Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire

If you haven’t heard yet, AT&T is dropping unlimited data! By the time I post this, it probably will be unavailable altogether. I'm sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with the timing of the Apple WWDC development conference where the new iPhone is expected to be announced - you know, the one that will probably make it even easier to consume hoards of wireless data. AT&T is letting existing customers keep their plans, but isn’t signing up new customers.

Now there will be two basic plans, one for ‘regular’ users and one for heavy users. If you believe AT&T, then this move will actually save most consumers money. But the problem is that people have no idea how much data they are using. Sure you can get apps to monitor your data use, and in reality, it’s only heavy video conference and mobile TV users who will surpass the new limits and who are causing problems, but it’s an easy decision for them – it ‘s the rest of us I worry about.

Is this a sign of things to come? Sprint still offers unlimited data, as I’m sure do many others. As the iPhone is released on more networks (if those rumours come true), then we will likely see the other carriers experience the same bandwidth problems that AT&T is experiencing.

p.s. for a good read, check out the previous post on this blog post “Are we in for a wireless traffic jam?”.

Furthermore, there’s some talk that 4G will deliver the ability for metered billing.

So what does this mean for research? Well, in one sense it bodes well for the use of Apps over the Mobile Web because Apps can be so much more efficient than the web. Furthermore, survey data is measured in kilobytes, let alone megabytes (until you start incorporating heavy multimedia transfer for display or capture). These plans allow for gigabytes – so we’re probably safe on that front… Apps also don't suffer from Latency like mobile websites do, so the experience is better (a little more on that here).

So will it truly matter to research? Users could become more hesitant to use their precious data allotment on surveys, no matter how compact our data is. Our primary challenge could become one of education in our screening and recruitment activities when we go to launch a customer satisfaction questionnaire, or any other mobile research program. Of course, we must also incent adequately to cover those costs AND the respondent's time.

Personally, I think the mobile Internet will eventually reach the state of the “regular” Internet, where most broadband companies stratify their offerings based on bandwidth (How fast can I get what I’m downloading), not total use (How much will it cost me if I download this)?

We have had good success getting people who are on a wide variety of networks to participate in a cellular survey, so frankly I’m not that worried. But, we continue to keep an eye on the evolution of the wireless marketplace, optimize our products, and work with our partners and clients to educate participants.

Meanwhile, the rest of the mobile world continues to trudge along the App path – Google now includes Apps in search results.

It’s all part of the fascinating evolution of mobility and research!

A customer recently called me and said "we have a big MCAPI project starting this summer. We've used Palms in the past with your PDA survey software for customer satisfaction questionnaires, but Palm is losing market share. What device should we use for our mobile data collection?"

I argued that market share in the consumer world is irrelevant to what gets the job done best for intercept research.

Some people think Palm is all but dead, but that's far from the truth. Did you know that Bono (yes THE Bono) just put hundreds of millions of dollars in to Palm?

And did you know that Windows Mobile is losing market share?



And no, it wasn't displaced by iPhone, but by RIM.


Yes, I realize that Palm is the smallest slice in this pie, but you don't even see Android on here (yet). Also, the Palm Centro was one of the best selling devices of 2008, with sales surpassing 2 million units in July of 2008.
The point is that you want to run your survey software on a device that is reliable and easy to use. It probably should have a touch screen and a keyboard, and offer good battery life. Palm and Windows Mobile both offer great devices in this regard.

I'll admit that Palm's story isn't all rosy, but they have a strong chance at re-winning some of that market share. ..and if you still don't believe me, check out this segment from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.