Couldn't do a day in retail

For the last couple of months I’ve been working for MaritzCustomer Experience, an international market research firm. I’m glad to have the chance to work at home, doing work that I like. It’s been a little bit of an adjustment, switching from working for a very small firm to working for a very large firm. It’s been more of an adjustment in the topics I interview people about.

When I worked for Saperstein Associates I did polling about local politics and interviewed educators about educational materials. We moved from project to project. I’ve worked on the same project at Maritz since I started at the end of March. I interview people about their customer service experience after they’ve visited one of the client’s stores.

Respondents often tell me that I did a good job interviewing them, but that doesn’t always make me feel good. That’s because I remember getting a call as a supervisor from a respondent who told me that she appreciated that one of the interviewers I supervised did a good job explaining the questions. In case you don’t know, an interviewer should never explain questions to a respondent. It introduces bias to the survey.

Interviewing respondents about their customer service experience often reminds me of the time that I made a comment about one of Saperstein’s clients that “She couldn’t do a day in retail.” Those words taught me a hard lesson on the words of Jesus, when he said, “For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matthew 7:2, KJV)

I like to keep this verse in mind when I interview cantankerous respondents who give low ratings to the people who work in the client’s stores. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to be the one to sell something to the cantankerous respondents, or deal with their problems.

If you apply to Maritz, please be sure to tell them that I referred you.

Pretesting Surveys

A regular client asked me to do a couple of pretests in the last few months. Pretesting used to be much more common among polling organizations than it is now. The idea is to do about a dozen interviews using the final draft of the questionnaire. We time each interview to calculate the average length. The client expects me to report any errors in language or logic of the questionnaire. They also expect me to report any problems with the sample.

I feel fortunate that I have a client who thinks of not pretesting as a penny-wise and pound-foolish proposition. Even if he does not need to rewrite questions, he finds pretest data helpful for accurate proposals and budgets.  We always learn something from a pretest.

One thing I like about getting on the phone to do a pretest is that we often learn about hot-button issues we didn’t know about. Surveying people about a school levy, park levy or library levy sounds dry, but questions on a questionnaire sometimes provoke excited responses on educational policy  or environmental issues. When this happens, a pretest provides a good excuse to let a respondent go off topic. Doing so can illuminate issues that have not been addressed by either side of a levy issue.

Pretesting also provides an opportunity for me to evaluate my interviewing skills. Respondents let me know pretty quickly if I read questions too quickly or too slowly.  The better I get at listening, the earlier I learn which probes yield useful information for the client.

I would be glad to have a chance to help other opinion research or market research organizations with pretests, if there are any that still do. If so, please let me know.

John C. Stevens

voice.communicator@gmail.com

(614) 772-2332

Correct Pronunciation

I get job satisfaction from unusual things. The other day, a guy in Hawaii gave me a compliment because I correctly pronounced the name of the street where his business is located. When I said "Honoapiilani Road," he said, "Pretty good!"

I'm working on a database update project, verifying or confirming contact information and other data for a trade association. I've worked on the project this time of year for the past four years. It's one of the few projects that gives me a chance to call Hawaii. I learned from working on the project in the past that in Hawaiian, the vowels do not usually blend; each vowel is pronounced individually.

I'm grateful that I studied French and German in high school. Doing so gave me a leg up on pronouncing just about any European name I come across. I do better than most telemarketers and survey takers, but I've slaughtered my share of people's names and place names. Greek names still give me trouble. I often have to practice saying Middle Eastern names before I dial the person. Most Asian names aren't as hard to pronounce as they look. I have been able to set appointments, complete surveys, or at least get a person to listen to me for 30 seconds just because I pronounced their names correctly.

I've learned that even if I do mispronounce a person's name or a place name, most people appreciate an honest effort. People in Hawaii don't seem to expect mainlanders to be able to pronounce Hawaiian place names correctly. I hear small expressions of delight if I come close.

I would love to hear from anyone who has faced similar or more difficult challenges. I rarely have to call anyone overseas. If you have, let me know.

Pulling myself up by my bootstraps

I am no longer selling educational materials. My decision to discontinue that work was based 75% on lack of confidence in the product and the organization behind it, and 25% on lack of confidence in my sales skills.

Since Labor Day, I have been working on a database update project. My client is a person I supervised when she was an intern. This is the fourth year I have worked on this database update project. The first two were while I was still employed at Saperstein Associates. I expect to finish the project this week.

Over the weekend I created a document in Google Docs and got a shareable link for it. The purpose is to advertise my skills as a voice communicator. I also got  new email address for this venture. I am looking for work that I can do at home. I am now responsible for driving my son to and from school, so it would be difficult to take a job outside of the home.

I had an idea to create another document and link the first document to it, in which I would tell stories from my years on the phone. I decided that this blog would serve that purpose.

So, future posts on this blog will contain stories from my years on the telephone. Meanwhile, please take a look at my new online flyer. If you know of anyone who could use my help, please pass along the information.

