Social Media in Market Research

I read about social media marketing, and have some experiments going.  I recruit part time telephone interviewers for a small market research firm.  My experiments involve using my personal Facebook page and Google+ page.  I have also placed ads on local college job boards.

I still have more experimenting and learning to do.  My goals going into it were to avoid spending money on advertising in the local newspaper or online forums.  I also wanted to avoid advertising on Craigslist.  The volume of the responses through the college job boards, Facebook and Google+ has been much less than the responses we have seen from Craigslist ads, but the quality of the applicants has been much higher.

I am usually quite skeptical of coincidence.  That is why it surprises me that some of the people who have applied for jobs over the summer have been people who did not respond to any advertisement.  One person worked for us three years ago, one person ten years ago and another person worked at the firm 18 years ago, before my time.  Another person lives in the neighborhood and wants to practice his interviewing skills as part of his education in the social sciences.  Perhaps these people heard through the grapevine that we were hiring.  They heard that I sent emails and posted ads from other people.  Perhaps it is coincidence.

All of this gives me the impression that any kind of effective social media marketing will be an adjunct to word of mouth advertising.  Facebook and Google+ can make the process more convenient, but having something that people want and a good reputation are what gets people to pick up the phone or come in the door.

This leads me to believe that the same principals apply to conducting research via social media;  Facebook and Google+ may make the process more convenient, but someone will still have to make sure that a sample is representative of a population and phone calls will still have to be made to ask people to participate in surveys.  The survey might be on a Facebook page, but interviewers will need to call people to direct them to that page.  The chat function may be used to clarify responses to open-ended questions.  That part may be fun.

The Hearty Hello

One thing about my job that gratifies me is that I occasionally run into people I used to supervise, either in person or on social media.  They tell me that some of the interviewing techniques I taught them have helped them in their careers.  What is especially gratifying is when they tell me that they are glad that I told them about The Hearty Hello.  What makes it especially gratifying is that most interviewers seem to think The Hearty Hello is pretty corny when I introduce the concept to them.

I call it The Hearty Hello because it is alliterative, which makes it easy to remember.  I could call it The Sincere Hello.  The idea is to make a good first impression.  I learned from telemarketing that a caller has a few seconds after a person answers the phone to make a good impression.  I noticed that all of the survey questionnaires we use start with the word “Hello.”  Respondents are more likely to agree to participate in a survey if I say “Hello” with a positive attitude.  I try to say hello in such a way as to thank the person for answering the telephone.  It does not work if I ham it up.

The few variations to The Hearty Hello that I make are when I conduct business to business interviews.  I like to use a person’s name if they give their name when they answer the phone, like this:

“Good morning, XYZ Company, Linda speaking.  How may I help you?”

“Good morning, Linda.  May I speak to Mr. Jones please?”

I will say “good morning” or “good afternoon” if that is how the person answers the phone.  Otherwise, I stick to “hello.”  Repeating the person’s name back to them signals that I am paying attention.  That means less work for them in handling the call.  Whatever impression I make with the person answering the phone will be conveyed to the person I want to interview.

Say “Hello” in a hearty and sincere manner when you greet people in person or on the telephone.  The result of the call will likely be positive.

Robot Interviewers

A few years ago I conducted telephone interviews for a business-to-business market research project.  I called librarians to ask their opinions of a proposed new software product for libraries.  One woman told me very politely after I read the introduction that it sounded like an interesting topic to discuss and that she would not mind taking the time, but that she had recently agreed to do a telephone survey that turned out to be an obscene phone call.  She said that she was very sorry, but that she would have to decline.  I had been trained to overcome objections, but this was a new one for me.  I had to mark the response for that library as refused to participate and move on.

The very next day, on the same project, another woman told me that the survey I had called her about sounded interesting, but that she had recently agreed to do a survey that turned into an obscene phone call.  This time I was quicker on the uptake.  I asked the woman if we could have a female interviewer call her.  She told me “Well, since you asked that question, go ahead.”  I was able to complete the interview with her.  I guess some obscene callers have a thing for librarians.

This is one of many anecdotes that I need to keep in mind as I investigate the use of speech recognition technology to collect information for market research and public opinion research telephone surveys.  My motivation for this investigation is not to reduce payroll costs, although that is a consideration.  Nor is my motivation to eliminate the headaches involved in supervising human interviewers who either do not want to work or who do not pay attention to instructions.

My motivation for investigating the use of speech recognition technology for telephone interviewing is that I think robot interviewers could get more accurate information for our clients.  Some of the vendors of systems that use speech recognition technology for market research interviewing use this as a selling point.  They say that it is actually an advantage for a respondent to know that they are being interviewed by a robot because the respondent is more likely to give an honest opinion. 

I am thinking specifically about a survey we did earlier this year.  We called registered voters throughout Ohio to ask them their opinions of proposed legislation regarding animals.  The survey had questions about regulating the ownership of exotic animals, the treatment of chickens on factory farms, and whether the penalty for cockfighting should be a felony instead of a misdemeanor.  I wondered at the time whether people would give honest answers to these questions or if they would give what they considered to be socially acceptable answers.  Who is going to say that they are in favor of cockfighting?  A person might say that if they knew that their answers would be kept confidential and if they did not have to say it to a human interviewer.

We will most likely not use speech recognition technology for telephone surveys until the technology advances quite significantly.  The technology can now be used for simple surveys that have yes/no or agree/disagree questions.  It can skip a question based on an answer to a question if appropriate.  It can record answers to open-ended questions, but cannot probe those responses.  A robot interviewer would not know when and when not to ask “Why?”  The speech recognition systems used in customer service applications can understand what a customer is saying well enough to route a call to a human CSR and can even schedule a reservation, but cannot actually help a customer resolve a billing discrepancy.

Another consideration as I investigate this issue is that researchers and their clients may rely less on telephone polling in the future.  Google claims that its Google Surveys can provide data that is statistically representative of a population.  If so, this will remove an obstacle to doing more research via the Internet.

These are my impressions of speech recognition technology so far.  I would like to find out if I am incorrect.  Future posts on this blog will cover what I learn about speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence as well as successful interviewing techniques as they apply to concepts in market research and public opinion research.  I will also be looking at how big  data can beused for market research and public opinion research and more generally about how automation replaces human workers.  Please feel free to direct me to sources of information or share your own stories about interviewing.

John C. Stevens
jstevens@sapersteinassociates.com