Do phone surveys have a place in 2023?
Intro
In the first Viewpoint podcast Ali, Ben and Connor discuss who Viewpoint-Research are, and what they do! Ben and Ali then answer the biggest question. Do phone surveys have a place in 2023?
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Who is Viewpoint Research?
Viewpoint-Research is a customer feedback organisation set up as a social enterprise. They have a hiring practice of employing people with previous barriers to employment: such as, disability, mental health issues or long term unemployment.
The daily work consists of telephoning customers on behalf of companies, councils and charities, to gain useful feedback to improve services.
Viewpoint also has an excellent programme set up called Viewpoint Hubs. Within Viewpoint Hubs, councils can work with Viewpoint to set up a Viewpoint Hub, a satellite office, where local residents can be employed to conduct surveys. This is a really interesting concept and in the podcast it’s explained that by hiring people local to the survey local people, you’re able to create instant rapport and improve the quality of calls.
“It’s 2023 I could knock up a survey monkey or similar quickly, how are you guys still here?”
In the second half of the podcast this question is posed to Ben and Ali, and it really is key. Do phone surveys belong in 2023, especially with low cost email survey alternatives. Ben immediately gives 3 or 4 good reasons why he believes they still offer the best results when it comes to customer feedback.
Quality/depth of Information
Phone surveys offer a higher quality of information than online counterparts. Imagine the situation, you’re presented with an online survey asking for 1-10 scoring on 3 or 4 questions. And at the bottom of the page is a box for “more comments”. You quickly fill in scores and leave the box empty. This is not quality information with a lot of depth. The alternative is you get a call from someone who asks you a couple of questions. You may say similarly, you had a 7 out of 10 experience. The benefit of the [phone is the survey conductor can ask “why?”, or “how could it have been better?” and probe for the reasons behind the scores.
Targeting particular groups
Targeting particular groups came up as a very useful benefit of phone surveys. With an email survey you have no control over who responds. And what may happen is you don’t hear from a particular group of customers, or you may only hear from one group of customers. The benefit of phone surveys is you can adjust for this, and say “this group isn’t replying, we may need to reach out to more of this group than that group” or “we’ve had too many from group X respond we can stop reaching out to them and follow up with other groups”. This real time adjustment can stop final results from being heavily weighted one way or another.
Reaching marginalised groups
Another benefit of phone surveys is for reaching marginalised groups. Some people still aren’t online in 2023. Whether it’s a member of the older generation, someone who’s recently come to the UK, or someone who doesn't have the capability or want, to be online. These people can’t be reached via email. However, they can be reached by phone. It’s really that simple. The question to ask is, “how many of my customers might not be online”, because obviously this will affect some businesses more than others.