Editor's note: Cord Udall is phone center assistant manager, Western Wats Center, Provo, Utah.

As market researchers, we have the rewarding job of tracking the opinions of the public and professionals alike on everything from pizza toppings to airline booking procedures. This broad range of investigation exposes us to the latest technology in hundreds of fields - technology that could certainly be useful to our own industry. But a review of market research firms reveals that despite the researchers' exposure to new technology, we, as an industry, are often slow or reluctant to adopt it.

What technology are we slow to embrace? A prime example involves the rise of CATI systems, which several years ago began to replace paper and pencil surveys. As a phone center assistant manager, I spent entire shifts photocopying, editing, and delivering enormous stacks of paper questionnaires to our data entry department. What a relief our CATI system brought with its timesaving (and mind-saving) abilities to ensure adherence to rotation and skip patterns, eliminate virtually all paperwork, and process data for quicker turn around for the client.

"So what?" you ask. Well, supposedly we are all familiar with the benefits of CATI systems, and would all agree that these benefits greatly outweigh those of paper and pencil surveys. However, a study conducted in December 1994 by Western Wats Center shows that only half of 139 field service and two-thirds of 216 full-service shops employ a CATI system to assist in their telephone data collection.

What are the others using in this computer age? What they always have - good ol' paper and pencil.

The market research community now finds itself at a crossroads regarding the technology of predictive dialing. But what exactly is a predictive dialer? First generation predictive systems were heavy-duty mainframe computers that operated by way of a host or PBX system serving dumb terminals. These predictive dialers distinguish themselves from automated or power dialing systems by using a pacing algorithm, which accounts for number of interviewers and phone lines, average connect time, and average amount of dialing time to find the next live respondent. Based on these parameters, the algorithm controls the dialer and sets the pacing speed. The system is then fed phone numbers from the sample, and dials a proportionally higher amount of lines than there are interviewers. After screening out nonproductive numbers (e.g., busy, no answer, disconnect) and rescheduling retrievable attempts for future radiating, the system forwards only live connects to the interviewers. These "good" calls arrive accompanied by relevant sample information on the computer screen just as the waiting interviewer hears the respondent's "hello."

Telemarketers were the first to dive into the predictive dialing world. Telemarketing's growth can be largely attributed to predictive dialing, which cut costs and doubled production in most telemarketing centers. As a result, the telemarketing industry has grown explosively. Fat profits generated by rapid telephone sales have attracted streams of marketing dollars previously spent elsewhere.

But what about market research? How can predictive dialing specifically benefit our industry? Following are results from a recent dialing comparison conducted in my phone center:

Hand Dialed Predictive
Completes 1,000 1,000
Production Rate 2.02 2.82
Interviewer Hours 493 hrs. 354 hrs.
Questionnaire Length 7 minutes, 14 seconds
Incidence 47% 45%
Total sample units 10,000 10,000
(Survey Sampling, Inc. Random Business Screened, 2 replicates)
Total dialing attempts 12,812 23,965

This comparison of predictive and manual dialing methods clearly favors predictive dialing. As an operating manager in a phone center, I certainly favor it! We spent 39 percent fewer dialing-hours to complete the project, and found a 40 percent productivity gain using the predictive dialer on this split sample study. How can predictive benefit the interviewer and the supervisor who work directly with the dialer? The dialer saves interviewers from the monotonous task of dialing and encountering mostly busy, disconnected, and unanswered calls, relieving them from burnout. Predictive dialers can be quick and effective in their sample management, freeing the supervisor from traditional project work to attend to the needs of the interviewing staff. Chris Hall, president of Advanced Phone Resources, has found similar results. "Our new predictive dialer has made a real difference. We saw instant results in our phone center -- fewer hassles, increased production and a happier staff. Our interviewer turnover has started to decrease and our time is spent in more productive activities."

Can researchers benefit?

If predictive dialing has benefited telemarketers, why can't it do the same for the market research industry? Telephone research and telemarketing are birds of a different feather but are similar in many operational aspects. Since predictive technology is superior to manual dialing methods, then one would expect to find a predictive dialer in most research phone centers. However, a 1994 Western Wats inquiry of the research industry shows only 3 percent of field service and 4 percent of full-service companies have invested in predictive dialers, compared to 74 percent of telemarketing firms.

