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.

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

Ending the year by adding to the count

I always like it when I complete at least one interview on the last day of the year. It was especially gratifying this year because I interviewed a person on a project that I have been working on since July. I have conducted a good share of the interviews for the survey myself. The respondents have been difficult to reach and it usually takes 30 minutes or more to do the interview.

We have learned much while working on this project. Such a long interview presents opportunities to learn about nuances of establishing rapport and eliciting cooperation from respondents.We have talked to people from all over the world and have learned a little about their cultures. I am grateful that such a project came along to give me topics to blog about for a long time to come.Some of the experiences we have had will contribute to a sense of camaraderie for those of us who have worked on the project. I am grateful to have the work when things are slow otherwise.

I look forward to more telephone adventures in the coming year.

We're Almost Done

The other day we had a small party in our phone room to mark a project’s 100^th day of dialing. The same day marked another milestone on the project for me: it was the third time I had to ask a pregnant woman her weight. I know I shouldn’t stereotype people – especially when working on a scientific survey – but show me a pregnant woman who is not sensitive about her weight.

The project is a social research study in which we are required to ask respondents extremely detailed demographic information about each member of a respondent’s household, including height and weight. The weight questions are almost at the end of the questionnaire so that an interviewer has an opportunity to build rapport with a respondent. Still, the question comes up rather abruptly. Some respondents are taken aback. We don’t ask female respondents if they are pregnant, but they often volunteer the information early in the interview.

The first pregnant woman on the project to get the weight question gave me the idea to say “We’re almost done” right before the weight question comes up. She was a good sport about it, but she said “What!? Did you just ask me my weight?” when I suddenly asked her “Approximately how much do you currently weigh?” She then laughed and told me her weight. Not only that, but she weighed and measured her two toddlers.

Building rapport on a project in which an interviewer must ask for intimate details of a respondent’s life is often a matter of tone of voice. The interviewer must sound professional and positive, but also nonchalant and not too interested in the answers to the questions. Knowing when to say “We’re almost done” is a matter of timing. Saying this at the right time can mean the difference between completing an interview and not completing an interview. The statement not only helps a respondent to be patient and stay on the phone, but can also give an interviewer the last bit of rapport they need to get answers to sensitive questions. It can soften the abruptness of a question. The third pregnant woman I had to ask the weight question barely hesitated before answering.

They Call Me Mr. Diversity

Our current project leads me to believe that I did not misspend my youth.  We interview people all over the United States, from many different backgrounds.  Many of our respondents speak English as a second language.  Most respondents have financial problems and life issues that go along with financial problems.  The 30-minute interview contains many more demographic questions than most market research surveys.  Many of these demographic questions are at the beginning of the survey, and the answers drive whether we ask other demographic questions at the end of the survey.  We usually have all of the demographic questions at the end of the survey, to give us a chance to build rapport with respondents.  Most respondents received a letter before we started calling.

Some things I did as a young person that seemed pretty knuckleheaded at the time prepared me for this challenge.  I was a globe spinner in elementary school.  In junior high and high school I often put aside my homework while in the library so that I could randomly page through the encyclopedia or magazines.  When I was old enough to ride the city bus on my own I would hop on random bus routes to explore Minneapolis and St. Paul.  I spent the summer of my 21^st year on a hitchhiking tour of the United States.  At different times I have avoided college, television and owning a car because I believed I could experience life better without them.  I intentionally sought work, live music, volunteer activities and recreation that would broaden my experience.  I struck up conversations with many interesting individuals while engaged in these activities.  This exposed me to many cultures and taught me to not feel sorry for myself. 

My diversity of experience taught me adaptability, which we need to get the job done.  On our present project the interviewer and the respondent sometimes have to work together to figure out the best person in the household to answer the questions.  Diverse experience as well as my present career gave me many pieces of information about human beings that I can put to use.  I am grateful that my parents encouraged me to study foreign languages while I was in school.  It now makes it easier to understand foreign accents and pronounce names correctly.

