Principles of customer service

AC 3.1 - Designing research tools

Checklist

You should now be ready to visit your chosen tourism organisation to collect information about the quality of the customer experience, using the research tools you have designed.

The more research tools you have the better the chances are that you will be able to produce a good report on the quality of customer service.

Questionnaire design

  • Have you designed a questionnaire which contains a number of open and closed questions? 
  • Is there sufficient space for you to write comments people make in response to open questions? 
  • Are you sure that there are no spelling or punctuation mistakes?
  • Do you know how many people you will survey with your questionnaire?  How many will you survey personally?
  • Are you sure that you can record personal information without asking people personal questions?
  • Do you know how you are going to use the information you obtain from your survey?
  • Does your questionnaire contain any perception survey questions?
  • Do you know how you are going to use the results of your questionnaire survey?

Mystery shopper

  • Are you sure that your mystery shopper checklist will give you the information you need to investigate the quality of the customer experience in your chosen organisation?
  • Do you know which areas or departments within your organisation you are going to conduct your mystery shopper survey?
  • Do you know what other members of your group will be doing at the same time?
  • Do the questions in your mystery shopper survey require quantitative (number) or qualitative (opinions) responses?
  • Do you know how you are going to collate the results of your mystery shopper survey?

Interview

  • Do you know who you will be interviewing?
  • Will you be interviewing a single person or a group (focus group)? 
  • Will you be interviewing on you own or as a member of a team?
  • Have you researched the role of the person/people you will be interviewing?
  • Have you thought about the types of question you will be asking, namely, open-ended, closed, follow-up or probing?
  • Have you practiced the questions you will be asking?
  • How will you record the responses to the questions?  Will you write the answers down or record the responses?
  • Have you checked that you are asking the correct questions?

Pedestrian Counts

  • Have you designed a form for recoding your pedestrian counts?
  • Do you know where you will be conducting your pedestrian counts?
  • Do you know how you are going to collate the results of your pedestrian counts?

Annotated map

  • Do you have a copy of a plan or site of the organisation you are studying?
  • How are you going to record information which might be put onto or around the map?

Photographs

  • Will you be able to take photographs when you visit your chosen organisation?
  • Do you know what it might be appropriate to take photographs of?
  • Will you be able to download your photographs and insert them into the report you write?
  • Will you be able to annotate your photographs to indicate the quality of the customer service at your chosen organisation?

Secondary research

  • Have you undertaken secondary research into your chosen organisation, using a range of websites?
  • Have you created a log of the sites you visited and the information you obtained from them?
  • Do you know which of the sites you researched were more useful and those which were less useful?
  • Has your research helped you to understand more about the organisation you are studying and the quality of the customer experience it provides?
  • Do you know how you are going to use this information in your report?