There’s no question that brands face more fierce competition today than ever before, but they also face consumers who demand more from the products and services they choose. As such, it’s crucial to understand customer satisfaction (or lack thereof), and voice of the customer (VOC) research has become the go-to method in which to do so. However, over the years, much of this research has moved online. But is there still a place for live telephone interviews in VOC? Yes! And in this post, we’ll explore how live discussion can bring invaluable insights to the table that might otherwise go unnoticed and why you should use it to augment other types of data collection in your VOC research.
Evolution of VOC Research from Telephone to Online Data Collection
There are a few of us in the research industry still around who remember the days when online data collection came on the scene. In the early 2000s, online data collection was still a bit of a novelty. The benefits were enticing potential cost savings, time savings, and better response rates were some of the big ones touted but the jury was still out. However, by 2017, for the first time, online surveys constituted the majority of all quantitative survey modes implemented worldwide, according to ESOMAR’s 2018 Global Market Research Report, as reported in AAPOR’s Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology. VOC research reaped those online data collection benefits, sure, but what was often missing when the surveys were only done online was the context and nuances of the customer and their experience behind the written word.
What Voice Can Tell You That Text Can’t
We all know how easy it can be to misinterpret the tone of an email or text, and in the interest of brevity, there’s often much left unsaid. The same holds true for online surveys; your questions may be answered but were there more you should have asked or would have asked if you’d had additional context?
This is where live telephone data collection can add tremendous value. Not even necessarily as a replacement for online, but instead to augment it. For example, if you uncover trends or if customer satisfaction scores are declining, being able to ask open-ended questions – where you can probe, explore and clarify - can help you understand the ‘why’ behind the data.
Best Practices for VOC Research
We recommend a multi-modal approach for VOC research that includes telephone, online, and perhaps intercepts, as well, to gain the most insight from your customers. ADRG maintains numerous interviewing centers with hundreds of stations, each equipped with the latest in multimodal survey technology as well as a large team of remote agents throughout the United States.
With deep experience in industries such as advertising, non-profits, banking, finance, fast-moving consumer goods, education, government, retail and supermarket, technology, travel and tourism, transportation, and utilities, we survey millions of Americans each year.
Whether it’s serving as a reality check to validate or calibrate what you’re seeing in your VOC research or to more thoroughly investigate customers' expectations, wants, and preferences, telephone data collection is here to stay. We can’t tell you how often a client has hired us to look at one problem, but when we talk to their customers, we find other challenges or opportunities we didn’t intend to discover. As the saying goes, “And that’s why they call it research.”