Recently, one of the interviewers I supervise had a difficult interview.  He and the respondent had difficulty understanding each other’s accents.  The interviewer became frustrated and wanted to terminate the interview.  He worked very hard to speak slowly and clearly.  I told him to repeat a question once and mark “Don’t Know” if the respondent still did not understand.  Afterward, I found a tactful way to tell him to listen to his own accent.  I invoked the name of a former coworker from China.  She sometimes did not understand things I said until I used a British pronunciation or spelled a word.

I told the interviewer to try to use a Mid-Atlantic accent.  I told him to imagine an island in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere between New York and London.  A person who grew up on this island would have an accent somewhere between an eastern American accent and a British accent.  Such an accent can be helpful when talking to people who speak English as a second language.  For many such people, the Queen’s English was their first exposure to the language.  The conversation was effective.  The interviewer responded to my coaching and had a much more productive shift on his next shift.  He had a better attitude about interviewing foreign respondents.  I learned about the Mid-Atlantic accent from recreational reading.  I have coached other interviewers on not being shocked when respondents tell about their financial problems or family problems.

Neutrality and being able to instantly establish a rapport with a respondent are useful skills for any telephone survey, but they are especially important for our present project.  A sense of adventure and love of people are also quite useful.  Being well-read and well-traveled is helpful for any interviewer.  I understand why my father said that every young person should go on an odyssey.  He used to say that if a person goes to college, the college should be far away from home.  The world is much bigger than we imagine.

Can Big Data Predict Local Elections?

In the public opinion research office where I work we have several framed bar graphs hanging on the wall.  These bar graphs show how closely our survey results matched the actual voting in several local elections.  We also have a Dilbert comic strip on the wall that succinctly captures the challenges of getting reliable information from telephone polling:

Dilbert is in a meeting with his boss and a consultant.  The consultant is explaining the results of a survey and says that they surveyed 1,000 people who still have landline phones and no caller ID.  When asked for their opinions a new technology, 34 percent replied, “Fiddlesticks” and 23 percent could not hear the question.  The other 43 percent thought that the interviewer was in the room with them and offered hard candy.

The Obama campaign made use of Big Data before the election in 2012.  They were able to precisely predict how the vote would go in each state.  I also learned that the campaign relied on benchmark data that was gathered from conducting 10,000 telephone interviews.  These interviews measured the opinions and demographic characteristics of voters throughout the United States.  The campaign used this information to create models of voters who might be persuaded to change their vote and if so, what might influence them to do so.  This helped the campaign to carefully craft individualized online ads to reach voters even in solidly Republican precincts.

I like to remember the part about the 10,000 telephone interviews when I see posts on LinkedIn warning me that my job may become obsolete.  Big Data and such things as text analytics may automate some of the work done by human analysts, but someone will still need to get on the telephone to gather information that can be used to calibrate such data.  Such calibration will be even more important in predicting local elections. 

We recently completed a survey about a levy issue that will be on the ballot in November of 2014.  We are planning to conduct another in October.  I have taken steps to learn more about Big Data and text analytics to learn if they can be used to predict elections with the same accuracy that we have achieved with telephone surveys.  If our clients perceive that they can get the information they need to influence how likely voters will vote, they will believe that they will not need to spend money on telephone surveys.  It will be important to be ahead of this perception rather than trying to catch up with it.

I doubt that there is enough data on the Internet to provide insight on crafting campaign messages for a local election or accurately predicting such an election.  The Obama campaign had plenty of text to analyze.  People were interested in the presidential election.  They posted blogs and participated in discussions on Facebook about it.  I see almost nothing about local elections.  The posts that I do see are for candidates, not bond or levy issues.

The Dilbert comic strip mentioned above illustrates one of the challenges of polling individuals younger than 65.  I wonder whether Big Data and text analytics can measure the opinions or predict the voting behavior of those older than 65.  Such people are more likely to vote on bond and levy issues than younger people, but are less likely to participate in heated debates on Facebook than younger people.  Calling them on the telephone may be the only way to learn how they plan to vote and why.

John C. Stevens
Saperstein Associates
(614) 261-0065
jstevens@sapersteinassociates.com

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