This FAQ provides answers to questions you may have about Consumer Contact, and our services.
Questions
- Project management
- Programming
- Translation
- Sampling
- Weighting
- Coding
- Tabulation or data file
- Questionnaire length
- Estimated Incidence level
- Sample size
- Number of open ended questions
- Deliverables required such as tables and data files
Q: What makes Consumer Contact different from other data collection companies?
A: Consumer Contact is driven by a passion for quality in data collection and is considered one of the Top Ten data collection companies in
Q: What industry associations do you belong to?
A: Consumer Contact is a corporate member of MRIA and CASRO and our employees serve on the boards and committees of both organizations, as well as being active in MRA, CMOR and ESOMAR.
Q: Are you a full-service research company, or is your focus on the field and/or tab phase of the process?
A: We are solely a quantitative data collection (field and tab) company. We do not offer “full-service” consulting services, and we believe in NOT competing with our clients. Consumer Contact limits its practice to telephone and Internet data collection, we provide expert assistance on sampling, weighting, data entry, coding and tabulation.
Q: Is my data secure?
A: Consumer Contact employs a number of procedures and technologies to ensure the data that we collect is secured. The servers our data are on are housed at a dedicated collocation facility that only permits physical access to the servers on a pre-arranged basis, and to specific, listed software employees. The servers are separated from the public internet with router access control lists (ACL’s) and dedicated firewalls. Many of the servers do not have any publicly accessible connection to the internet at all.
Q: What services do you provide?
A: The Consumer Contact team of data collection professionals provides all the elements for a research project:
We can translate questionnaires, do the required coding and provide tables. Languages include: French and Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Italian and Portuguese. Most of our dialing is within North America; we do have the ability to conduct research internationally.
Q: Is your emphasis on business-to-business or consumer/product research?
A: We regularly conduct both business-to-business and consumer research. Approximately 75% of our work is consumer related, and 25% is business- to- business.
Q: Can you develop a questionnaire?
A: Our core competency is data collection for research professionals. We will review and provide comments on questionnaires, but we do not write the questionnaire. We can recommend qualified research consultants to provide this service if it is needed.
Q: What format does a questionnaire need to be for programming?
A: Microsoft WORD format is preferred but we can handle any type of digital file format.
Q: What are the Consumer Contact CATI resources?
A: We have over 75 full-time employees and we employ more than 1000 contract interviewers working across our 5 call centres (Edmonton, Toronto/Head Office, Toronto/York, and Montreal). With nearly 380 active CATI stations, this allows Consumer Contact to complete large-scale research project in timely and cost effective manner.
Q: How do you recruit and train interviewers?
A: Consumer Contact leads the industry in interviewer recruiting and training. The interviewer hiring process includes scoring of behavioural skills and a communication test. Each new interview undergoes two days of initial training, concentrating on operations proficiency, an introduction to Market Research and soft interviewing skills.
Quality monitoring is 15% for new interviewers with ongoing full call monitoring of 10% of all trained interviewers.
All interviewers are carefully briefed before working on any project. Clients are welcome to attend all briefing sessions prior to the start of a project.
Q: What CATI package do you use?
A: DASH. One of the most popular CATI software packages available in the industry.
Q: How flexible is your programming platform?
A: Our CATI programming solution is very flexible, allowing us to meet virtually all of our clients’ questionnaire design demands. We fully support all standard questionnaire requirements and can include audio in the design, if required
Q: Will you produce data in SPSS?
A: Yes. We can provide fully labeled SPSS data files on request.
Q: Do you have in house coding and data entry?
A: Yes. We typically code all open-ended questions for clients and also provide data entry services, if required.
Q: Can Consumer Contact do multi mode data collection?
A: We can do multi-mode combining both telephone and online data collection. We can also do telephone recruiting to the web and collection of email addresses via telephone surveys.
Q: What is the Project Management process?
A: Day to day project management will be handled by one of our dedicated Project Teams. The assigned Project Director will be able to answer all questions pertaining to the project and provide status updates on a daily basis; this allows you one point of contact for all operational issues.
Q: What are your Data Collection Quality Control processes?
A: Because every project handled by Consumer Contact is the result of many different individuals’ efforts, special care is taken at every stage to ensure that quality is not compromised. All fieldwork will be conducted from our
Q: What are your quality procedures for programming and data cleaning?
A: The questionnaire will be programmed into our CATI system by Consumer Contact’s in-house Programming Department. Extensive technical checking is done by a separate tester along with the Client Service Project Director prior to the start of the main study. Arrangements can be made via the Internet to conduct additional testing of the CATI program. Cleaning and marginal checking is conducted on an ongoing basis throughout the course of the project to ensure all questions are being correctly asked.
Q: How can I see my research data in field?
A: Consumer Contact provides Access free of charge to all clients. Access allows clients to view results in real-time starting from the moment the study launches. Your Project Director will provide login details for Access.
Q: What is your privacy policy?
A: Click here to view our privacy policy.
Q: What affects the pricing of a project?
A: The cost of a research project is impacted by several criteria including:
We will discuss all these items with you, in detail, before generating a quote for your project.
Q: How do I request a quote?
A: Contact Oscar Fernandes (oscar@consumercontact.com) or Gord Ripley (gripley@consumercontact.com) or phone 1-416-493-6111 (1-800-461-3924) to discuss your research needs.
