Can You Hear Me Now?

Collecting data never sounded so sweet.  And it still doesn't.  The extraction of information from people for business purposes is reminiscent of a trip to the dentist.  The difference being the dentist comes to get you, and it's while you're eating dinner.  Marketing is in our eyes, stomachs, and most importantly our hearts. Yet we don't want it in our ears.  American consumers respond with hostility when they hear "it'll just take a second", especially by telephone, a contraption that's been pushed aside in favor of texts and emails, but still does the trick best for surveying .  This puts those who are genuinely trying to get some valuable information in a serious pickle, the sour kind.

The charm of telephone for collecting information is the amazing amount of information made available not in peoples words but in their voices.  While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a voice may be worth something there are no words for.  As a recently hired research associate who operates strictly over the phone, I've heard it loud and clear.  Peoples voices, and the tones they use, let a phone surveyor get what they want better than a filled in bubble ever could.  When someone cautiously answers a question and then finishes their sentence by making their voices higher, I don't dare let my pen hit the paper.  Confusion is one of the many things a voice can reveal that are worth knowing about someone you're collecting data from (especially when its the backbone of the product your selling).  Certainty, cooperativeness, authority, and attention are other natural byproducts of a vocal exchange, and a savvy surveyor knows how to leverage them.

From umm's to huh's, a live exchange is filled with signals that might make a surveyor repeat, skip, or rephrase a question.  Sometimes a surveyor will use his discretion and not even include certain results, suspicious the source was carelessly estimating or filling in for someone more in the know.  Unfortunately the revealing nature of the phone survey is not only its greatest strength but also its biggest weakness.  People may say that they believe in the importance of research and take pride in the information age, but often that attitude stops at the caller ID.  Some incentives to side step the panhandler like reputation of a phone surveyor include cash rewards.  However, with such an offer comes a biased sample of people attracted to cash rewards.  Randomness is important in statistics. Any time incentives are introduced to a sample, the results lose a sense of validity and genuineness.

The more we learn with our eyes and tell with our fingers, the less we can be sure we're hearing what's being said.  As the available amount of information increases exponentially, much of it is being lost between the lines. Voice communication will prove ever more valuable as we see the likes of social networking and search engine optimization crowd it out of the marketing game.  Information that comes from a persons mouth and not their keyboards is going to become as precious as ever.  Numbers and letters get the point across, but voices amplify the meaning.  Listen up.