Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

The story by reporters Tim Craig and Jon Cohen details how this is a big shift in the numbers since last month, when there was only a 3-point lead. Why is this lead opening up? Because, among other things, the reporters assert, "By wide margins, Virginia voters think that Obama is the candidate who would do more to bring needed change to Washington..."

For those of you who have been living in a phone booth, "Change We Need" is Obama's campaign slogan, word for word. And sure enough, when you drill down to the actual poll questions asked by this newspaper, one of them is:

"Regardless of who you may support, who do you think would do more to bring needed change to Washington?" [And while we're at it, two points if you can identify the grammatical error in this question.]

Regardless of whether or not you believe the "mainstream media" are biased, there is an important lesson here for your business, as well: Don't believe every number, just because someone puts a decimal point behind it. Customer satisfaction surveys, feedback reports, and other "polling" data that drive many firms' marketing decisions, are subject to the same biases and hidden influences as political polls are. If you want to be sure you'll improve your average customer satisfaction scores, there is a sure-fire way to do so: (1) Pay bonuses to your executives for improving these scores, and then (2) put these executives in charge of taking the measurements themselves. This will pretty much guarantee you'll get better numbers, no matter what the reality of the situation is.