idea of our ability to bring what we call audience to the package of what we're able to provide.

Priscilla McKinney: I love that. But just as a thanks for coming on, I would like to give you just a chance to talk a little bit about some of the changes that are happening over in your place. So tell us about how the whole company is coming together. I mean, it's not brand new news. It's not breaking on my podcast, but you're really a family of companies.

And I know for people who listen to this podcast, they know this industry, but yet sometimes they miss what happened and what group came to what group. So just give us a quick overview of that so people know what's going on in the industry.

Jennifer Reid: Yeah, absolutely. I think for us, it's really about what we call the trifecta, our ability to bring the tech, the consulting and the audience all together, the opportunity to sort of build and extend products on top of that. And so not only can we offer communities or consulting services, not only can we offer communities that now we have the ability to have sort of voice of market kind of engagements and platforms where a client says, okay, well, I don't really need a community or a community isn't appropriate for me, but I want your tech.

So the opportunity to sort of match that together with a more of a market level audience is something that we can bring to the table. And then it allows us to start to sort of churn out interesting syndicated type products, because this is how these things all play nicely together. We've just launched in the US a syndicated product called Underwritten and it's about insurance among Gen Zs.

That's a perfect example of I have these really great consultants that have tons of experience in financial services, now they have this access to sample, the ability to bring them together. And of course I would be remiss to not talk about how AI plays into it. I'm required by law and by contract to always talk about AI.

But how AI plays into that, the ability to build, if you start to think about knowledge bases, if you start to think about synthetic personas, all of those things are absolutely based in quality human data. That's what we're really seeing, that these can be tools that really help our clients get more speed, more elevation, makes their research last longer because they're able to sort of more easily refer to it and bring it all together.

But the audience piece of it is really elevating to that. And every day on any issue, I can pull a smart and experienced research consultant, a software engineer, an AI expert, a salesperson together in the same room, because those are all people that live inside our family, and we can co-innovate together. And so it's really going to make the innovation that we can bring to the table a lot faster. That's just sort of some of the highlights. So trifecta is the word that we use every day within our group.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah, yeah. And the Rival Group, the trifecta being Rival, Reach 3 and Angus Reed Group together. So you can hear from this conversation that Jennifer is very approachable. It's Jennifer Reid, R-E-I-D. You can reach her on LinkedIn, the co-CEO and chief methodologist over at Rival Group. Jennifer, thank you for coming on the show.

Jennifer Reid: Thank you so much Priscilla for having me.

Priscilla McKinney: And from all the peeps here at Little Bird Marketing, have a great day and happy marketing.