Thought Leadership – By Dave Rothstein, RTi Research Do Market Researchers Want to be Trusted? And trust drives participation – especially participation for the right John is the head of Customer Experience (CX) for a large hotel chain. reasons. And broad participation from people that want to Jennifer is the CMO. John shares his latest report with Jennifer that contribute improves data quality – which improves trust. See where shows 40% of their customers thought their stay was enjoyable. Is this is going? Jennifer pleased with that report, or is she appalled? Probably the Tackling trust as an issue is hard. Where does one even begin? You latter. But for some reason, we in market research (MR) seem to be got it – by improving our CX. GRBN’s research shows a direct satisfied with this same low level of positive CX among the many relationship between CX and trust. If we can improve the CX we millions of respondents we engage each year. provide to our respondents and participants, a broader level of trust According to the latest GRBN Global Trust Survey, just 40% say they is sure to follow. find the research they participate in to be enjoyable. Wait, what? Trust MR Not Sure Don’t Trust MR There’s more. Right now, as highlighted in the same global research, Positive CX 59% 36% 25% almost half the people say they aren’t sure if they trust MR (45%). Another 16% flat-out don’t trust MR. As an industry meant to distill Negative CX 11% 22% 32% what people say, do, and think into meaningful and accurate insights, should we be concerned that only a third of the people Let me recommend a great resource on how to get started on trust us? improving CX – GRBN’s participant engagement Handbook, ENGAGE Let’s assume we do want to engender a higher level of trust. How 2.0 – a guide with 30 expert tips for improving the research does CX fit into this equation? The answer is that CX drives trust. participant user experience. GRBN Global Trust Survey 2020 - US Report © 2020 GRBN 8