A day in the life of a Market Research Manager

Iain Dalton works for Fineline, a market research Company that works closely with The Nottingham on monitoring its customer experience.

I first started in the market research industry five years ago after exploring other career paths and realising they were not for me.

My original job was as a telephone interviewer, which involved calling members of the public or businesses and finding out their views and opinions on various subjects, mainly the customer service they have received when using various companies. I found this job interesting as no two calls were the same, and you knew what you were doing was important in helping companies improve their offering from both a products and service point of view.

After a couple of years I progressed to Research Manager and I have now been in this role for nearly three years. Just like the telephone interviewer role, no two days are the same. While I didn’t have any qualifications in market research initially, the company that I work for is putting me through my qualifications, and one of the things I enjoy about this role is that you are always learning, and there is always another course you can take to ensure you are doing the job to the best of your ability.

My main task in this role is to ensure that all research is completed accurately and results are sent to existing clients to the agreed timescales. This is done by liaising with the telephone unit at our company and letting them know what the daily targets are and doing regular quality checks on the calls that they make.

One of my favourite things about this job is initially meeting the clients and finding out about their research goals and what insights we can provide for them. The research goals that clients have really can be about any subject, and you can help to shape how companies tackle key issues in the future, such as important topics like climate change and diversity.

Organisation is vital in any job, but in this role I think it is paramount. Our clients have timescales for their research projects, and with several projects going on at once you have to plan your work at the start of each day to ensure you are keeping to the timescales. Finishing projects late isn’t an option, as clients plan their meetings around the research deadlines, and plan their subsequent actions on the back of those meetings.

Other tasks I carry out in this role are as follows:

• Sending results files to clients – these include Excel spreadsheets with just the raw data, Powerpoint presentations or even edited videos of focus groups.
• Presenting results to clients – going to visit the clients and explaining the results to them.
• Providing excellent customer service to clients. One thing I’m particularly proud of in my role is the service I provide to clients, trying to answer any queries they have as quickly and efficiently as possible.
• Strict adherence to data protection and GDPR.

Overall, I think a career in market research would be a great path for anyone to go down.