Are you considering conducting telephone research in and around the St. Louis, MO area, across the United States or around the world?
Are you looking for expert advice in designing a telephone study that will help you obtain the highest quality data?
Are you looking for a skilled and highly experienced team of professional telephone interviewers to help bring validity to your qualitative project?
We can help!
The Research & Planning Group has conducted hundreds of telephone studies and tens of thousands of telephone interviews over the last four decades, and we can help you through the entire process!
Telephone surveys are a popular method of marketing research because they are:
- Fairly fast to field compared to mailing list or intercept studies, with many telephone studies requiring mere weeks to complete from start to finish.
- Useful for reaching senior citizens as well as rural consumers or those without easy access to the internet.
- Cheaper and easier than scheduling and conducting in-person interviews
- Scalable to regional, national or international participants without adding significantly to the cost since no travel is required.
- Convenient for participants, particularly those who are busy or who prefer to speak during off-hours.
The ultimate purpose of telephone survey research is generally to do at least one of the following:
- Hear regional or national voices for representation or geographic comparison.
- Measure sentiments such as satisfaction, likelihood to recommend or affinity for a brand or organization.
- Test new ideas or concepts through descriptive language or provided stimuli.
- Prioritize new services, features or benefits.
- Hear the voice of participants expressed in their own words and language to bring an organization closer to its customers or stakeholders.
Here are a few things we’ve learned about focus group research:
- Telephone surveys are ideal for reaching those who don’t live on the internet. While online panel research has made it easier than ever to reach consumers of all ages, we have found that senior citizens, rural consumers and those who do not have easy access to the internet tend to be easier to reach via telephone surveys. If you are hoping to hear from consumers in any of these situations, it’s vital that you include telephone surveys in your research method.
- Telephone interviews are conducted by quota, ensuring you have an appropriate sample size. Telephone surveys are generally designed to utilize a master list from which a response quota can be set. Telephone interviewers then call down their list until they reach their quota. This can be very helpful for studies in which a there is a strong desire for a particular sample size or where the sample needs to be stratified to include a proportionate number of subgroups.
- Telephone in-depth interviews are excellent for collecting verbal data but are limited when it comes to introducing visual stimuli or studying nonverbal responses. Telephone interviews tend to be focused on asking participants to respond to questions, and it can be challenging to utilize telephone interviews to showcase visual concepts.
Telephone in-depth interviews cannot utilize visual stimuli as effectively as in-person or virtual interviews can (often, how the stimuli will be displayed needs to be pre-arranged with participants), nor can they provide any visual cues on a participant’s body language or other nonverbal responses without the presence of a pre-arranged recording device. Even so, some professional interviewers feel that the lack of visual stimulation during the course of the interview can lead to higher-quality responses as the participant is forced to focus on listening carefully to the interviewer’s questions.
- Telephone in-depth interviews are extremely convenient for participants because all they’re required to do is speak. Our professional interviewers have conducted interviews with participants who are driving, who are shopping, who are on vacation, or who are out and about engaged in activities like hiking or golfing. While this might sound like it could lead to distracted participants, the reality is that these are very natural times to participate in a conversational interview and being away from a workspace or computer can actually improve the attention span of the participant.
Whereas online and paper surveys require participants to focus their full attention to complete a survey (and may turn off those who tire quickly of providing detailed information or checking boxes), telephone interviews actually work best when the participant is relaxed and feels comfortable speaking. - Telephone in-depth interviews are a particularly good method for B2B (business to business) research. As surveys continue to become more widespread in every facet of life, it is increasingly difficult to get busy professionals to participate in surveys of any sort, even with a paid incentive. Telephone interviews are ideal for reaching busy professionals because they can be scheduled as high-priority tasks rather than added to a list of daily obligations. B2B interviewers often receive significant training on the research topic and in interacting with the business sector under study, and thus are able to conduct themselves appropriately and professionally.
One best practice we do recommend for B2B studies is to offer an incentive (or honorarium, if you prefer) to participants to show regard for their time and input. This can range from a small electronic gift card to checks more made out either to the participant or charity of their choice.
At RPG, we often design and conduct telephone in-depth interview studies from start to finish with heavy collaboration from our clients. While we are the experts on conducting research, we know our clients are experts on what we do. When we work together as a team, we can ensure that we get the best possible information to help our clients uncover what they need to know through research.
If you’d like to learn more about our approach towards telephone in-depth interview research, feel free to contact us. We’re always here to be a resource, and we’re happy to help you however we can!