Something which is of constant surprise when working with large service organisations is how hard it is for them to recruit people for research. This difficulty is a data point in itself, as it indicates how much distance there is between service providers and the people for whom they are providing a service.
We thought it would be worthwhile pulling together a how-to guide for clients, to help reduce the risks associated with this activity. This post is a collection of tips from around the office.
As an organisation you’ve embarked on a journey of discovery, hoping to understand how to design and deliver better services or products to your customers. Good for you! Whether you call them customers, visitors, clients, or partners, you know you have a lot of them and it should be relatively easy (right?) to get in touch with them and ask them some questions about their experience.
But if it was that easy, why haven’t you done it already?
Recruitment is hard. That is why there are so many companies dedicated to the craft. These companies charge for their services and for good reason. They have access to thousands of people in their databases, and can easily call on these lists to select people who are right for your need.
But not always. You may have niche requirements that you feel you cannot fulfil using an external recruiter. You also might feel that sensitivities around the sales process mean it would be better to contact your customer through your relationship managers or specialty customer-focused staff. These are all very valid reasons to conduct recruitment yourself but please, learn from us, this process can take a really, really long time. Delays can compromise the project timeline dramatically and therefore cost you financially.
When a consulting research or design company (like Meld!) proposes a start date to research it is highly likely that this date has been highly orchestrated to align with internal resourcing. Changes to this date can be highly disruptive to consulting research companies, especially small ones. If you are going to take on the role of recruiter then keep this date as sacred and have a back-up plan for what happens if you can’t meet it. For example, do you have another possible start date? Will it be ok if there are alterations to the research team personnel because of a date change? Can you afford to pay the consulting research company for delays if this is in the contract?
If you have thought all of this through, and you feel you have the time to recruit internally — three to four weeks as a guide — then wonderful! Go ahead. Go forth and muster those participants!
If you are going to recruit internally—and have the time to do so—start by asking these questions:
Once you have a clear understanding of the logistics of the recruitment process then you are almost right to go. Almost. There are a few more things you should be considering. The first is what is called the ‘screener’. This is fundamentally a list of requirements for the people you want to recruit for your research. As a guide, these are usually the things we specify:
The list above should be given to the person (or people) who will be conducting the recruitment. This will form ‘the script’ of the phone call they use to screen the participants.
When you have a list of people who have agreed to be part of a research project then there is a whole raft of work that needs to be done to book them in at suitable times for both the participant and the researcher. We use a variety of tools for this:
There is so much more to this than I’ve written here, but I hope it gives you enough detail to go forth and make contact with your customers. We wish you luck on your recruitment endeavour!
Here at [insert company name] we are always looking to improve our services by better understanding our customers’ needs. To do this, we have engaged [your research company name], a customer experience design firm, to interview some of our customers on our behalf. We’d like to invite you to participate and share your [subject of research] experience so that we can continue to improve our [service quality, service delivery, products, etc].
As a token of our appreciation for your time and insights, all participants will receive [incentive amount]. Each session will be [XX] minutes and be held on [date] at [address].
If you would like to participate, please call [recruitment organiser name] on [phone number] or email [email address] for further details. We look forward to hearing from you.
