TABLE OF CONTENTS A second data collection option involves interviewing customers by telephone, typically at work in business markets and at home in consumer markets. Responses can be recorded on paper questionnaires or, using computer assisted telephone interviews (CATI), data can be captured straight onto the computer. Let's consider the advantages and disadvantages of telephone interviews.
Telephone interviews are usually the quickest controllable way of gathering survey data.
They are relatively low cost and normally much less costly than personal interviews.
The two-way communication means that the interviewer can still explain things and minimise the risk of misunderstanding.
It is possible to gather reasonable amounts of qualitative information in order to understand the reasons underlying the scores. For example, interviewers can be given an instruction to probe any satisfaction scores below a certain level to ensure that the survey identifies why customers are dissatisfied and not just that they are dissatisfied.
Distance is not a problem even in worldwide markets.
Interviews have to be short. Ten minutes is enough for a telephone interview especially when interviewing consumers at home in the evenings. Up to 15 minutes is acceptable for business interviews during the day.
Questions have to be quite short and straightforward. As we will see when we look at rating scales in Chapter 6, there are certain types of question that cannot be used on the telephone.
One of the biggest frustrations with telephone surveys is that people do...
