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I've worked for Quality Digest for 15 years, and until our first-ever ISO 9000 Registrar Customer Satisfaction Survey (on page 30), I had never experienced heavy-duty advertiser pressure to not run a story.
The idea for us to conduct the survey came from Quality Digest subscribers. One asked why no trade magazine covering the quality industry had the chutzpah to survey registrars. I told him it was because we're all afraid of the results: It's tough to scrutinize your primary advertisers. What if your largest advertisers score low in the survey? What if they all cancel their ads? Think of the credibility you would gain, he replied.
After much internal debate and consideration, we decided to go for it. To make sure that our survey was accurate, we consulted with noted statistician and Quality Digest columnist Tom Pyzdek. He outlined a statistically valid methodology for designing the survey that would prevent bias from creeping into the survey questions (see "Survey Methodology" on page 36). We spent a great deal of time determining how to design the survey, what questions would be asked and how the data would be collected and presented. Our methodology also prevented ballot stuffing.
We attempted to survey every ISO 9000-registered site in the United States and Canada for which we had a valid fax number (about 15,000 sites). Survey participants had their choice of answering the survey questions via fax or over the Internet at a special Web site (courtesy of Scantron Corp.).
To ensure that our data was analyzed properly, we utilized the services of a leader in SPC software and data analysis, SPSS Inc. They graciously agreed to analyze our survey results and even dedicated one of their data specialists, Chris Costello, to the project.
The survey findings came as a pleasant surprise: The registration industry is providing good service in all categories. In fact, not one registrar--even those about which we've heard rumors--received a "bad" score.
Pleased with ourselves and with the survey results, we sent the data to the registrars for feedback. The representatives of four registrars stunned us by their reactions. One immediately threatened to sue and cancel his advertising, another told us our survey would put his company out of business, another begged us not to use his company name. One registrar explained at length how competitive the registration business is and how important it is for companies searching for a registrar to "do their homework" to ensure that they have selected just the right registrar to meet their needs. Our survey, he claimed, would prevent anyone from selecting a registrar that wasn't on the top of our survey's list.
Contrary to these complaints, however, several of the registrars that scored below the mean in one or more categories were delighted. They appreciated that we were the first to devote the considerable amount of time and money required to conduct the long-needed survey.
Because this is the first year that we have conducted this survey and because we didn't notify the registrars of our survey in advance, I decided not to publish each registrar's rankings. We've only published data about registrars that scored above the mean in each survey category. Did we do our readers a disservice by not publishing all the data? I don't believe so. We have planned a series of annual surveys of registrar customer satisfaction. If we do run this survey again next year, I plan on publishing all the data.
Please e-mail your thoughts on this survey--especially those about whether we should publish each registrar's ranking in future surveys--to spaton@qualitydigest.com . |
