Interview with Marcus Schatilow & Thomas Maiwald-Immer, QuestionPro

"Online communities provide insights into worlds of life that are still often unknown to us"

Contrary to the frequent assumption that online communities are a purely qualitative solution, QuestionPro points out the quantitative potential of the method. With enthusiasm, Marcus Schatilow and Thomas Maiwald-Immer present their software for online communities and show how the technology provides real-life insights.

 

You are holding a WdM web seminar on May 16th entitled "No Limits with Online Communities!" What excites you so much about online communities?

Marcus Schatilow: My enthusiasm for online communities began back in the late 2000s, when I was involved in the development and marketing of my own community solution at my previous employer. On the other hand, it was already clear at that time what new, true-to-life insights community technology makes possible in combination with good community management and trustworthy moderation. I will never forget how participants in one of the first online communities took us into their bathrooms to talk about oral care. This went so far that we received photos and videos from the bathroom and even from the oral cavity. Some of them took some getting used to, but they were quite deep, realistic insights that backed up the great findings from the online group discussions and forums. And that was just the early days of online communities!

 

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: Yes, for me, or rather for us here at QuestionPro, online communities and the opportunities and insights they offer are simply fascinating every time. Communities offer the possibility to study different stakeholders on one platform. For example, you can set up and simultaneously conduct a single community with different customer target groups, competitor customers, employees or, in the B2B sector, with suppliers, service providers and others involved in the value creation process. In this case, the respective stakeholder groups cannot, but do not have to, interact with each other. But you enjoy the advantage of having all the data and insights in one system.

On the other hand, our community solution, for example, offers the USP that you can conduct both qualitative and quantitative research fully with the respective stakeholder groups on one platform. No matter whether it is design thinking, behavioral approaches, or classic qualitative and quantitative market research. One can qualitatively discuss topics asynchronously with the participants in forums, or simply observe them, create innovations together in the idea board, work synchronously on topics together by means of (video) group discussions, and obtain deep and situational insights from everyday life with mobile diaries. And this is just as agile processes in the company require and Customer Insights Managers can optimally integrate into sprints and other processes with the insights gained.

In addition, qualitative insights can also be presented in QuickPolls to all or a selection of the community participants for voting. The big advantage of our software, however, is that the complete survey software is integrated in Community. Therefore, one can easily set up methodologically sophisticated and complex quantitative surveys, conduct them with the community participants, analyze them and follow the results "in live" in dashboards - no matter if it is a semi-monadic product test, a monadic A/B ad test, a van Westendrop price test, a maximum difference scaling or a conjoint analysis.

 

Marcus Schalitow: I absolutely agree with you, Thomas, that's unique. And due to the integrated connection to online panels, it is also possible to obtain opinions directly from external customers and non-customers. You are not stuck in your "own juice", but you quickly get a representative market picture and can think outside the box. Customer data can also be exchanged, verified or enriched between a community and other internal customer systems, e.g. CRM, via so-called APIs.

For the participants, I see further advantages in the fact that communities enable participation independent of location and time. In addition to the advantage of being able to guarantee regional distributions in such a cost-efficient way, heavier but highly interesting target groups, such as parents of small children, managers, doctors, senior citizens, etc., thus also have the chance to actively participate in the communities. And the ability to participate in the community both via the browser and via an app offers participant-friendly usability as well as the opportunity to dive deep into the lives of the participants when something crucial happens at the “Moment of Truth”.

 

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: We are also enthusiastic about the technological developments of recent years. The ability to have participants record videos in real life situations, which are transcribed immediately after recording with AI support and analyzed using semantic text analysis, make it easy to be "fans" of Communities. And this is just one use of this technology, which will of course also be used to analyze qualitative insights from the forums or quantitative open-ended questions, so that the effort required to analyze the number of open-ended responses from the participants can be increasingly dwarfed. Frankly, this is certainly not currently a substitute for qualitative, in-depth analysis by trained researchers. But tendencies and quick insight in the real life of the participants and a pre-structuring is already possible with it today without hesitation.

Sign up for the session at Week of Market Research, on May 16, at 12h CET (in German):
"No Limits mit Online-Communities!"

