Myth Buster 3 – Myth: End Clients Can’t Do Anything About Participant Engagement. Busted: Yes They Can, With Our Help

Whilst the agencies have to take practical day-to-day responsibility for participant engagement, the end clients need to take overall responsibility. At the end of the day, it is their customers and potential customers being surveyed. It is their data and their insights, which are either suffering or benefiting. But end clients need help in taking this responsibility, and GRBN is providing that help. We are aware that many end clients do not have the bandwidth to actively manage participant engagement, hence they are delegating it to their agencies. If their resources are tight, this is totally understandable as they need to focus on their key deliverable, which is business impact. We need, however, to make sure that these end clients can trust that indeed their agencies are actively managing participant engagement and deploying best practices. Other end clients want to do more to actively manage participant engagement, especially as market research becomes a more and more important touchpoint to their companies, but these Insights leaders are frustrated at the moment, as they do not see an easy means to manage their agencies. “I have high expectations on my suppliers, but I don’t have the tools to hold them accountable” In 2018, GRBN piloted the ENGAGE MR coaching program, as a means to enable agencies, sample providers and indeed end clients themselves, to set participant engagement objectives and put in place an action plan to achieve those objectives. You can read more about the program here. The feedback on the program pilot so far is that it definitely works. Not only is data quality improved, but also the processes through which that data is collected can be made more effective, enabling these agencies to deliver higher quality data more quickly. The ENGAGE MR program and the attached participant engagement certification is a way for end clients to trust that their agencies are indeed taking care of participant engagement, and to give end clients the tools to actively manage their agencies on this matter if they so desire. This year we are looking to get more end clients to encourage their agencies to participate in the program and to become certified as Participant Engagement Champions. Please get in touch if you want to find out more.