Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

Surveys at the touch of a button™

Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, is an inbound, automated telephone survey that can be conducted in the comfort of the respondent's home or office at their convenience. To provide a new resource for marketing research, we’ve pioneered and developed a process so inviting that respondents actually contact us, eager to participate in your survey!

With the increasing use of voice mail, answering machines and caller ID, respondents have become more difficult than ever to contact by telephone interviewers. E-mail, direct mail and many other demands on our time have decreased response to mailed surveys. Further more, busy consumers and executives are becoming less likely to stand still long enough for an intercept interview. While the Internet offers promise for a wide variety of data collection tasks, ready access to the web for all consumers is still a long way off. These factors have contributed to the rising cost of survey research over the last several years.

And, it’s easy!

It begins by distributing survey invitations, either at a retail location or by mail. Participants are asked to call a toll free number and answer the survey questions by using their telephone’s keypad or by simply speaking their response to open-ended questions into the phone.

Quick, convenient, low cost and high response.

Responses generally occur within a day or so of the invitation and respondents can call from their home or office 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thus, the process is convenient and will not interrupt their family or work routine. In fact, respondents enjoy this unique process so much they are often left with a more positive feeling toward the subject company, feeling that the research is a true service and benefit to them.

Our IVR surveys provide truer demographic profiles than many other methods, and higher response rates than many other methodologies. IVR can assist you in researching large or small numbers of customers or employees, even non-purchasers, with great results – all at a significantly lower cost per interview than traditional live interviewer telephone surveys or mystery shoppers.

You can take advantage of this state-of-the-art survey methodology without investing in costly hardware or learning complicated programming.

Outbound survey and notification options

While primarily used as an Inbound method (respondent calls us), IVR also has outbound survey options, useful for when a list of phone numbers is available or, when the incidence is so low that live interviewer interviewing is not cost effective. Using a sensor to determine when a person or an answering device answers a call, the IVR system proceeds to either begin the survey or leave a message requesting participation in the survey. Such calls can be conducted during the day and messages can be picked up in the evening so potential respondents are not disturbed during their dinner or evening activities.

And, consider these additional points:

• The survey results contain no interviewer bias; thus absolute uniformity is ensured.
• The process can accommodate virtually any length of questionnaire or size of sample.
• IVR can be combined with live operator, where required, to reduce live operator interviewing costs.
• Because IVR data is being collected electronically, it can be viewed in real-time or selected intervals, on the Internet, so you can see the results of your survey as they come in. For retail or restaurant, multi-unit operators results can be segmented and password protected so results can be viewed by the unit, region or time period, etc. for which the person logging in is authorized.
• Open-ended comments are digitally recorded verbatim, with no interviewer editing, for easy review by phone or with a click of your mouse via the Internet. Online coding is also available.
• Full multilingual capabilities.
• Data entry errors completely eliminated.

For a demonstration of our Interactive Voice Response surveys, call 1-800-710-9149

Want the best of both worlds?
Combine IVR and Internet to create an Inclusive™ Survey, which offers the best of both worlds: equal access and low cost.