Everything old is new again.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Standage Market Research seemed hopelessly old fashioned by employing the market research methods of the pre-computer era. Now, with the world of telephone surveys rapidly changing, we are more confident than ever that sticking to time-honored techniques works. With the rate of cell phone/wireless only households exceeding 50% of all U.S. adults, the reliability and validity of landline-based surveys are increasingly threatened. At Standage Market Research we resisted the trend to fully convert our phone bank to a CATI (computer assisted telephone interviewing) system, and now find that this rising tide of wireless only households has provided an entirely new market (computer-dialing to cellular telephones without prior consent is prohibited by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991).
Some unique benefits of working with Standage Market Research:
Better Response Rates. As anyone who has ever received a call from a typical phone bank will tell you, there is almost always a 2-to-5 second delay before an operator is on the line, and that delay is your opportunity to hang up! Because we use live callers, a naturally flowing conversation begins as soon as respondents answer the phone.
100% TCPA/FCC Compliance. Because we are not using a physical dialer at all at SMR, you do not have to worry about placing an illegal call to a wireless number ever -- and it can happen in a lot of innocent ways. If someone forwards a landline number to their cell and you autodial the landline, if a cell number has changed owners when you have consent from the prior owner but not the current one, if your calling sample is not thoroughly scrubbed of wireless numbers...there are increasing legal concerns that are rising even as the number of Americans that you can only reach via a wireless number becomes the majority. And if you are not up to date on this issue, you might want to read this: http://www.marketingresearch.org/article/gallup-settles-costly-tcpa-lawsuit-12-million/
The Best of Both Worlds. SMR had been conducting interviews using paper samples, paper surveys, and hand-dialing live interviewers for over 25 years. And, this may seem odd but…we finally installed a CATI survey system in 2012! Computers excel at randomization and complex piping of interviews, and are a more efficient way of recording sample disposition. The bottom line is, we can customize all of our methods to suit your research needs and still hand-dial your calls.
Quality, Experienced Interviewers. Because we have always been a small, family run business, we have unusually high employee retention for our field; some callers have worked for us for 10 to 15 years. Others are the children of past callers! While we are always hiring new interviewers as well, all of them have to abide by our one primary rule: filling in a single piece of data that was not asked and answered by the respondent constitutes cheating and earns an immediate dismissal. We utilize both an onsite and remote real-time call monitoring system.
