March 12, 2020
We have been hearing so much about new technologies, new methodologies, eye tracking, neuroscience, and big data; a blog post on telephone recruitment runs the risk of being very old school and boring but stay with me, and you’ll see why!
Our business is heavily concentrated in international B2B and healthcare data collection where the opportunities can be of higher value, but they are also challenging to execute. Demand has never been stronger for access to verified B2B respondents, and healthcare professionals including hard-to-reach groups such as the C-level suite, Hedge Fund Managers, Foreign Exchange Traders, Partners at Management Consulting and Accounting firms-the list goes on. These are the decision makers and influencers within their organizations, so it is not surprising that they are in demand and hard to reach. In our world, single-digit incidence figures and tiny universe sizes are the norms.
Today, the standard in our industry is to access these people either via online panels or via traditional call centres, both of which come with their own unique challenges. While accessing B2B respondents via traditional online panels can be faster and cheaper, we always worry about verification and bias. The reality is that these senior-level execs are not signing up to panels to do surveys for a few dollars. There is always the danger that many of these panellists are at lower levels within their companies, retired, out of work, or are not being entirely upfront when they sign up for the panel. Because the panel firms are reluctant to release contact information, it is almost impossible to conduct your own independent verification checks. Don’t get me wrong; there are many good B2B and Healthcare panels out there that we trust, and we have independently evaluated their recruitment and verification systems, but I don’t buy into the concept that top executives, KOLs or payers across industries are truly represented on these panels.
The second alternative is going down the traditional call centre route. What is nice about this approach is that there is more transparency. You can brief the interviewers, listen to the phone calls, and verify who the respondents are. On the negative side, most call centres are employing junior level staff that follow a script and have great difficulty in building a rapport with high-level executives. This results in low cooperation rates and a not so pleasant experience for the respondent.
At SCR, we have enjoyed great success with an alternative approach. We launched our own Executive Interviewing Centre (EIC) a few years ago in our London office. Traditional call centres pay at the minimum pay levels, and typically the environment is production oriented where the interviewers are following scripts and sound like telemarketers.
Our EIC is different. We hire educated professionals that have either retired or are victims of these tough economic times. We pay them highly competitive rates. The culture is professional, and our main focus is on building a good rapport with the respondent. This results in a truly positive experience for them. We recruit these respondents for qualitative or quantitative research that can be conducted on the phone or online. We provide our interviewers with Internet access and LinkedIn access to verify respondent information.
So far, the results speak for themselves. The executive interviewers are happy, the respondent is happy, and most importantly, our clients have been thrilled with the results. Over the next twelve months, our plan is to make significant investments in our EIC as we carefully scale our capabilities in this area. We are just beginning. The team has some great ideas so stay tuned!
