Editor's note: R. Christopher Horak is operations manager for ConStat, Inc., San Francisco.
The most critical factor in providing reliable, timely, and cost effective research, the key that connects design to analysis, is the interviewer. While much work has been done on interviewing techniques, little attention has beer' paid to the practical management of an interviewing station. This remains the weakest link in the marketing research industry. This article is an overview of some of the critical problems, and the solutions to those problems.
Sales, design, tabulation, analysis, and reporting have been and continue to be analyzed extensively by market researchers. But the most critical factor in providing reliable, timely, and cost effective answers to the client's marketing questions remains largely unexplored. The critical link between design and analysis, the pin that hooks the bull to the cart, is the interviewer. While much research has been done on interviewing style and methods, little has been done on managing these interviewers. Having both developed and run field operations in biological, medical, ecological, marine, industrial, and marketing research for twenty years, and having knowledgeable acquaintance with many other fields, it is my opinion that field operations in marketing research are among the most poorly managed.
The field operations supervisor
In other fields, the field operations supervisor, or FOS, is considered the most critical member of the research team. My chief of staff at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Research once told me that he'd kill nine good lab people to get one good FOS. And there is a good reason for this. The field operations supervisor is a unique combination of "blue-collar" and "white-collar" skills. On the one hand, the FOS needs to have an extensive education, or at least academic knowledge of the particular research field. On the other hand the FOS must often have sheer physical skills, and no problem with repetitive, boring, and tedious work. The FOS must be able to be a dishwasher and chef with equal skill, and devote as much if not more energy to dish washing as to the more "glamorous" parts of the job. The best FOS's will be able to do any part of operations as well or better than those they hire and train to do the job.
In medical research, the FOS may be responsible for scanning 10,000 medical charts, culling the desired information, and converting it into computer enterable form. In biological research the FOS may need to have mountains scaled, water samples collected according to protocol, and returned in a condition to be analyzed. In market research, the FOS manages everything between design and analysis.
Besides being consulted during initial bidding (an occurrence that happens all too infrequently), the FOS must analyze the questionnaire, the sample and the proposed schedule, and integrate this with other ongoing projects. S/he is responsible for recruiting interviewers, training them, and coordinating their schedules with the available hardware. In the meantime, the FOS must maintain equipment, and see to it that appropriate office supplies and forms are available while monitoring their use. In addition to integrating these factors, s/he must monitor the overall job status, make ongoing analyses and projections of manpower requirements and final dates for projects. Meanwhile the FOS must make sure that the results are in a usable form through editing, coding, data entry, and so forth. In the interest of brevity I'll mention only one other part of the job, though there are many more.
On top of all the above there are usually two or three project directors and/or principles breathing down your neck, often with competing needs that the FOS must prioritize. Often they are full of "what- you-should-do's" based on knowledge that is largely theoretical. Usually they cannot understand why this or that will or won't work, even if you tell them, because they're not really listening. Frankly, it is in this area that the greatest problems arise in market research operations. Principals and project supervisors frequently make it virtually impossible to manage interviewers properly.
Interviewer management
For years the attitude has been that interviewers in general are unreliable, untrustworthy, and dress peculiarly. As a result we have all sorts of trouble staffing our interviewing room, monitoring performance, verifying everything the interviewers do, and trying to keep the client from seeing them. Since we view them as non-professionals, we assume that they do not deserve professional wages. We further justify low wages because of our increased costs due to the large amount of training, supervision, monitoring, verification and editing that their unprofessional conduct imposes.
Of course, due to extremely poor training, poor wages, lack of respect, uncertain employment, and lack of opportunity for promotion, we increase our turnover and subsequent training costs by driving away those who would be professionals. Then we expect our FOS to do a good job with generally inferior tools, tools which in most cases could have been average or superior.
Interviewer recruiting problems
FOS's, due to the inability of principles to understand the need to pretrain and due to the necessity of meeting performance demands anyway, are often constrained to rehire individuals who have a record of no-call/no-shows, or of consistent lateness or absence. When interviewers feel that they can do this, such unprofessional behavior is encouraged. When these exceptions are made only for the best interviewers, the effect is even worse. Besides encouraging others to engage in this behavior, it has a damaging effect on morale.
Under no circumstances should such behavior be tolerated. After it has been established, it is very difficult to eradicate. Attempting to do so can then wreak havoc on your reputation with other interviewers. You may find many preferring to work elsewhere before you have anyone with which to replace them. The only way to prevent this is to develop a professional staff, which takes time, training, money, and a longer point of view from the principals that will allow the following problems to be addressed.
Training
Generally, interviewer training is spotty at best. Many companies refuse to do any formal training and others, fearing non-competitiveness, do the same. The FOS is expected to provide some minimal training for each individual hired, and not during slow times, but during the project itself, when s/he has the least amount of available time. Any feedback the individual receives thereafter occurs usually when they have made a mistake, overheard during monitoring or discovered in editing. The only positive feedback an interviewer may get is when s/he achieves a higher than expected rate of production. This arouses suspicion about validity, so even this positive feedback is tainted. Only the egocentric and the stubborn survive this.
