Today’s market researcher has many technological tools for both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies.  The advent of wireless devices, social media platforms, high-speed Internet connectivity and international panel availability for sampling has created unique opportunities for understanding the behavior of the marketplace.

Seldom will you find a researcher that somehow is not or was not connected to a “phone room”, the shortened name for a telephone survey center where computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) occurs. Phone rooms have been the backbone of quantitative data collection for what seems like 1000 years (as seasoned researchers may say…). The staff of CRI earned their stripes in phone rooms where the rigors of daily operations educated them on all aspects of market research and thus gives them a unique perspective on newer research methods and solutions.

In the last 15 years, CRI staff has overseen the execution of over 2 million hours of interviewing in their phone rooms.  This includes surveys for media research, political polls, studies to test advertising campaign awareness, and surveys of all types for financial institutions, retail, insurance, energy, healthcare, and municipal and community issues. There probably hasn’t been a research question posed that hasn’t been asked by one of CRI’s phone room interviewers. The process of implementing a survey into a production environment involves many steps. These steps are the core of understanding research design. They include, but are not limited to the following:

• Consultation with the client to determine the research objective(s)
• Designing a survey instrument to answer the research objective
• Determining the appropriate respondent set and procuring the appropriate sample
• Programming, implementing and fielding the survey
• Produce statistical reports with the clean data collected
• Scrap and rework all of the above steps to meet budgetary constraints while keeping an eye on statistical validity of the entire research project

In the midst of the actual design of the project elements, managing the human element to support the phone room activities is another facet that has given CRI staff the insight to great research. Over 15 years of recruiting thousands of interviewers and training them to ask and collect data the same way as each other every time is an arduous task at best, but a great exercise in resource management. Implementing quality control procedures and error management systems are crucial to the management of quality phone rooms.

Phone room work often runs 7 days a week. In many cases, there are both daytime B-to-B studies and evening consumer studies being fielded each day. This involves complicated IT and telephony systems that require 24×7 uptime. These hardware systems endure constant activity capturing data so their design and maintenance are challenging and rigorous tasks.

The phone room has taught the staff at CRI “how to research.” The repeated exercise of fielding phone surveys has enforced best practices in the science of market research. We understand the finer points of sample management, response rates, respondent fatigue and questionnaire brevity when conducting a study–all the while keeping the acceptable margin of error in check and maintaining financial responsibility to the project.

Sometimes a phone study needs to be abandoned for another method if the respondent set becomes financially and logistically impossible to reach. In today’s landscape of mobile phones eliminating landlines as a primary telephone method, CRI staff is recognizing the need for multi-modal solutions.

Telephone surveying as a core competency is a great way to become a great market researcher. Nearly every single day, a research product is delivered to a client. This product is full of insightful data for decision making. It is the result of a highly perceptive consultative and design effort, a scientifically managed production effort and an insightful presentation of results.  CRI staff has been delivering these products for many years through its phone room operations and is now able to share those best practices through their latest methods and solutions. We continue to select the very best tools and combination of tools to suit our clients’ needs, budgets and timelines for decision making.

For many years, public opinion researchers have relied upon the telephone as a means to gather a random probability sample for general population studies. Until recently, this method had many advantages – for the most part, every household had exactly one telephone line, and these telephone numbers were assigned in such a way that a random selection could be easily obtained to cover any desired geography. Before recent technological innovations such as caller ID, answering machines and cell phones, people would generally answer their home phone, and they were fairly likely to cooperate with an interview. Thus, a perfect sample could be obtained that was projectable to the entire population, and telephone interviewing reigned supreme. Only two alternatives existed – mail surveys and in-person interviews. While perhaps appropriate for the U.S. census, these methods were generally less appealing to most researchers due to a lack of timeliness, cost factors and response rates.

Over the last decade, many technological changes have come about that challenge the traditional stronghold of telephone interviewing. Caller ID and voicemail have lowered response rates. Cell phone only households have surged in popularity, especially among specific demographics within the population (young, no kids, minorities, etc.). The Internet has given rise to alternative forms of communication, with email, texting, and social media replacing conversations previously conducted via the phone. However, the need for research has only grown as advertisers and communicators need more insight into the ever more complicated landscape they must contend with. With this, new forms of research have emerged to challenge the traditional telephone survey – Internet surveys, social media research, address-based sampling, etc. Are any of these alternatives the magic bullet that will replace telephone interviewing?

Let’s start with Internet surveys. This is a cheaper (albeit not as cheap as some believe) and more timely alternative to telephone interviewing. This is an appropriate and useful method when trying to reach a very specific target audience that would be too costly to find via a phone sample (25-34 year old plumbers), or when time is of the essence. However, those selected to participate in online surveys come from opted-in panels. These are convenience samples characterized by a nonsystematic approach to selection as opposed to a probability sample which accurately reflects the true microcosm of the population at large. It is more difficult to confidently make projections to the overall population when recruiting survey participants from online panels.

Social media research involves a more passive approach to gathering opinions. You’re listening to the conversation, rather than asking specific questions. This is a very valuable tool to measure the level and direction of public sentiment, but is unable to replace the directed feedback telephone surveys provide. As with online surveys, a sizable, unique segment of the population is ignored (those without online access or participation).

Finally, many researchers are falling back to traditional methods of mail and in-person interviews, given the challenges faced by the other alternative methodologies. These methods are effective in providing a representative population, but still have cost and time constraints.

So no, I do not expect telephone surveying to disappear in the near future. Other methodologies are now available to augment and assist the telephone study, but certainly not to completely replace this method. While not as effective as in years past, this still remains an effective, relevant and necessary tool to research public opinion.