We are excited that you're sponsoring the WdM this year. What do you expect from the event this year?  

Michael Lersch: The bar is already quite high every year - the WdM offers a very extensive and high-calibre programme, and we are happy to be part of it again. We plan to join in many exciting discussions and learn about new topics and industry trends. For ourselves, of course, we hope to make many exciting new contacts.

Dr. Holger Liljeberg: We are also very pleased to be a sponsor again this year! I would like the contributions to focus even more on quality aspects, especially against the background of the current development of methods. In my opinion, it should always be clearly explained with all innovations how reliable and robust the results are and for which areas of practice they are - or are not - suitable.

How has the situation developed in your office? Is the atmosphere comparable to pre-Corona times or is home office the "new normal"? 

Michael Lersch: We have chosen a middle path and try to combine the best of both worlds. We run a hybrid approach with fixed office and home office days. It is important to us that there is time for small talk, and this is best when you meet people face-to-face. You also catch things that you probably would have missed otherwise because you wouldn't have been physically there for the conversation. You can learn a lot from body language, after all. On-boarding new employees is also easier when they are present, especially if they have little work experience. Of course, the home office offers colleagues many advantages, such as flexibility and time savings for travelling. That's why we combine both.

Dr. Holger Liljeberg: We have concluded a company agreement that gives our employees extensive flexibility in choosing their specific workplace and working hours. In addition, there are a variety of digital formats for exchange within the organisation, as well as with clients. Our weekly "massage day" is taken as an opportunity for all our staff to schedule a day at the office. We also emphasise team events that take place regularly - and more frequently than before Corona - to promote face-to-face interactions. Even if the physical get-together is of course limited compared to pre-Corona times, the increase in flexibility has rather positive effects on the work processes as well as the working atmosphere.

In light of the numerous crises around the world, what is your biggest challenge right now? 

Michael Lersch: You can already feel that companies pulled back on their investments and spending. There are certainly some companies that have been hit harder, but overall, we are not experiencing as precarious a situation as we and the industry expected.

Dr. Holger Liljeberg: For us, the biggest challenge of the ongoing crisis status is more to be found at the project level. We deal a lot with political communication. The various crisis situations are increasingly causing cracks in society and in social cohesion. In this context, it is a growing challenge to examine all communication not only purely in terms of content and design, but also in terms of fundamental communication style and wording against the background of political positioning in the population. This reduces the reactance of different groups of the population and reaches those people who are rather hostile to politics and/or who have no confidence in political institutions anymore. I will also go into this topic in more detail during our webinar at the week of Market Research on 15 May at 1 p.m.

How has 2023 been going for your company so far?

Michael Lersch: Considering the macro environment, we’ve started the year really well and continue to be optimistic. We are very satisfied with our growth both in the market research area and in the customer experience line of business. We’re especially excited about Qual as we have a lot going on right now, including the launch of our new online focus group tool, Forsta Discussions.

Dr. Holger Liljeberg: The extremely positive development of the last few years continues seamlessly. We were once again able to win significant framework contracts and have currently also expanded our staff significantly to be able to continue to carry out the large number of qualitative and quantitative studies in the highest quality. 

AI is on everyone's lips right now with the launch of the new AI tool ChatGPT. What's your take on the tool? Do you use it in your company?

Michael Lersch: It was a huge hype at the beginning, and everyone is still talking about it. But I wouldn't use it for important business or life decisions right now. It will definitely continue to be an exciting tool to consider, but I don’t think we should trust it blindly. I share Jörg Munke's opinion that you first must understand how the whole thing works in order to be able to control AI.
To come back to the question about usage: we are not currently using ChatGPT or similar tools in our company, but we are already working with this kind of AI solution in various areas, for example in text analysis.

Dr. Holger Liljeberg: We have made first attempts with content analysis of qualitative survey data and have had rather positive experiences. However, this does not replace the analytical expertise of our staff, rather it reduces their workload by focusing their attention more on the essentials. Such tools are also well suited for initial research on new research subjects, but only with caution due to the sensitivity to misinformation.

Specific Questions for Forsta

In many areas, the differences between BI tools and MR-based data analysis tools are converging. Where do you still see the differences between visualization approaches that come from business intelligence or from market research?

Michael Lersch: The basic idea behind the two approaches is based on a completely different starting point. Market research data are somewhat more specialized than financial data, for example, and therefore require a different approach. For me, however, there is clearly a coexistence of the two approaches. You can learn more about this in my presentation on 11 May!

How is it that many companies cannot demonstrate the necessary return on investment with existing CX programs?

Michael Lersch: There are a wide variety of reasons why companies struggle to demonstrate the required RoI with their existing CX programs. The most common is too much focus on just collecting metrics and not linking these metrics to the company's goals and CX strategy. This is because if the metrics are looked at in isolation and the CX program is not seamlessly integrated into the company culture, processes, and systems, it will be difficult to maximize and demonstrate the ROI of the CX program. You can learn more about this in the webinar by my colleague Jakov Cavar on May 9, or read our ebook The business value of CX; Designing a program that delivers, available on Forsta.com.

Specific Questions for Info GmbH

Mr. Liljeberg, you are also on the panel for the discussion on blind spots in recruitment. Which target groups make life difficult for you in your projects?

Dr. Holger Liljeberg:

Very often we (also) look for people who are critical of politics in Germany, which is often associated with a high degree of mistrust of the media and, of course, of opinion research. In this context, we are also dealing in part with target groups that are less relevant for classic market research, such as parents of children with limitations or disabilities, low-literate people, or people with cognitive impairments. In all these target groups, a very sensitive approach and suitable recruitment quotas must be used both in recruitment and in the implementation of studies in order to generate usable results in the end and to make reliable recommendations.

What trends can you identify in the field of recruitment? Is it becoming more and more difficult to get people to participate?  What are the reasons?

Dr. Holger Liljeberg: Due to the increasing shift of qualitative studies to the online field, the recruitment base is becoming broader. For this reason, we predominantly do without the "classic" pools of test persons from the studio operators, but instead recruit "cold-calling" based on very broad approaches, often even on a representative basis. Even if the no-show rate of the test persons is significantly higher in these ways and thus a stronger over-recruitment is necessary, this is very good for the results. In addition, very specific target groups can be mapped very well in these ways and qualitative projects can be carried out nationally with little additional effort - even away from the established studio locations.

-published in German on marktforschung.de-