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.

Curmudgeon to Curmudgeon, Part II

I had an unexpected meeting with a client today that confirmed some conclusions I drew last week. He told me more about the complaint calls his client received about interviewers at my competitor’s phone room. He listened to recordings of two of the calls that generated the complaints. He said both the interviews were by the same interviewer.

My client told me that on one of the calls, the guy said the respondent’s name wrong and got impatient with her. The interviewer said, “Have you done a survey before?” in a real snotty tone of voice. When my client talked about it with the guy’s supervisors, they said they considered the performance acceptable. My client was incredulous. He said he told the other company that he fired them because they were endangering his relationship with his client.

I figured the complaints about rudeness stemmed from the interviewers becoming impatient with elderly respondents. I told my client this, and added that it’s easy to do if you don’t get over yourself. He tried not to let me see him smile, but said “Exactly right.”

Now that I am an independent interviewer, I would like to focus on conducting business to business projects, gathering competitive intelligence. I still plan to focus on that area, but my current project causes me to believe that perhaps I have skills that I take for granted. Apparently, not everyone can be patient when conducting telephone surveys with an elderly population. I need to find a way to gauge the demand for this skill.

It gratifies me that I took Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare to heart as a child. I can make more money being patient with people than I can being impatient with them. That’s what I thought, even before all of this happened.

Curmudgeon to Curmudgeon

There I was, all set to write a gloating blog post about how I won a contract away from a competitor because of my reputation for patience and politeness. Then I read someone else's blog post about not getting so worked up when people interrupt. That post pushed some of my buttons. I had to learn this the hard way, so I knew I should not be so quick to congratulate myself.

Patience and politeness are important for any interviewing project, but especially for my current project. Several respondents have told me that they never do telephone surveys. The only reason they are willing to participate is that they are members of the organization for which I am conducting the surveys. I learned to pause after I tell them who I am doing the survey for, so that they can say “Yes!” or “Oh, okay!” I learned long ago that if an interviewer indicates annoyance when interrupted by a respondent, the respondent will perceive the interviewer as rude.

My client told me that he cancelled the contract with the other vendor to do these interviews because that vendor’s interviewers were rude. He had me take over when there were just 17 interviews left to do out of a batch of 100. I started the next batch of 100 the next week. I did not ask my client to show me the emails he got from his client about the rude interviewers. I assumed that his client received complaints from respondents.

The respondents were probably rude to my competitor’s interviewers. Most of the respondents are old and curmudgeonly, like me. The interviewers probably sighed or got irritated tones in their voices. Sometimes that’s all it takes for a respondent to call and complain about the interviewer’s rudeness. It was probably worse than that, though, if my client halted the project with 17 interviews left to do.

Besides pausing strategically and allowing respondents to interrupt, what helps me keep a good attitude over the length of a project is remembering that I am interrupting a respondent’s day to ask them to give me information. I often interrupt their lunch or dinner. Sometimes I even wake the baby. I understand if they get irritated.

By the way, I have heard several times that Americans tend to interrupt more than people in other parts of the world. Especially men. Especially if they’re from New York. I think women interrupt more than men, but that’s just my own experience.

Time Zone Nerd

One thing that my job has taught me is that I am a time zone nerd. On a recent project, I had to put the finishing touches on my calling list by researching the time zones of some of the contacts. Some states and area codes are in more than one time zone, so I had to look up the ambiguous ones. Fortunately, we have a field for the county in the database, so I was able to learn the time zones pretty easily. Time zone boundaries conform to county boundaries.

I discovered that I enjoyed doing these lookups. I suspect that there is not much of a need for this type of knowledge or skill, as Google Maps does not show time zone boundaries. When I googled “Does Google Maps show time zone boundaries?” I found a link to a Google Group in which someone had asked why not. Another person replied that Google has apparently not seen a need to do so. Mapquest does not give time zone information, either. I had to consult my Rand-McNally Road Atlas, or type “What time zone is Sullivan County, Tennessee in?” (Eastern).

I know few other people who know things about time zones in the United States that I know. I remember a meeting a few years ago. It took some effort to get across the idea that most of Texas is in the Central Time Zone, but El Paso is in the Mountain Time Zone.

Indiana is now less confusing than it used to be. It used to be that some counties in Indiana did not observe Daylight Saving Time. All of Indiana now observes Daylight Saving Time, but some counties have switched time zones. One must have an up to date map to determine the time zone for a specific county in Indiana.

Arizona does not observe Daylight Saving Time, so I treat them as part of the Pacific Time Zone during the warm months, except for the parts of Arizona taken up by the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo Nation observes Daylight Saving Time since their territory is in three different states. Alaska observes Daylight Saving Time, but Hawaii does not.

I am curious as to why Google Maps and Mapquest do not include time zone information in their search results. There must be other people who need to know the correct time in places they call or plan to visit. Perhaps they think that exceptions to Daylight Saving Time observance will confuse people. Perhaps the cartographers at Google Maps and Mapquest do not understand time zones.

For now, I plan to not throw away my Rand-McNally Road Atlas. I plan to continue to purchase a new one every two or three years. It would be fun to hire myself out as a time zone consultant.

I need your help to predict an election

One issue on the May 6 ballot in Franklin County will be for a levy for the Columbus Zoo. Saperstein Associates is neutral in this debate. We are not for or against the levy. We just want to predict the election.

We are now in our third week of polling on this issue. We are interviewing 400 people each week. We may be starting a poll on another ballot issue next week, so we will have more than one poll going on at the same time. This means that I need to hire more interviewers.

The job is ideal for moonlighters, retirees, stay at home parents and those who want to add skills to their resumes, or want to minimize gaps in their employment history. You can call me at (614) 261-0065 or email me at jstevens@sapersteinassociates.com