Research is vital for forming strategies; finding out information about the market and making informed business decisions to help reduce risk and costly mistakes.

The difference between a good telephone research campaign and a poor one can mean the difference of acquiring thousands of new customers versus wasting time and money on a research campaign that results in you being left with poor and inaccurate information that doesn’t benefit your business.

The importance of these calls were highlighted recently during the Brexit vote to leave the EU. YouGov ran extensive phone polls and online polls to find out what the public were planning on voting. In total over the campaign 78% of telephone calls showed people planned on voting remain, where as 63% of online polls showed a different side to the story completely. 63% of people taking the online polls were found to be voting leave.

How did Telephone Research get it so wrong?

There are a number of reasons this particular campaign went so wrong. The questions asked were misleading and confusing, ‘weighting by social attitude’ was used which essentially pushes a poll result to a previously known poll of social attitudes. As attitudes to the EU are social attitudes, this was included which influenced a misleading result. Finally, not enough people from different geographical areas took the poll and so the views were not broad enough, providing just a sample of similar views. These all contributed to creating a poor research campaign. This was represented in the findings that was shown to be highly inaccurate and well wide off the mark.

How do you create an accurate and effective Telephone Research Campaign?

• Clear, precise and simple: have an end goal. Pick simple, easy to understand questions that won’t cause confusion or mislead the audience so they understand exactly what they are answering.
• Diversity in target audience: don’t just target one niche area of the market as you will get similar views/results. Ask a diversity of different people in the market to get a clearer picture of what you want to find out.
• Don’t use previous attitudes or information, even if it based on the same or similar information.
• Mix it up: combine online polling with tele research and see if your results match, to get a clear view of what you want to know, remember not everyone will answer the phone.

Insight Data is a member of the Direct Marketing Association and the Glass & Glazing Federation.

We have a dedicated market research team and can manage a wide range of projects using telephone research and advanced email questionnaires.

Our team will work with you to understand your requirements and agree the process and most suitable methods of collecting the data.

We can provide the finished research in a number of formats, and our experienced management team can produce an executive summary or opinion on the work if required.

Insight Data provide research services for industry/product research, competitor research, customer surveys and industry services.

For more information, call 01934 808293 or email hello@insightdata.co.uk.