Most customer satisfaction surveys conducted by CSSL involve telephone or mail methodologies.  Permit us to discuss most of our clients' preferred approach, the in-depth telephone interview.  This is our favorite method of listening to the "Voice of the Customer."

Telephone interviewing methodology varies by target — executive versus consumer.  In both instances, we work with clients to develop and test questionnaires, select sample, set methodological parameters, etc.

Our most unique telephone specialty is qualitative executive interviewing.   We have extensive experience successfully conducting research with difficult to locate, very busy, sometimes distracted executives, such as CEO's, Purchasing Directors, etc.  There is an art to getting through the protective receptionist or executive secretary, and we know how to do it.

The executive interviewers assigned to our projects are not at all like your typical $5 per hour telemarketers.  In fact, they are not telemarketers at all.  They do not engage in selling or other typical telemarketing activities — only market research.  Interviewers are well paid, articulate and smart, fully capable of engaging top executives in intelligent conversation.  

Supervisors thoroughly train and brief interviewers for all assignments.  Interviewers learn key words and phrases associated with all projects, which will enable them to engage executives in conversation and understand their responses.

Executive interviewers working on our projects know how to probe and dig.  They capture important comments verbatim.  After completion of interviewing, we code and tabulates responses. 

This step has the effect of quantifying qualitative responses for ease in trend analysis.

CSSL also conducts consumer interviewing, utilizing carefully selected sample.  Some of these projects involve paper questionnaires.  However, many do not.  Depending upon length of interview, incidence, number of completes required, budget, and timetable, sometimes it makes sense for clients to consider computer assisted telephone interviewing (known as CATI).  We have extensive capabilities in this area.

We particularly recommend CATI for use with tracking studies, or for studies involving elaborately branching questions.  Note that our clients may monitor survey data over the Internet, in real time, for CATI studies.  See Sample Telephone Report.  

In some instances, we recommend a combination of CATI and paper interviews, the paper portion for verbatim recording of responses to open-ended questions.  As noted above, we code open-ended responses after conducting the interview, and the CATI system later matches and tabulates coded answers along with other data.   

Why use paper at all when CATI is so efficient and accurate?  CSSL has found that telephone interviewers are generally capable of capturing more complete responses when writing them on paper rather than entering them into a CATI system.  

Published studies on learning theory and ergonomics tend to support this CATI/paper combination approach, and we recommend it for some studies involving extensive use of open-ended questions.  

Of course, many clients prefer that we conduct their surveys ONLY using CATI (including capture of responses to open-ended questions), and we are happy to oblige in such instances.

We look forward to discussions with you about customizing your survey!

Suggestion:  Look at Sample Telephone Report for illustrative real-time CATI reports.