1 June 2025 · Priya Raman
Reading cancellation boxes without inventing a story
People write ‘moving’ when they mean price. People write ‘price’ when they mean the magazine arrived damaged. Coding has to hold both.
A cancel box is a rushed sentence. Coding it as if it were a surveyed attitude will invent a story. We read samples with the client until the codebook can hold “moving” that clearly means price, and “price” that clearly means a damaged issue or a missed delivery.
Double-coding a sample is slower than running the whole file through one person’s first instinct. It is the only way we will put shares on a chart. If the sample agreement is poor, we widen the codes or we refuse a precise percentage and show ranges instead.
Empty boxes are information: they often sit next to one-click cancel in a checkout that never asked. Do not fill them with the last campaign’s hypothesis. Put “no text” in the table and let the commercial team sit with the silence.