Interviewers need ongoing instruction. The belief that you are learning, advancing your knowledge and experience, is an incentive that can outweigh money. Interviewers need to be crosstrained in editing, coding, and data entry. They need to experience for themselves what it is like to edit an incomplete survey, to code an improperly clarified open end, or to enter numeric figures at breakneck speed when the leading zeros have not been added. Once individuals have learned this, they need further training, in focus group recruiting, intercepts, mystery shopper techniques, etc.
Dress codes
Dress codes are important. Without certain limitations, a professional office environment can come to appear similar to scenes from Marat-Sade. Some companies try to deal with this by maintaining interviewing facilities separate from corporate facilities. While this does work to a degree, there are drawbacks. This separation does nothing to counter the general perception interviewers have that they are considered second class citizens by management. It more readily permits unprofessional dress to become standard. It increases the separation of management from operations with corresponding communication problems. It virtually insures that the clients will not observe operations directly. This last may not be a problem, but it precludes an advantage. How much better would it be if the clients observed a well ordered group of professionals working on "their" study? It creates a very good impression, and promotes further projects from the client.
Unprofessional dress habits also contribute to poor attitudes towards interviewers. Interviewers are expert at reading between the lines and quickly realize that they are not regarded with respect, yet they often fail to make the connection since there are so many other conflicting signals concerning the reasons for this disrespect. In addition, unusually sexy clothing, both male and female, is visually distracting at best and at worst can totally disrupt interviewing rooms, particularly the younger employees. A dress code that I have found effective without being draconian is found in the appendix.
Headsets, ergonometric furniture and lighting
In most of the interviewing facilities I have worked, outside of government and university research facilities, headsets and/or ergonometric furniture are not provided. This is a serious error. Such equipment improves interviewer comfort and morale, decreasing absenteeism and illness. It also decreases the research firm's long term exposure to workmen's compensation actions such as carpal tunnel syndrome, neck and back problems, eyestrain, etc. The bottom line is that this type of equipment increases productivity. Headset manufacturer Plantronics claims that headsets improve productivity 11%. In the course of my experience, the addition of headsets has increased productivity as much as 43%. I require all of my newly trained interviewers to use them, whether they wish to or not. If you take the time to review the literature you will find productivity improvement from full-spectrum lighting, adjustable desks and chairs, and even glare screens.
Hiring
Too many times have I seen interviewing rooms staffed by all Mormons, or all Filipinos, or all high- school students, or all women, or all people with Southern accents. It is essential to have a mix of "types" of differing cultural, racial, political, religious, regional, educational, economic, and even sexual backgrounds. First, it ensures that these factors are not determining a portion of your results. Second, it ensures a healthy and interesting human environment. Third, when different interviewing problems arise, perhaps due to the area or population you're calling, you have a much larger pool of experience from which to draw possible solutions.
While many firms give lip service to "hiring-from-within," most do not actually do so. Due to mismanagement of operations by administration and subsequent FOS overload, high turnover can be expected at this level. Interviewers quickly note the discrepancy between stated policy and fact. This compounds the interviewers' impression that management does not respect interviewer skills. It reinforces the feeling that there is "nowhere to go, so what's the use of trying to do a better than adequate job?" You must promote from within.
Project scheduling
Frequently the FOS will be told that a project will begin on or about a certain date. S/he then goes to a great deal of trouble to obtain commitments from an adequate number of interviewers. S/he is then told that the project will begin in, say, three days. Then the FOS rearranges only to be told that the project is again postponed. Why this is a serious problem needs some explanation. Professional interviewers can assure themselves of a high probability of working full time only by being signed up at four or five companies. While some standards have to be maintained (see appendix for a workable policy), it is a practical impossibility to require a professional interviewer to work exclusively for your firm, even if you guarantee a forty hour work week. Most have to work one and a half jobs or more to make ends meet.
Projects that don't begin at least nearly on time result in interviewers not working on days they could have worked elsewhere. Thus, the FOS and the firm begins to lose credibility with interviewers. The best will then place your firm on a lower priority. If the process continues, the only interviewers you will be able to recruit are those no one else wants. It is essential for principals to make it clear to the client that failure to adhere to the schedule, to provide sample in a timely manner, etc., may reduce reliability or increase costs.
Piloting
In the interests of cost-cutting, pilots are often neglected. Even when they are done, they usually consist of a few interviews, conducted by project directors and other staff who are not professional interviewers. If professional interviewers are used, their findings are usually relayed to the FOS, who relays the information to her/his superiors, who then relay this on to the client. This is obviously inefficient, prone to significant error, and again indicates a poor opinion of interviewers.
A pilot with a few good interviewers, followed by a full fledged debriefing, with principals and clients, almost always improves the quality of the study. You avoid both the ridiculously obvious errors and the subtle errors that only professional interviewers are likely to catch. Since interviewers are treated as partners in the team, they feel respected, and tend to remain loyal to the firm. Finally, in practice, throughout twenty years of research, I have never seen a client lost this way. Rather, I have noticed a lot who were quite impressed.