 

In your opinion, how has the relevance of online communities for market research developed in recent years?

Marcus Schatilow: As I said, online communities have been around since the late 2000s and have long been discussed in the market research industry as MROCs. And although they have been around for so long, people have always been somewhat reserved about them. People were always happy to test and experiment, but - except for a few customers - they didn't fully recognize the potential. Ultimately, however, the limitations of the Corona pandemic have led to a mind shift. Currently there is almost a feeling that this is a new technology. And I am personally pleased that the main argument, "you have to sit behind the observation mirror to understand the customer", has now been pushed far into the background - you can also participate in online communities as a "silent observer". Ultimately, the questions to be answered and the target group should be the only decisive factors in the choice of survey method - and not the feel-good atmosphere in a test studio and a business trip.

 

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: Yes, that's true. The technology has been around for a while. However, it has evolved greatly to incorporate other technologies - such as mobile, AI, video. Also, online communities were long seen as a purely qualitative solution. And this is still in many people's minds today. Yet, the quantitative potential, or the combination of qualitative and quantitative research, is enormous, as demonstrated, for example, by our client Zalando with its beta-testing approach during our X-Day.

 

Marcus Schalitow: And Zalando is a good example of how powerfully you can use online communities nowadays to gain customer insights quickly and cost-effectively, and thus, above all, avoid mistakes and inspire customers.

 

What exactly does QuestionPro offer? Just the software?

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: QuestionPro offers further technical solutions in addition to software for quantitative market research surveys and qualitative online communities. On the one hand, we support companies in setting up and managing an organization-wide market research repository with the project management tool "Insight and Research Hub". The aim is to create, conduct, store and document market research studies in a structured manner - in other words, to increase efficiency and effectiveness within the company. The projects can be found quickly and easily by all those responsible or other stakeholders without any major search effort, thus promoting transparency and quality assurance. In addition, QuestionPro offers technical solutions to optimally set up and execute experience management in companies. These tools and features for touchpoint analyses along the customer journey or reputation management support our customers in obtaining, structuring, and analyzing CX data.

 

Marcus Schalitow: Furthermore, our service portfolio includes both technical and methodological consulting on how market research and experience management projects should be set up and executed. In technical consulting, this often involves the question of feasibility and implementation. In the methodological area, the consulting offer includes advice on target groups, sampling approaches, questions or questionnaires/guidelines, simple and complex statistical analyses as well as evaluations in the context of do-it-yourself projects. In addition, we also offer our customers full service, i.e., QuestionPro takes over the entire market research and experience management process from A to Z for our customers. Within the scope of methodological consulting, we also provide advice on online communities, e.g. for a successful start or low participant mortality in the community. We also take over the complete online community management as a full-service including moderation.

 

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: And not to forget our access to worldwide online access panels with more than 22 million participants.

 

Who is your offer intended for? For institutes or also for contracting companies themselves? What should be taken into consideration when recruiting members for the online community?

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: Our offering is aimed at anyone who wants to comprehensively understand their customers, the markets, and the competitors. Ideally, this means companies that want to collect data efficiently, derive insights and measures effectively, and ultimately make their organization more customer centric. Regardless of the industry or the size of the company. Our customers therefore include institutes as well as commercial enterprises, universities, etc.

Marcus Schatilow: When recruiting for an online community, you should make sure that you recruit the target groups that you really want to have in the community. This sounds trivial, but unfortunately it is not always self-evident.

In addition, when recruiting, make sure you have a good mix of participants, whether based on sociodemographic characteristics or on personality dimensions, attitudes, and motives. The latter are highly relevant in the composition of online communities. For example, with a good mix of personalities, I am always amazed at how - with the right motivation from the moderator - online communities can encourage the group of introverts, who are often neglected in market research, to make very valuable contributions and provide insights into their worlds of life, which are often still "unknown" to us - even on very intimate topics. One example is the community of our client WOW Tech, which is all about the "love life" of us humans. In general, I have learned with online communities that it is ultimately always a matter of community management and moderation how well online communities work, if you have paid attention to a good mix in the target group when recruiting participants. And if it is indeed difficult, then fortunately it is very easy to quickly top up the community with further participants - either via the panel connection or via customer data from our clients.