The obvious question is "Why?" A close look reveals several factors. First, many research operators are simply unaware of predictive dialing technology, and if they are aware, they don't understand how it operates and how it could benefit them. Further, many people who are aware of predictive technology aren't computer literate, and thus fear it. But the principal deterrent still seems to be its cost, which is perceived to be prohibitive. Most predictive dialing manufacturers have steadily raised prices for their product as a result of demand from telemarketers. And because they are now even more feature enhanced, these PBX style dialing systems now cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 per station, an investment requiring $100,000 or more for the average market research phone center. Higher demand and more features has led to costly maintenance contracts, updates, and necessary maintenance by in-house programmers. All of this, of course, instantly equates to huge expenses.

How has telemarketing been able to effectively adopt the predictive dialer if cost is such a deterring factor? Unlike the market research industry, telemarketing is a young industry with expanding markets. Telemarketing firms are ubiquitous now, most of them operating at high profit levels. The investment in a traditionally expensive predictive dialing set-up is more feasible for telemarketers than it is for a market research firm or data collection center, whose industry has matured and is much more cost driven.

Jumping the hurdles

The overwhelming value of predictive dialing technology would seem indispensable to the future of telephone data collection. But several distinct factors, especially cost, are deterring its widespread use. How, then, can the industry jump these hurdles to take advantage of predictive dialing technology? Working in the new realm of computer telephone integration, some industry developers are providing a way. Advances in PC technology, combined with new "open architecture" dialing card systems, have allowed these developers to create PC-based predictive dialers.

Here's how it works: A phone center that is PC networked (such as those using PC CATI systems in their data collection) adds an open architecture dialer to the existing PC network. This is done by loading a dialing interface on the network server and installing the dialing engine as a conventional node on the network. This means that most networked CATI systems need no other enhancements, and no major overhaul of interviewing software is necessary. But what about cost? In this PC environment each interview station can be equipped with predictive dialing for as little as $2,000, a drop of up to 80 percent of the cost for a traditional dialer.

For several years, we at Western Wats looked to incorporate predictive dialing company-wide. We had already invested in CATI technology to assist in the data collection process, but our dialing remained primarily manual due to the high costs of acquiring additional predictive dialing stations and the seasonal nature of our political research work. Last year, my life as a phone room manager changed for the better! Western Wats developed and installed a custom research predictive dialing system on my CATI network. The results are impressive. We have installed predictive systems in each of our four phone centers, and have taken on work that previously would have made me shudder! For instance, in a national election project last fall, we made 85,000 screening calls from a 110,000 sample base in just three days -- with a production rate of over 50 screenings per hour!

Despite how wonderful the PC-based dialer now appears to my staff, most of them were anxious when considering possible difficulties before we installed this new technology. One obstacle we anticipated was the possibility of requiring extensive training for managers, supervisors, and interviewers to operate the dialing equipment. But that worry soon vanished. Because the supervisors and interviewers were already familiar with the existing CATI, they needed only minimal training on the dialer. My staff was up to speed in just a few weeks. The dialing system has been a big time-saver in other areas. As a phone center manager, I used to spend the wee hours of many nights sorting sample, completing master dialing tallies, and manually entering dialing disposition results. Our PC-based dialer now does all of that, as well as create on-line reports of interviewer statistics, quotas and project production figures.

Change to survive

Current industry trends suggest that market research may be forced to make sweeping operational modifications to ensure its survival. The data collection phone center particularly faces many growing challenges. Labor pools are shrinking, labor costs are rising, refusal rates and answering machine use are up, and the demand for low-incidence studies is climbing. The predictive dialer can obviously aid the industry in overcoming these challenges.

And though its acceptance as a practical research tool has been inhibited by different factors, specifically cost, its advantages make it an overwhelming favorite to maintain the industry's prosperity. With predictive dialing, labor costs dive as productivity increases. Call center workloads can be increased with same staffing levels, and studies fumed around more rapidly in the field. And with innovative PC-based dialers, a much lower price tag cuts the investment "payback" time in half compared to traditional predictive systems -- not to mention that it makes a phone center manager's job much easier, and allows the phone center staff to get to bed before midnight!