Further problems with administration
A good interviewing staff will notify you of unexpected problems. Perhaps a focus group has been scheduled on the same day as an out of town conference important to your target respondents. Perhaps the structure of the interview may invite the respondent to refuse. Often when these problems are brought to the attention of the administration, they are either ignored, given lip-service and not acted upon, or actually provoke anger. Principals must be able to listen and respond effectively. They must develop client relationships that permit renegotiations where necessary.
It is a mistake to induce competition between interviewers. Competition should be confined to each individual, i.e., "How much can I learn today, and how much better can I be today than I was yesterday?" There will always be those who are exceptional and those who are not. When interviewers start trading comments such as, "I got X number of interviews, how many did you get?" it discourages the slower interviewers. Furthermore, outstanding interviewers quickly realize that they don't need to work quite so hard to perform adequately. After all, they are smart enough to realize that the faster they work, the sooner they will be out of a job. This is why all of my interviewers are requested to discuss production rate only with supervisors. Of course, they do it anyway outside of earshot, but the point - that quality and cooperative behavior will be noticed and appreciated - is made.
Some companies try to remedy interviewer productivity problems with bonus plans. While this stimulates some workers to maintain productivity, it has no effect on those who will do their best regardless. It means a loss of income for the less skilled interviewers who don't yet have the ability to take advantage of these bonus plans, due to the resulting shorter job length. Such plans generally prove to be a take-from-the-poor-and give-to-the-less-poor scheme. The resulting resentment does not improve overall productivity. Soon you have interviewers stealing second-pass sample from each other, refusing to dial areas with a low response rates, and going for quantity over quality (reducing the reliability of your results).
It takes a very good FOS to operate on the cooperative basis. Feedback on interviewer performance has to come mostly through observation. The only numbers you can use are the overall increases in productivity. This does not point out to you the interviewer who, when possessed of five call-back appointments for the same time, passes some off to other interviewers. In such a case, the interviewer who is doing the most to improve interviewing room productivity may appear to be doing more poorly than others in terms of rate. That is why my office is in the interviewing room, while those of my assistants may be elsewhere.
If a bonus structure is to be used at all, it must be for overall performance of the interviewing facility. For instance, your production rate indicates that you will finish a study on Monday, when it must be finished by Sunday night. You have no more lines or interviewers. You inform the interviewing staff that if the study is finished by Sunday, you'll give everyone an extra five hours pay. Soon you will see the better interviewers instructing the less skilled on pertinent tricks of the trade. Over the last few days, almost everyone will show, champing at the bit, even on a weekend. If the interviewers come in on Monday you'll end up paying about as much anyway. With this bonus structure it is likely that the study will be done by the deadline, and you will induce your more experienced interviewers to provide practical advanced training for your less skilled interviewers.
Summary
Adherence to professional standards for interviewers may increase some training and other ancillary costs for a while, but in the long run, decreased absenteeism, increased interviewer morale, company loyalty, and cooperative professional behavior will increase productivity. Improved productivity will justify higher wages which will encourage professionals to remain in the field. Increased levels of professionalism among the interviewing staff will encourage respect from non-interviewing staff, and encourage a true hire-from within policy, again resulting in professionals who remain in the business. Pilots which include the professional interviewing staff in client debriefings further enhance professionalism, morale, loyalty, and productivity.
Management (and bonus plans) based on a cooperative model, initially require more of the FOS, but result in higher interviewing room productivity and better interviewer training. Improved training allows the FOS to spread the work load to interviewers, providing a core group suitable for promoting from within, and which incidentally results in fewer FOS burnouts. It is important that the field operations supervisor be a fully equal member of the management team. Sales, design, analysis, and reporting can blind you to the practical problems in operations which in the final analysis are every bit as important, if not more so, to the project's and ultimately, to the marketing research firm's, success.
Appendix
Dress code - Clothing should be appropriate to a professional office environment, neat and clean, without major rips, tears or excessive patching. Spandex and tights without clothing covering them are not permitted. Suits, ties, and skirts are not required, but are appreciated.
Working for other companies - If you have agreed to work on a study for ConStat, that includes working until the study is done. Given the job-to job nature of research interviewing, professional telephone interviewers must often work for a number of companies in order to increase the probability of working full time, week to week. While we are willing to accommodate this need (even to the point of referring you to their companies), this does not include abandoning the study towards the end because another job is starting elsewhere. Professional behavior requires you to balance the needs of the current company's study with those of the next company's study. You will find that experienced supervisors will understand this; discussing the competing needs with the supervisor at the next company also assures the next supervisor that you will not leave that study with little notice. Usually some compromise can be reached. At the same time, if no compromise can be reached, your commitment to the current study takes precedence. As with consistent tardiness or absence, even with a good excuse, if you cannot be relied on to do the job you were employed to do, we will not be able to consider you for future jobs.