John C. Stevens, Voice Communicator
(614) 772-2332
voice.communicator@gmail.com

That's why they call it a career

There was a time when I worried about becoming too specialized. I loved the work, and my skill and confidence increased the more I did it. What I worried about was not enough demand for my particular skills in the marketplace.  I recently completed a project that called for these skills in conducting in depth interviews. I talked to educators about printed and digital educational materials. I find such projects interesting, and they help me feel as though I’m doing something to contribute to education reform.

One of the things that I liked about this project was that I had a discussion guide instead of a questionnaire. This meant that I could get a respondent talking with some warm-up questions. If I can establish rapport with the respondent, they will usually answer most of the questions in the discussion guide before I get to them. I just have to listen closely in order to ask appropriate probing questions and then wrap up by asking any questions that the respondent did not address.  

One of the challenges on this recent project was the timing of it. I may be overspecialized in my interviewing career, but the experience led to a job selling Common Core test preparation materials. I started that job last month. It was difficult for me to give each job the time and focus it needed. Before I worked in market research I did business to business telemarketing. I did not succeed in that endeavor as well as I had hoped, but the experience gave me some skills that allowed me to do well at conducting in depth interviews. I believe that the skills I learned as an in depth interviewer will help me be more successful at sales this time around.

Working in telemarketing got me used to making cold calls. It taught me how to deal with gatekeepers. It got me used to thinking in terms of getting paid for results instead of getting paid for putting in the time. Conducting in depth interviews improved my listening skills and taught me how to probe for information without being annoying. It gave me confidence in asking questions.

Some of the research projects I worked on had questions that were designed to help the clients find out if declining sales were due to the content of their programs or the sales representatives who sold them. This gave me some clues as to what to do and what not to do.

The complaints I have about the sales job are the same complaints you would hear from any sales representative you may know. One of the things I like about it is that we now have email and social media marketing tools that we did not have when I did telemarketing back in the 1990s. I am having fun imagining how to use these tools in conjunction with my voice on the telephone. I have a lot to learn and I look forward to learning it.

Artistry at Work

I saw a police officer directing traffic the other day. She had to alternate traffic through one lane because of some digging on one side of the road. Seeing her directing traffic reminded me of another officer I saw directing traffic in downtown Cleveland back in the 1980s. This guy impressed me. I saw him as I was walking back to my car during the afternoon rush hour. He had to direct four lanes of traffic in each direction, and looked good doing it.

This was before traffic officers wore green fluorescent vests. If people had cell phones in their cars in those days, they still called them “car phones.”  The officer wore his dress blues, complete with snow-white gloves and a white hat. He used grand, fluid motions to communicate how he wanted the traffic to move. I noticed that he made eye contact with drivers as much as possible, and seemed to know his whistle codes quite well. I enjoyed watching him work, and he seemed to enjoy his job.

It struck me that adding some artistry to his work made him more effective at his job. His stylized arm and hand motions caught the eye and made clear what the drivers needed to do. I wondered if he wore a dress uniform because he was black. A black officer probably needs something like that for motorists to respect his authority.

The traffic officer in Cleveland had a more difficult job than I do. I thought of him when I gave my blog the title “The Art of Interviewing.” Sounding smooth and authoritative on the phone usually results in higher productivity and better quality of information. Reading questions verbatim without sounding like I am reading from a script helps keep respondents interested in a survey.

I have to be authoritative with respondents without seeming like a jerk. On a recent project, some respondents had difficulty choosing from Agree Strongly, Agree Somewhat, Disagree Somewhat, or Disagree Strongly on a battery of questions. Instead of going into a lecture about how we need standardized answers to compare answers and keep the survey scientific, I just said “I need you to pick one of those four.”

Almost any job can be done better if the worker thinks of himself or herself as an artist. I do not mean to endorse “creative accounting,” though. Let us not get carried away.

The Rhythm of Work

My father taught me not only the value of work, but also how to work. When I was a kid he recruited me to help a friend move to a new house. Some of the items required two men to move. My dad talked to me about moving in the same rhythm as my partner. My uncle ran a dairy farm. From him I learned about sensing the rhythms of machines.

Most of the work I do now is with my voice and my fingertips, but the ability to sense the rhythms of people and machines helps me to be productive and makes the work less stressful. It is a way of working smarter, not necessarily harder. Sensing the rhythms of people when I interview them on the phone means listening to them. I am getting better at knowing how fast or slow to read a questionnaire introduction by the way a person answers the phone. I find that telling them who I am and what I am calling about, and then pausing long enough for them to say something, goes a long way toward gaining cooperation.

Understanding the rhythms of work also means setting a pace. This usually depends on the workload for the day, but I usually start with setting a goal of making 100 calls before noon. To do this, I like to keep up a fast pace for an hour, take a short break, then get back to pounding the phone. On some projects I have to dial the phone myself, and on others the computer dials it for me. I usually need a few minutes to adapt when switching from one to the other.

When I make business to business calls I need to think about the seasonal and workday rhythms of the people I am calling. Some people like to be at their desks at 7:00 AM so that they can get things done before everyone else gets to the office and the phone starts ringing. Other people are better reached after 10:00 AM.

I think I have the rhythms of telephone interviewing down. I want to do more writing, so I am working on the rhythms of that kind of work. It is starting to look like getting some writing done is similar to accomplishing my goal of making 100 calls before noon: it’s easier if I just get the first call over with.