Telephone Interviews

Telephone interviews were once considered an inferior substitute to face to face surveys.

Today telephone research is a widely used method of gathering survey data. Mackman Research specialises in low volume telephone surveys of senior executives.  We do not operate a call centre operation but instead have a small number of  very skilled telephone interview researchers.  We encourage you to have direct contact with the telephone research interviewers working on your project.

Advantages of telephone interviews

Telephone questionnaires have some significant advantages:

• Answers to questions asked in a telephone interview are often as valid as those asked face to face.
• Telephone interviews have the impersonal quality of self-administered questionnaires and the personal quality of face to face interviews.  So, telephone surveys are unintimidating (like self administered questionnaires), but allow interviewers to probe or answer questions dealing with ambiguity of items (just as in a personal interview).
• Telephone surveying is less expensive than face to face interviewing and convenient.  It is not without effort though as often telephone interviewers need to call back many times to numbers that don’t answer.  We frequently make as many as 10 attempts to call back potential telephone interview respondents.
• There is no reaction to the appearance of telephone interviewers although respondents do react to accents and speach patterns.  Mackman Research telephone interviewers are adept at voicematching techniques.
• Telephone interviewing is safe to undertake.

Mackman Research treats every project individually

We do not use a templated one product fits all approach. Our tailored design ensures that our results are statistically sound and relevant to the needs of the client that has commissioned them.  Careful consideration is given to the research method employed and we will often use a blended approach.  Other methods that we employ include:

• Face-to-face interviews
• Focus groups
• Phone surveys
• Participant observation
• Postal surveys

Quantitative Research Methods

• Face-to-face interviews
• Online surveys
• Telephone interviews
• Postal surveys
• Door to door surveys

Please do not hesitate to call us to discuss your needs or to request a quotation, enquiries can be made online by completing our research enquiry form.