The British Gas ‘listening exercise’: a researcher’s view

It has been widely reported recently that British Gas is running a ‘listening exercise’ with a small panel of customers. These customers will be invited into British Gas’s inner circle and encouraged to ask questions, air their views and then report back publicly on their efforts.

Listening to customers is a laudable enterprise, particularly for a company which has received a lot of flak over the years. However, I do have some concerns over their methods and motivations:

1. The recruitment method is questionable

The company is recruiting people through their website, inviting would-be participants to explain in ‘100 words or less why you want to be part of our panel’. Not only does this preclude customers who don’t have access to the internet, it allows British Gas to screen participants based on their current views of the company and potentially create a significant bias within the panel. Furthermore, this method puts those with limited language skills at something of a disadvantage. Now I’m sure British Gas wouldn’t do this, but a little more transparency around the recruitment would be reassuring.

2. Twenty is a very small sample

Although this will predominately be a qualitative exercise, 20 is still a small number for a business counting such a diverse range of people as customers. I sincerely hope they won’t just be asking 20 white-collar, Guardian-reading middle-Englanders (like me) to participate if they actually intend to listen to views representative of their huge customer base.

3. Where are the intermediaries?

The description on the website suggests that this is going to be a purely in-house exercise with no third party facilitation. Again, I think it’s great that a company wants to get so close to their customers, but I know from experience that this can be tricky without help.  At FreshMinds Research we frequently run workshops with clients and their customers and it can be very difficult for the clients not to become defensive when their work or service is criticised.  This defensiveness can result in a breakdown in the communication process if it is not carefully managed by an intermediary who is less emotionally involved in the discussion.

There are also questions around British Gas’s ability to elicit information from their cutomers. I’m obviously not suggesting that only research firms are capable of asking questions of people, but there is a skill involved in encouraging respondents to really say what they are thinking. Unless questions are asked in the right way there is a real danger of leading people, meaning the information you gather contains more of your own opinion than of those you are interviewing.

All of the above leads me to question the motive behind such an exercise. Is this listening with a view to acting on the findings or merely a PR stunt? If it’s the former then I would recommend rethinking and then expanding the methodology.  If it’s the latter then I’d advise British Gas to be honest about it or run the risk of bringing research into disrepute.

Images courtesy of www.britishgaslistening.co.uk

Read more here

• British Gas asks customers to steer service
• British Gas’s ‘listening panel’: just hot air?
• British Gas embarks on ‘listening’ exercise

About the author

Kirsty is a Research Manager in our Research Expertise Development Team, and is involved with tailoring our methodological approach to projects across all the industry sectors we work in. Coming to FreshMinds from JRA Research, she has an invaluable wealth of experience, especially in qualitative research. Kirsty is certainly kept busy, running focus groups up and down the country, and is so highly valued she’s nicknamed the Queen of Market Research. She also supports Nottingham Forest, but nobody’s perfect.