Repeat Customers - Indian Restaurants and the Survey Taking World.

When I first moved to the US, I was very surprised to hear that restaurants and businesses within the category were really hard to get into, and be successful in. The margins are low, rents are high, and the overhead is steep.

This was surprising to me because, in India, owning and operating a restaurant is considered to be a "safe bet". In fact, a common theme is that many celebrities own restaurants, either through their own brand name or through a subsidiary because of the stable promise of good ongoing income. After all, 1.3 billion people will be eating a lot of food.

The reason for Indian restaurants being successful is simple - there's enough foot traffic in most first and second tier cities that you'll keep getting customers unless you literally are poisoning people.

In the research world, especially since 2021, we have all become acutely aware that high quality respondents are hard to come by. However, this industry does not have the same luxury in numbers that the Indian restaurant industry does.

Additionally, the experiences we create do not welcome them as good repeat customers.

While our industry does see a lot of traffic (better defined as: people, human beings) come through, the return rates are very poor. For example, when were you last in a panel and took a survey?

Personally, I attribute this to low payouts and poor experience.

On the survey side, the best numbers we've seen from entry to survey complete is around 20%. It's usually lower but let's generously use that number.

The first-time survey taker is analogous to the Indian restaurant goer. Many of them are there simply because they happened to stop by to get a bite, while visiting a different neighborhood and driving by. In the survey world, somewhere in the demand/supply economics of the internet, a respondent has been invited either through a game, or a panel, or a direct invitation. However, they do not necessarily want to participate again given the completion rates and experience is generally poor.

In other words, 90% of the time, we're turning people away from any given restaurant.

Taking any other internet experience as an example, e.g., shopping on Amazon, we get what we need most of the time. Certainly, far greater than 10%. If we didn’t get what we were looking for 90% of the time, we would simply not use Amazon again. Sadly, our survey experience is doing exactly that.

Is there any surprise then that we don't have good supply of respondents? Of course, as analogies go, I don't expect this to stand up to perfect scrutiny - but the point is - let's work to provide a better experience. And, let's not poison anybody. Always sage advice.