Three reasons for businesses to conduct telephone surveys

According to research from Harvard Business School, more than 75% of new consumer product lines fail, and this number rises to 95% for B2B industries.

This high failure rate can be attributed to many factors – foremost among them being lack of customer insight. Organisations often think they know enough about their target audience, and rush into the process without adequate research.

Ultimately, this leads to a loss of both time and money, and can also damage customer loyalty.

The importance of telephone surveys

A telephone survey has distinct advantages over other methods of market research. Your clients are more engaged and responsive when you use phone interviews to ask open-ended questions.

In a B2B setting, conducting telephone surveys has three main benefits.

A continuous learning process 

Direct feedback from customers on how to improve your product or service is priceless. 

Working directly with the people you want to target, they can point out changes that can help overcome a wide range of customer challenges. 

The information you gain from a phone survey can help you constantly do better and develop according to your goals.

Identifying your target audience

In order to gather useful customer data, businesses should interview a target audience, but exploring a new possible customer group can open up many opportunities. 

A phone interview is very simple, inexpensive, and convenient to conduct, so expanding your focus groups can pay off.

It is possible to evaluate the potential of a new idea by interviewing a new target group, without wasting valuable resources or making costly mistakes.

Telephone interviewing is flexible

A non-structured telephone interview allows for a natural, conversational flow.

Following the interviewee’s lead, interviewers can explore key observations and delve into specific topics at length. A dual effect occurs, making the respondent feel heard and drawing out valuable insight.

These more flexible research methods may uncover something unexpected, but extremely valuable.

Underperforming B2B companies don’t listen to customers

Many B2B market research survey questions are lifted from consumer surveys, and this results in less than satisfactory customer feedback.  Although B2B companies can copy some consumer practices, survey design is not one of them.

In general, B2B customers spend more on each transaction than consumers, and take a longer time to make a decision. It also takes multiple decision makers to reach a final decision. 

B2B customer needs: critical questions

1. Are there any major challenges/barriers to doing your job?
2. What are the reasons why your current process or solution isn’t working?
3. During your day, what occupies the most of your time?

By asking these questions, you can discover what makes your customers’ jobs more difficult. Identifying the existing needs of your customers is the key to aligning your product or service with them.

1. When you are making a purchase, what steps do you take?
2. Who is responsible for your budget?
3. How much does your organisation expect to spend on [insert product] this year?

A B2B purchase typically involves multiple parties. A procurement team may involve everyone from bosses and coworkers to a large procurement department. You’ll be able to estimate how long the buying cycle will take by knowing the number of people involved and how long each step takes.

1.  Which trends do you see having the greatest impact on your business in the short term and long term? 
2. What other solutions have you considered?

By asking these questions, you can discover what the bigger issues are or what questions customers are asking. In addition, they help you position your product to align with organisational growth.

Count on More Than Words for your telephone survey

The best results from phone surveys come from carefully planning every campaign before launching it.

It is necessary to have your input on every aspect of the survey design, including the questions that will be asked to respondents.

Our team has extensive experience conducting business surveys and, with a clear understanding of your objectives, we’ll be able to recommend questions that will yield the results you need.

In order to get the information you require, our trained interviewers will ask each respondent in your target market questions from survey templates created in collaboration with your business.

When conducting telephone interviews, the script and order of the questions can greatly affect response rates and quality of the data collected.

The interviewer will receive a brief (to fully understand the campaign’s objectives), along with a statement that lays out how each question will be phrased and arranged.

We will ask questions that are tailored to the client’s needs and wishes as well as those of the survey respondent.

Our goal is to maintain contact with potential respondents for as long as necessary.

If you are interested in conducting phone interviews or customer service surveys  with your clients or customers, please contact us on 0330 010 8300.