Dear Speak Asians ,
I am addressing my fellow Speak Asians with a purpose to clear all misgivings about the surveys and related issues . I know that there has been a disruption in surveys , resulting in all kinds of fear and misgivings . To clear the clouds of doubts and anxiety , I wish to share the facts and exact situation as it is :
1. The surveys are given to us as questions in text format by respective clients .
2. These questions are then converted into proper questionnaire in a survey using application which is a 3rd party hosted service.
3. We were using one of the best hosted sites –Survey Monkey which had major market research companies as well as corporate across the globe as their clients. While this was a key point for their selection, this also made them more rigid and less open to changes required by our ever growing community of consumers .
4. Due to internal problems and lack of bandwidth to cope up with our 1 million strong panel base , survey monkey systems failed to deliver as per our requirement . Thus we had to move the application to another hosted service- Novi Survey which we found was more receptive and had a better platform .
5. This shift from one application to another was quite challenging as the platforms were different and integration with our back end system took much longer than expected.
6. We could not transfer the old surveys from Survey Monkey to Novi Survey due to application change causing major disruption in old surveys which were not filled up by some panelists .
I am happy to share that we have now over come most of the issues and the status is as follows :
a) We have bought the entire application at a premium price and are now hosting it on our own servers. Hence the ownership of the application is ours and we shall not be dependent on any external vendor for running of our system.
b) We have made the surveys current and are working towards clearing the backlog.
c) Panelists who did not complete the previous surveys are being given extra time to complete so that they do not lose out on their earnings.
d) To handle the slow response , we have done load balancing and made surveys available to panelists Zone wise .
I would like to appeal to all my fellow Speak Asians to help us in this transition. We are aware of the problems faced by you in the field and want to assure you that we are working extra hard to overcome the challenges. It will take another 10-15 days before the application for surveys will stabilize . So please bear with us for a little more time for a better future and spread this message of change amongst the fellow Speak Asians who are already 1 million strong and growing !
Warm regards
Haren
28th March ,2011
