In today’s busy world, gaining agreement from ideal candidates to an interview, and keeping them interested and willing to answer questions, is a skill which we do not underestimate. We set great store on the quality of our interviews and in the ability of our interviewers. We do not employ people who sit in a call centre all day. All of our fieldforce staff are mature business people with an ability to locate the most suitable respondent in a company, often at senior management levels. Most of our interviews are conducted by appointment and typically last over 20 minutes, sometimes up to three-quarters of an hour.

We are regularly congratulated on our ability to conduct interviews with respondents which other companies or in-house staff may find difficult to achieve. This ranges from Property Directors and Facilities Managers of leading blue-chip companies, to IT Directors and top 100 Architectural and other professional practices. Sub-contractors who are out all day are another forte of ours!

Telephone interviews offer many benefits compared to self-fill questionnaires. People-to-people dialogue allows for probing and clarification of responses, feedback from people who would be unlikely to complete a self-fill questionnaire, fuller comments, longer interviews, and a more controlled sample.

Interview programmes need not be large. Given the background, we can make recommendations on the structure of a telephone programme to gain meaningful feedback, and can conduct as few as 10 interviews, up to several hundred, to suit the study and budget.