Top Facts about Self-Reported Data

Modern online marketing mantra dictates that user feedback should be the backbone of your strategies for the future. You need to ask users about their experience, their stay on your website and their thoughts on your products, services, customer care and the entire episode of buying from your brand. These feedback forms should be assessed and studies to learn lessons, make your services better and also improve your entire business infrastructure to make it more user friendly.

However, there are some hard facts about these self-reported data that you cannot ignore. In fact, taking them into consideration will make more sense of your self-reported data. Take a look:

• Memory Games: Users do not always remember where they first heard about your brand or how they ended up knowing about a certain product or service. You need not lay too much emphasis on the source of this data unless you get the feeling that the user is absolutely sure of what they are reporting about.
• Reality Bends: Some users tend to twist reality when they are filling up feedback forms. This behavior can be attributed to a number of reasons that are beyond the scope of discussion on this post. The twists in the tale usually focus on placing the user at the center of story. In this process, they may be bending some facts here and there.
• Who Cares: Most of your users will find filling up these feedback or self-reporting forms a pain. As a result, they will try to rush through the process or simply ignore as many fields as they can get away with. In fact, if you make the forms optional, they will skip filling it up at all! Be prepared for this kind of royal snubs from buyers, even if they are on your consumer list for years.
• Better Choice: Despite the short-comings of the self-reported data collected online, it is a much better choice than asking them the same questions offline on the phone. For example, if you ask them where they heard about your brand from, the answer usually hovers around “The internet!” This answer does little for your data as it is too vague for use. Even if you end up asking some specific questions to ascertain the source, it pays little dividends.