Some Musings About Online Chats [4.28.10]

Preface – if you’re not sure what an online chat is, you might be a bit lost here. Please refer to the “Our Work” section of our web site for details on chats and when they should be used.

 

As I write, I am on the tail end of the largest online chat group project I have ever done.  Karen (here in Florida with me) is chatting with teens in the UK.  Thousands of miles away, Stefano is seated somewhere in Italy mixing it up with adults scattered throughout his country.  Earlier this morning, I wrapped up the last of a series of groups on the same topic with “mates” in Australia.  In a few days, we finish in the UK and then Karen begins work with consumers in Mexico.

Although I got up at 2:30am to start those Aussie groups (it was early evening down under), I’ve kissed my kids goodnight each night of this project.  I think Al Gore invented the Internet for online chats.

My company has been doing online chats since 2000. We must have done at least a few thousand by now.   You name the topic, we’ve done a chat on it.  We know chats and we have a lot of thoughts on them that are time to share. Some are for clients and some are for moderators but everyone can learn something.  Here goes:

If you have not done an online chat, get with the program.  By my count, this is 12 year old technology.  It’s refined.  The platform is stable.  You can obtain the truth.  I am even ready for the next generation of the platform, whatever it may be.  

Know the limitations of chats.  Nothing beats being face-to-face with consumers.  Repeat - NOTHING.  Let’s not try to make chats something they are not and let’s not make excuses for what they are.

Telephone focus groups are not better.  I used to wonder, “Why not just do a telephone focus group in place of a chat?”  After all, couldn’t participants get their comments out quicker and wouldn’t we be able to hear the emotion in their voices.  I wondered this until I did a telephone focus group.  It was awful.   No one knew when to talk.  We stuttered all over one another.  And people were obviously tuning out (surfing the web, checking email) as the group went on.  We still needed to have people look at stimuli online so we were not far away from the computer anyway.  It is simpler and better to consolidate the methodology to the net and we can keep them focused on the chat once they are there.

Chats take a lot of work.  Even more work than a normal in-person group if you do not factor travel time in the equation.  There is a guide to write and upload, usernames and passwords to create, stimuli to upload and format, and transcripts to download and format.  For some tasks, there are no parallels in the offline world.  Stimuli is especially difficult to manage.  In an in-person group, a client can just hand the moderator a concept at the last minute.  Not so in a chat.

Managing a chat group is an exercise in controlled chaos.  You have to watch the clock, manage who comes into the group, converse with and learn something from the participants, take a sometimes constant stream of input from the client,  and filter out random comments from observers that have nothing to do with the guide.  Then, throw in the uncertainties and dynamics of the Internet and using a computer.  If you cannot multi-task to the Nth degree, chats may not be your thing.  It is not a piece of cake for clients either.  They must get used to a not necessarily sequential stream of conversation to say the least.

Don’t worry about “web cam” chats.  Chats were hardly in their infancy when someone thought of the opportunity to “enhance” the process with web cams.  See my earlier point about telephone focus groups.  Seeing people is not going to help but will surely complicate matters.  To understand what you think, I don’t need to see your face.  And I surely don’t need you to see the other participants’ faces.  I think “Brady Bunch” style chats are sexy but not practical.  Again, let’s not try and turn chats into something they are not.

Moderators, know you guide.  As a moderator, you can pre-load your guide and then simply “click” to have  questions appear in the chat stream.  Doing so is a helpful way to remember what to cover but I NEVER rely on it.  For each group, my questions are slightly different depending upon the dynamics.  The flow may be different so I may ask certain questions earlier or later than usual.   A question may have flopped in an earlier group and I need to tweak it.  I may just be punchy and playful....   I just worked with a moderator who suddenly had his guide disappear due to a technical difficulty.  He was utterly lost and told me he couldn’t go on without it.  What???????  A guide is a guide - not a script.  If you’re a professional, you should know your project well enough to work without a guide.

Clients, know your guide.  The ability to ask the moderator to probe or cover a particular topic on cue is one of the most appealing aspects of online chats.  However, just because you can does not mean you should.  For example, if the guide says color will be covered after reviewing shape, it is probably that way for a reason.   If the client team does not know this, then you can bet someone will pepper the moderator with instant messages to ask him to cover color in the midst of the shape discussion.  As a moderator, nothing is more troublesome.  It requires him to explain why color will not be covered at that point when he should be focusing on the discussion.  Solution - appoint a liaison between the client team and the moderator and use the real time back channel sparingly.

As with all of my blog posts, I invite discussion.  What else do you have to say about chats?

Jonathan