Q&A: Get to Know Terry Dolan, Managing Research Director of Research Operations at Integrated Insight

Wow, this is a difficult question for someone who’s worked in one industry as long as I have!

There are several for sure, but here are a few that stand out:

The first would have to be the implementation of a daily survey program in support of the massive Guest Satisfaction Measurement program Disney implemented in the mid-1990s. Before this rollout, we collected ‘snapshot’ surveys–think surveying one week out of the month and that week represented the entire month. I’ll never forget the conversation I had with Joni Newkirk who at the time was the Director of Research at Disney, now CEO at Integrated Insight. I distinctly remember her asking me what it would take to implement and I paused, chuckled nervously, and sort of flippantly said I’d run the staffing numbers, but that it would likely take a 100 Cast Members to make it happen. Joni calmly said, “Do it!” Within two months, we successfully hired and trained a team of Cast Members and successfully implemented a survey program that would quickly grow to over 500K in-person surveys per year.

Another accomplishment that I am incredibly proud of is the behind the scenes work we did as a leadership team while I was at Disney to put in place the ‘on-boarding’ and training infrastructure to support the rapidly growing operation we were building.

With our rapid growth, we quickly realized that our turnover was very high. It became evident that we needed to identify and develop ‘right fit’ talent for data collector roles. As a result, we worked with partners in Disney Casting to help them understand and hone in on the attributes that make data collectors successful. Things such as an outgoing personality as well as the ability to work well independently in a quota-driven environment to name a few. We then began working with Human Resources partners to build a thorough two-week training program that consisted of both hands-on as well as classroom learning opportunities.

Once we implemented these strategies, we saw our turnover plummet. In addition, we saw our Cast Excellence survey results (an annual survey Disney conducted among employees) increase dramatically.

Lastly, there is a more recent accomplishment I am particularly proud of and that is the work we did to safely and successfully re-launch in-person surveys for our LaGuardia Airport partner a few months back. For a few years we have been fielding ongoing passenger satisfaction surveys at LGA using iPad devices however, as a result of the pandemic, we paused data collection in mid-March of this year. Timing being what it was the beautiful new terminal opened in June and our LGA client wanted to safely re-launch ongoing data collection and more specifically, needed to obtain passenger feedback on a daily basis for a two-week period immediately after opening to understand perceptions of the new terminal.

After several conversations, we developed a plan that would enable us to safely re-launch with some significant changes to our intercept approach. First, we purchased a URL and we created a QR code. This enabled us to move away from using our iPad devices and enabled passengers to complete the survey using their device; thus avoiding the need to repeatedly clean our devices. We also needed to create a way for our data collectors to remain a safe distance from passengers. To aid with this we created large card stock images of the QR code and URL to enable our data collectors to hold up the image while maintaining a safe social distance.

With our new approach, we’ve actually been able to increase the number of surveys we complete each day, even with lower passenger volume due to COVID-19. So, it’s been a win-win for passengers and our partners at LGA.