How to Use Qualitative Research to Design a Managerially Useful E-Service Questionnaire

E-service questionnaires must be content-aligned with the company or organization’s customer relationship management system (CRM). Four phases of qualitative research will ensure this alignment. The first phase is a qualitatively evaluative search of the practitioner literature on e-retailing, both B2B and B2C, and on CRM so as to capture evolving knowledge in both fields. The second phase is individual depth interviews (IDIs) with potential, current, and lapsed customers to map their e-interactive behavior and experiences. The third phase is dyadic depth interviews (DDIs) with the marketing manager and the website designer to fully understand the company’s current and potential e-service and CRM capabilities. The e-service questionnaire can then be designed according to the general guidelines presented in this article and using question-and-answer templates provided in the author’s previous article [14]. The final phase of qualitative research will consist of post-survey IDIs with a sample of the original survey respondents to clarify and elaborate on the survey’s findings, followed by a final manager-designer DDI to implement the findings.