Not how many but why. A qualitative approach to customer relations.

Market research in the health service, as Virginia Hayden argued in our August issue, needs to go beyond the quantitative approach based on questionnaires. Here Michael Pryce Jones describes an alternative approach in the Oxford region. The Critical Incident Technique does not measure satisfaction and dissatisfaction, but shows what people like or dislike, and why, and is therefore a guide to what changes are needed.