KENYA · GUIDE 0530 · EDITION 4.2
Customer survey service in Kenya: Customers and Market Demand
The buyer and the buying decision
Businesses testing a specific service question. The offer to test is: Design and administer a small customer survey under client instructions.
Design a short survey around a decision the business can actually make, defining respondent eligibility, recruitment method, sensitive questions to omit, and the limits of interpretation.
Separate interest from an accepted order
Pilot the questionnaire with a few suitable consenting respondents.
The purpose of this test is to establish whether the buyer accepts the specified result, delivery arrangement and payment terms. An encouraging interview does not establish repeat demand. Ask what the buyer currently uses, what would make them change supplier and who has authority to approve the first order. Record a refusal as carefully as an enquiry so that unsuccessful offers do not disappear from the evidence.
Collect evidence specific to this offer
Record recruitment sources, respondent eligibility checks, misunderstood questions, missing answers, analysis decisions, observed sample limitations, and the specific business action each finding could reasonably inform afterward.
| Question to resolve | Evidence to retain |
|---|---|
| What exactly will the buyer accept? | Ask trial respondents to explain each question in their own words, then check whether collected answers can support the intended decision without forcing unsupported generalizations later. |
| What is included in the first trial? | Design a short survey around a decision the business can actually make, defining respondent eligibility, recruitment method, sensitive questions to omit, and the limits of interpretation. |
| How will a prospect see the offer? | Offer a decision-focused survey outline before selling large response targets. |
| What must happen before repeating the trial? | Results retain sample size, recruitment method and uncertainty. |
Decide whether to continue
Review the specification with the buyer before committing to tools or stock. A trial is commercially useful only if actual costs, rejected work, time spent and cash collected can be reconciled. The survey fails when it gathers enthusiastic opinions from easy-to-reach friends and presents them as evidence of demand among the business's actual paying customers locally today.
If a buyer changes the required output, record a new scope and re-cost the test. Do not count a request for a different product as proof of demand for the original one. Keep personal contact details in your private records and use customer statements publicly only with permission.
Turn the example into a buyer test
Fictional survey SUR-30 asks thirty willing customers of a repair shop five questions about booking and collection. Deliverables are a short neutral questionnaire, invitation script, de-identified response table and count-based report. Sample question: 'At your most recent visit, how did you book? Walk-in / Phone / Message / Other / Prefer not to say.' No claim of representative population research, causal impact, clinical assessment or guaranteed response rate is included. The shop decides how to invite customers without pressuring them; contact details are not requested by the survey itself.
| Buyer discussion | Evidence to retain |
|---|---|
| Specification to confirm | Every question informs that decision rather than collecting interesting but unnecessary personal facts. |
| Output to inspect | If 18 of 24 answer a question positively, report 18/24, not 18/30 or 75% of all customers. |
| Failure that can defeat acceptance | Question has many blanks |
Ask the buyer to describe one acceptable and one unacceptable result. Record the decision maker, price basis, quantity, handover point and payment date privately. A sample request, an encouraging conversation and an accepted order are different evidence. Keep the first commitment within your demonstrated capacity; no customer interview or successful trial is asserted here.
What a failed test should change
Check pilot wording and whether the form skipped it unintentionally.. If the offer cannot meet that check, revise the specification or process before promising a repeat. Keep rejected offers and reasons in the same register as positive replies so that your record does not exaggerate demand.