 

How exactly does the connection to external panels work with QuestionPro?

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: On the one hand, there is an "Audience" module integrated in our software that you are welcome to use. It allows access to 22 million panelists worldwide directly from the software. Furthermore, you can commission panel projects via our Panel Sales Team. One creates recruitment specifications for the community or a survey within the community, contacts the panel team and can commission the execution of the study. In both cases, the costs incurred are fully transparent to the client. In addition, only interviews, that do not contain a "bad response", have to be paid for. To be able to guarantee this, we are supported by an AI-based algorithm that already checks the response behavior for "fake answers" while the participant is answering the questionnaire.

The third option is, of course, to fall back on one's own "preferred suppliers" in the panel area and to work together with these accustomed providers. In this case, we simply provide the redirect links for survey projects.

 

For which areas of application do online communities offer particularly great added value?

Marcus Schatilow: Due to today's technical advancements, our maxim at QuestionPro is "No Limits." Even if it once makes sense to show this in real life due to the product to be tested, or a personal one-on-one interview seems reasonable, one can invite the participants from the community to a test studio or factory floor. Or one can send the products and other materials to the participants by mail. The experience with the return of the materials provided has been consistently positive. After all, an online community does not exclude the possibility of meeting in the real world or getting in contact with real products. This approach also applies, for example, to innovations that people are afraid will be published too quickly to the public in a community. In this case, however, it has been shown that continuous communities can identify participants with whom a relationship of trust can be built up and that this exclusive community group can be used precisely for these "special cases". This "exclusivity" promotes secrecy and loyalty to the community also.

 

To what extent can online communities contribute to the customer-centricity of the company?

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: Online communities, both short-term communities of just a few days and continuous ongoing communities, promote and enable true "customer centricity" in companies in two ways. The first is the "real world data" gained from the community participants. By this is meant that you can dive into the life worlds of the participants and really understand them. Also, participants can actively participate in e.g. product development sprints and directly share their opinions and ideas. This applies to customers, employees and, depending on the composition of the community, non-customers as well.

On the other hand, it is possible at any time for employees, management, and top executives to attend the communities either as "silent observers" or to participate themselves as active/passive members and thus directly gain a comprehensive understanding of the customers and markets. Of course, this is not suitable for all topics, but ultimately depends on the skill of the moderator and the commitment of the employees.

Of course, the timely provision of results and insights in dashboards also promotes customer understanding for true customer centricity, even if one does not directly follow the community.

 

Are there also areas where online communities reach their limits and where it would be better to use other methods?

Marcus Schatilow: As I said, for us online community is boundless, "no limits". Of course, there are topics, as already outlined, where you should speak directly and "live" with each other or also experience the spontaneous reactions and emotions of the participants. But on the one hand, AI-based technologies are already in the starting blocks that can recognize emotions in facial expressions and gestures as well as in the voice. On the other hand, there is the advantage that one can simply access the community participant field. Alternatively, one can recruit external community participants via access to online panels or proceed "classically" via other recruitment channels. The participants recruited in this way can then also (temporarily) register in the community, so that the profile information and other aspects are available.

 

Who should not miss your webinar?

Thomas Maiwald-Immer: Our webinar is aimed at everyone who wants to make their company truly customer-centric and understand their customers and employees comprehensively and deeply.

So, customer insights managers, market researchers, marketeers, customer experience managers, employee experience managers, managing directors - but also data scientists and developers of AI to optimize algorithms on human insights from online communities.

 

Marcus Schatilow: And it's also for all those, who still think of online communities as a qualitative method, and thus miss out the potential of the whole variety of methods.

 

ABOUT

Marcus Schatilow has been Head of Customer Insights & Experience (EU) at QuestionPro for a year. Before that, he worked at the IFAK Institute since 2007, most recently as Head of Consumer & Customer. After his training as a banker at the Sparkasse, he studied business administration at the Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg.

 

Thomas Maiwald-Immer has been Head of Sales (EU) at QuestionPro since 2017. Before that, he was Key Account Manager for customer satisfaction measurements at Honestly MT GmbH. He studied business administration at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg.

 

Interview published in German on marktforschung.de