Telephone Surveys: What Is the Best Way to Gather Results?

Conducting telephone surveys can be a great way to gather valuable customer feedback and data quickly and easily. It’s important to understand the dos and don’ts of conducting a successful telephone survey in order to maximize your results. This article provides an overview of what works, what doesn’t work, and tips for getting the most out of your surveys.

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Understand Your Audience and Their Preferences.

Knowing your audience is key to successful telephone survey results. Take the time to understand who your target audience is, what their preferences are, and how they like to be contacted by telephone. For instance, you’ll want to find out if they prefer to receive calls during a certain day or time of week, if they prefer email reminders, or if there are certain topics that should be avoided. Understanding these preferences will help you determine the best approach for conducting your survey and ensure that it is designed in a way that yields accurate results.

Choose An Appropriate Survey Length.

One challenge of telephone surveys is to keep it short enough to ensure accurate results, yet long enough to obtain the desired feedback. Generally speaking, a telephone survey should last no longer than 15 minutes for best results. Shorter surveys that take up to 5 minutes tend to yield higher response rates, but responses may not be as detailed or in-depth. Longer surveys might make respondents feel uncomfortable and are more likely to be skipped or abandoned. Therefore, it’s important to choose an appropriate length that will still give you valuable insight while also encouraging high participation rates.

Choose the Right People to Interview.

Identify and select the right people to interview for the survey. Make sure they’re representative of your target audience, or else the data may be skewed. If you’re able, consider obtaining demographics like age, gender, and occupation in order to better tailor the survey and ensure more accurate results. It might also be helpful to select participants based on their experience with whatever service or product you’re researching as this can help you gain valuable insights.

Set Clear Goals for Your Survey.

Before you make your first call, it’s important that you set some clear goals for the survey. This will help guide the questions you ask, and give you a better idea of what to look out for. Your goals should be focused around the data points that matter most to your research – such as customer opinion, sales patterns, or market trends. They should also be defined enough so that they are easily measurable – this makes setting up success metrics much easier. Be sure to also think about how far into the future these goals should be set, as this can change how data is analysed.

Choose an Effective Sampling Method.

When it comes to telephone surveys, random sampling is the most reliable method for obtaining statistically valid results. This means that each person in the sampling population has an equal chance of being chosen. To determine if your sample is representative, use data such as regional demographic information to compare with the results of your survey. Also consider stratified and quota sampling methods, which can help boost coverage or fill out particular respondent profiles. This gives you more reliable data that resonates better with a broader audience.

Find out more.

Speak to one of our Research Consultants to find out how we can design a telephone survey which is right for your business.

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