Qualification Highlights
Experience Managing Online Communities
We have over six years of panel management experience, and the communities we have created range in size from hundreds to thousands of members, and through online discussions and polls, the community members assist clients by providing feedback, generating ideas, or refining and testing new concepts. Our online communities contain portals that allow panel members to interact with the panel community and participate in a range of research projects.
We have experience with maintaining and managing online panels for maximum engagement and results. A few of the online panel communities we manage include the SaskTel Business Advisory Panel, the SaskTel Consumer Advisory Group, the Water Security Agency Drainage Consultation, the recently completed Ministry of Education Anti-Bullying Consultation, and Insightrix’s SaskWatch Research™. We understand how to motivate and engage panel members and use items such as incentives (i.e., points system, draws), reward badges, and create engaging, visually appealing surveys and forums.
We also share information and results with panel members so that they know they are making a difference and that their views are taken into account. Our reports back to panelists include messages on advertising campaign results, providing updates on when a specific advertisement has been released, and updates on decisions, telling them that their feedback is appreciated and giving them details on and reasons for choices that were made.
Development & Implementation Of Panel Recruitmen Strategies
We advise clients on the design, development, and execution of panel recruitment strategies. To begin the process, we meet with the client to gain a thorough understanding of what they want to use the panel for and the results they are interested in obtaining. The client’s specific objectives for the online community drive the methods used for recruitment. We have employed a wide range of strategies, including recruitment through mail outs, targeting through social media, newspaper and magazine advertisements, links on our clients’ websites, telephone, and customer lists.
Experience Conducting Research Through Community Panels
Insightrix has been conducting qualitative and quantitative research through panels since 2008. For these studies, we have consulted on research design and panel management, offering our clients direction as they work with online panels. We have carried out research with panels ranging in size and on a wide range of topics. Some of the projects we have undertaken using online panels include advertising concept testing, new product/service testing, public engagement on social issues and policy development, new product development, branding initiatives, corporate decisions related to the delivery of customer services, and co-creation.
Many of the studies that we have conducted using online panels have been qualitative, and we offer expertise in moderating discussions in an online environment. For the quantitative projects we carry out, we have extensive data analysis capabilities.
Experience Conducting Research Through Community Panels
Some of the key features of our online panel software include customized portals, moderator tags, user-generated threads, social interactions among panel members in our base model, panel rewards including points management, and topline survey results. We can provide a self-service option tailored to our client’s specifications.
A key advantage of our software and approach to developing online panels is that our clients have the distinct advantage of being able to provide requests directly to our development team and have them quickly implemented in the software. This is distinctly different from “boxed” solutions offered by large multi-national companies. Their solutions are heavily marketed for an extensive period of time to recoup their development costs. Users are forced to wait for an extended period of time before the next version is available and new versions are often released at a point where the added features are no longer seen as innovative. Additionally, our software was created with a mobile-first design philosophy, meaning that the software was designed for the mobile environment and that the portal, surveys, and discussion groups are mobile friendly.
Customer Service
Insightrix provides a level of customer service that is second-to-none, and we pride ourselves on offering an exceptional level of customer service. Our customer service includes being responsive to client needs and requests. Further, we have a proven track record of responding to client inquiries very quickly. To ensure that our clients’ needs are being met in the manner that they expect, we routinely conduct client satisfaction surveys which include a series of questions regarding the service level we provide to our clients.
To ensure prompt responsiveness to the client’s needs for this project, Insightrix has a dedicated toll-free number for the sole purpose of responding to client requests. This telephone number can be set to ring multiple Insightrix staff at once or in sequential order of priority to ensure that someone answers the telephone when the client calls. This dedicated number will be available in addition to the existing set of telephone numbers assigned to each Insightrix staff member.
Insightrix will provide the client with direct access to support staff. While the industry standard is a communications dashboard approach using a web-based contact form inside the software, Insightrix feels that its clients deserve quicker, more personal communications. Insightrix will be available to the client by email and by telephone and will provide immediate response to any inquiries or issues that may arise. During business hours Insightrix will provide responses to technical issues within two hours and stay in regular contact during the resolution of the issue. We seek to exceed the typical same day/four hour response considered standard in the premium software service industry and work to resolve issues as quickly as possible. Further, the client will meet the people who will be providing support during training on use of the software. Insightrix feels that introducing major clients to the support staff fosters trust and accountability.
Qualty Control Experience
We undertake several measures to ensure all of our panels remain of high quality and in good health. We employ a double opt-in approach for joining our panels: after signing up for a community, a panelist receives an email that contains a link, and this link must be clicked in order for membership to be activated. This industry-best method ensures that the people who have signed up to the community actually intended to join, increasing the likelihood that they will be an engaged panel member. Once a community is active, we monitor member activity by tracking how frequently members participate in surveys and discussions.
We have strict panel management quality control procedures in effect for our panels, which include monitoring the numbers of posts panelists create, tracking levels of activity, reaching out to re-engage inactive members, monitoring churn rates, identifying fraudulent panelists, and conducting satisfaction surveys with community members to identify areas for improvement. We develop and implement communication and incentive strategies to engage panel members and increase response rates. We generate panel health reports that provide details such as the number of panel members who requested to unsubscribe, the number of new recruits within a specific timeframe, the current churn rate, and study participation rates.
Digital fingerprinting is also used to verify panelists and prevent duplicate accounts from being created.