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.

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.

My Article Published in a Trade Publication

Steve Quirk sent me an email in late January asking me to write an article for his online newsletter.  He mentioned in the email that he had seen some of my posts on this blog and thought I might have something practical to contribute.

I am glad Steve asked me to write Back to basics:  Six essential skills for telephone interviewing.  Writing the article made me think.  I think it will help me train interviewers.

Proper Inflection Can Reduce Refusal Rates

I received some free coaching on telephone presentation skills from a prospect during my telemarketing career.  He asked me, “Are you asking me or telling me?”  I was telling him about a service so that I could set an appointment for a sales rep to make a presentation.  I was inflecting up at the end of sentences so that they sounded like questions.  The prospect went on to tell me that this habit was extremely annoying and showed a lack of confidence.  

Anyone who sells anything needs confidence.  If a salesperson is not confident the prospect immediately doubts the product or service.

I remembered this free coaching when I started working in market research and public opinion research.  We are not selling anything, but the same principles apply.  If an interviewer does not sound confident when he reads an introduction to a questionnaire, respondents will doubt the legitimacy of the survey.  They will think that it is not really a survey but a sales scam.  An interviewer can sound more confident by reading statements as statements and questions as questions.  An interviewer who is not confident will read an introduction to a survey like this:

‘Hello?  My name is John Stevens?  I’m calling from Saperstein Associates?  A public opinion research firm in Columbus, Ohio?’

An interviewer who reads an introduction this way is rarely conscious that she is doing so.  She is asking the respondent a question, which is ‘May I continue?’  If an interviewer can be aware of this and overcome it, he will have a better chance of having respondents listen long enough to learn what the survey is about.  This results in lower refusal rates, which helps and interviewer to feel more confident, which can further reduce refusal rates.

John C. Stevens
Saperstein Associates
(614) 261-0065

jstevens@sapersteinassociates.com

Slow Down!

I was out of town for several days while a telephone survey project was going on at my office.  When I got back to work and started editing the completed interviews I noticed some odd things in the data.  I cannot give too many details without violating the client’s confidentiality, but I can say that it was a problem that I anticipated before I left town.  I briefed our interviewers on the project the night before I caught my flight to Phoenix to visit my mother.

The survey was one that we have conducted almost every year for the last several years.  The sample for the survey is retired people and the questions with the weird answers can be confusing to people of any age.  We ask people to calculate percentages of their household income.  When I briefed the project last week I told interviewers to slow down, especially when reading these questions.  I reminded the interviewers that we are interviewing people in their 70s, 80s and 90s, so they might not hear or completely understand the questions if the interviewer reads too fast.  One of the interviewers, a man in his 70s, said in the briefing that he was offended by this.  I replied that I was basing the instruction on my experience with the project.  I knew that we would have problems if the interviewers did not slow down.

A good interviewer will mirror their pace to the pace at which a respondent speaks.  A good interviewer will also listen for when a respondent is not listening and re-read questions as appropriate.  Our questionnaires are written with certain words EMPHASIZED so that respondents have a clearer understanding of what we are asking.  When I brief and coach interviewers, I usually tell them to emphasize sibilant words.  Words such as “IF” and “BOTH” do not travel well over the telephone, so respondents sometimes do not hear them.  When this happens, respondents often become confused by the question or think we are asking a different question.

I held a meeting with the interviewers on my first day back at work, before we started the dialing shift.  I told them I was cutting off their coffee until they slowed down.

Don't Get Discouraged

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”  Calvin Coolidge

We finished a huge telephone survey project yesterday.  By huge, I mean 1,000 interviews.  We usually conduct 300 or 400 interviews on a project.  On the last few days of the project I held very brief pre-shift meetings.  These meetings were quite brief.  The purpose was to tell the interviewers not to get discouraged.

It is easy to get discouraged during the last few days of a survey project involving random digit dialing.  We ask to speak to the person in the household who is having the next birthday.  We almost always have quotas by gender, and we almost always fill our quotas of women before we fill our quotas of men.  When we fill our quotas of women, we call random households and ask to speak to the man in the household who is having the next birthday.  It takes many calls to find a man who is willing to participate in a survey.  This project was even more difficult because we had to interview people between the ages of 18 and 55.

I have conducted interviews on and supervised many such projects.  An interviewer can sit on the phone for an hour and listen to answering machine messages and busy signals.  When someone finally answers the phone, they tell you to take their number off the list.  Another hour goes by.  A woman answers the phone.  She says that her husband is not home and he doesn’t do surveys anyway.  Fifteen minutes later a man answers the phone.  He says to unrandomly select another household for the survey.

It is important for an interviewer not to get discouraged because if he or she gets discouraged, he or she will sound discouraged.  If an interviewer sounds discouraged, a respondent will be less likely to want to participate in the survey.  This makes it even more difficult to get the last few interviews needed to finish the project.

Our recent survey was not as difficult as a project we did last year.  We did a survey in which respondents had to be 25 or older and thinking about going back to school in the next six months.  After we filled our quotas of women on that project, we had shifts in which we completed one or no interviews.  That is how I knew that I needed to give our interviewers some encouragement on our recent project.

Engagement

I have had some success at social media marketing since my earlier blog post.  The type of marketing that I do is different from most other types of marketing in that I do not sell a product or service.  I recruit interviewers for a market research and public opinion research firm.  Still, I am in the online marketplace offering something in exchange for something else.

My supervisor told me a few weeks ago that my recruiting efforts through Facebook and Google+ plus were a good idea, and that they had produced some good results, but that they were not enough.  We have several large projects that need to be completed by the end of the year.  So, I got busy again.  We were slow over the summer.  During that time I built my networks on Facebook and Google+ and worked at practicing engagement.  I Liked and +1ed comments and pictures.  I engaged in discussions about some of these posts.  I remember spending most of a morning arguing with Facebook friends about President Obama’s “You didn't build this” comment.

The engagement paid off.  I got my first Google+ referral as a result of sharing a blog post on Google+.  I sent emails to several Facebook friends.  Here is what I sent them:

Saperstein Associates recently started a very interesting and worthwhile project.  It must be done sooner than I expected so that we can start on several other interesting and worthwhile projects.

I need to recruit a few more people to fill our phones through the holiday season.

Please take a look at the link below and let me know if you can help out and make a little extra money over the next few weeks.  If not, please pass the link along to anyone you think might be interested.

Thanks for your help.

John

http://www.sapersteinassociates.com/default.asp?contentID=514

Not everyone responded, and not all of those who responded were able to become interviewers, but the email campaign resulted in several good hires.  I got a phone call from a Facebook friend about an hour after I posted my letter to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch.

We could still use a few more interviewers, especially for our Saturday and Sunday shifts.  Please give me a call if you are interested.

John C. Stevens

Saperstein Associates

(614) 261-0065

jstevens@sapersteinassociates.com

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