Telemarketers, Researchers... what's the difference?
At first glance, telemarketers and researchers suck. They repeatedly call, ruining your dinner, interrupting your favorite TV shows, and ultimately torturing you until you finally answer the phone. But the similarities between the two only go so far. Essentially, telemarketers are trying to sell you something. That is not the case with market researchers. A researcher's main goal is to gather opinions from a small sample of people. These opinions are generally aggregated and used to express the feelings of the entire population being represented. The rest of this article will focus on Market Research and touch on some aspects from your point of view -- the respondent.
As a precursor, if you manage to figure out who is calling you, it may be a wise idea to visit the Better Business Bureau website and determine if the company is reputable and worth speaking to.
If Market Researchers are so great, why do they keep bugging me?
Market Research firms must reach out to its clients' customers -- that being you! Often there alternative methods for responding to surveys. These include online questionnaires, forms via postal mail, or in-person questionning. The alternative to these methods is to simply call the customers using data that the client provides to the firm. Gathering data from the customers is left up to the research company. Typically research companies strive to get as much feedback as possible from the customers and this requires contacting as many as possible. In order to make contact with as many people as possible within the limited allotted schedule, Market Research firms allow the interviewers to dial your number up to a limited number of times per day. Once you reach that limit, the calling stops. Also, as soon as you complete the survey that they are calling about, you will be placed on a list and not be contacted for a certain period of time, typically 6 months to a year.
I'm on the National Do Not Call Registry, what gives?
The national do not call registry only applies to marketers, not the market research industry. If this weren't the case, it would be nearly impossible to reach out to customers for feedback. Check out the official website of the National Do Not Call Registry for an explanation of the rules regarding exempt organizations, or see the snippet below.
In general, your organization is not required to access the National Do Not Call Registry, and thus may access as an Exempt Organization, if one or more of the following is true:
- Your organization is not subject to either the FTC's or the FCC's jurisdiction. For example, a non-profit charitable organization may be an Exempt Organization, assuming, of course, that it is truly a non-profit. Entities that have been granted tax exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code are not necessarily Exempt Organizations for purposes of the National Do Not Call Registry. See, e.g., FTC v. National Consumer Council, Inc., and FTC v. Debt Management Foundation Services, Inc., at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/03/creditcouncel.htm
- Your organization does not engage in any "telemarketing" or "telephone solicitation" activities, as defined by the FTC and FCC, respectively. For example, survey calls and political polling calls are not covered by the definition of "telemarketing" or "telephone solicitations." An organization that places ONLY these types of calls may be an Exempt Organization.
- Your organization qualifies for one or more of the specific exemptions contained in the FTC's and FCC's rules, such as:
- you only call to solicit charitable contributions; or
- you only call consumers with whom you have an established business relationship; or
- you only call consumers from whom you have received written permission to call; or
- you only make business-to-business calls.
I've picked up the call but nobody answers on the other end
Many market research companies use an automated system to dial phone numbers. This is called predictive dialing because it does the dialing for the interviewers and they simply take the call once the dialer detects that someone has answered. Unfortunately there are times when an interviewer is not available to take the call and you are stuck with nobody on the other end of the line. This is known as a dropped call. According to CASRO standards, a certain percentage of dropped calls is considered moral and acceptable. Without this fudge factor, the research companies would be wasting a lot of time having the interviewers dial the numbers by hand.
So how do I get them to leave me alone?
All companies must abide by a simple rule: if you make a request to be put on their Do Not Call list, they must not call your number for a certain period of time. Many people already know this but what they fail to understand is that you must actually provide the phone number. The simple fact is, if you don't provide it then the company will not know who you are or what number to add. It's as simple as that! In my opinion you should do your civic duty and take the survey that is being requested of you but if, for some reason, you are biased against such actions then you should ask nicely to be put on the company's Do Not Call list if you want to be left alone.