Every year we use SurveyMonkey
to get customer feedback about our product performance, customer service and
new product initiatives. We also ask
about their preferences for new content and enhancements to our services. The survey is usually sent out early in the
year (this year was a little late) and we typically get several hundred
responses. (All respondents are entered
into a random drawing for their choice of a couple of electronic gadgets, to
drive participation.) I plan to post on
the overall survey results in a week or so. Today, though, I thought I would report on a series of questions we
asked about the adoption of RSS.
For many publishers and information consumers, the
establishment of RSS as a standard coupled with the wide availability of RSS
readers has and will continue to dramatically change information distribution and
consumption. There have been a large
number of things written about the adoption
of RSS, much it moaning about the slow rate of adoption. Our survey results indicate that adoption, at
least in our market, is not speeding up.
Of over 100 respondents from financial institutions and
professional service firms (about 50% information professionals and 25%
analysts/bankers/consultants) only 16% were receiving information via RSS. (Almost 90% were receiving email alerts.) The
split between receiving RSS in Outlook, MyYahoo or other stand-alone reader was
about equal. About a third of the total
survey respondents skipped the RSS questions entirely, leading me to believe either
they weren’t up to speed on RSS or it wasn’t important to them. Finally, of the 80%+ who were not receiving
information via RSS, only a few Alacra customers thought RSS would be deployed
within their organization soon. The
large majority were unsure when or if RSS was going to be deployed within their
firms.
What does this mean? First, the survey results indicate that Alacra’s customer base of knowledge workers, who have often been early adopters for new information technologies, are not early RSS adopters. My take is that while many of us see the enormous value in RSS and the flexibility of RSS readers, Alacra customers are accustomed to receiving information on their desktops and alerts on their Blackberries. Second, many Alacra customers often complain of information overload. Unless well-managed, RSS only makes the problem worse. Third, at many financial institutions and professional service firms it’s extremely difficult to get enterprise software (such as Newsgator) installed, and that could be delaying deployment. Finally, premium content publishers, which account for much of the information consumption at a bank, consulting firm or accounting firm, are not doing much yet with RSS. So perhaps Alacra customers are waiting for this wonderful new technology to do something more specifically for them.
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