With the circumstances around and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic developing so quickly, our industry has already started thinking and behaving differently.
With social distancing and the ever-present threat of full lockdown upon us, we have already begun to adopt new ways of delivering our important services to commercial and government clients.
We thought it would be useful to share an update and some pointers on how we plan on navigating the current climate.
- Show empathy and understanding: this relates who how we go about approaching research participants and working with our clients and suppliers. Times of uncertainty can be difficult and distracting for some people, and we need to be prepared to allow people more time to complete tasks and recognise potential challenges of asking for time and attention.
- Find the best way of reaching participants: for the most part, our approach to key quantitative research techniques (such as telephone interviewing and online surveys) will not change significantly through times of lockdown or social isolation. However, face-to-face qualitative research will become more challenging. Accordingly, we need to put thought into choosing the best fit technique.
- Utilising technology: while in-person depth interviews and focus groups may be more challenging to coordinate right now, we have a large suite of alternative research options at our disposal. Specifically, we already utilise tools such as online live chat focus groups, multi-day online workshops, FaceTime interviewing and screen-sharing apps to allow us to reach people in creative and engaging ways.
- Continuing to talk: now is not the time for us to be ‘going to ground’ and failing to talk to consumers. It’s arguable that times like these make it more important than ever to check in and understand the functional and emotional needs of customers and identify how you can respond as a brand or organisation. In our experience, businesses that invest in insights in times like these tend to recover faster.
- Remaining flexible: Zing! and its partners have already implemented (and will continue to implement) strategies to continue working as normal through times of voluntary isolation or even lockdown. For example, provisions are being made for some telephone interviewers to log-in and work from home and qualitative recruitment screeners have basic health testing questions to filter out those who may potentially be unwell.
Basically, it’s as close to ‘business as usual’ as can be expected, and in some cases we may even have opportunities to get richer insights than ever before.
With challenge comes opportunity, and we’re already seeing the upside in reaching participants in new and exciting ways.
We know this is an evolving situation, but rest assured we’re positioned well to respond to changing circumstances. We will continue to communicate with our clients and partners with any major changes if and when they’re required.
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