In my previous post, I talked about the effects of different sampling approaches on the proportion of web versus telephone completes on our newly multimode customer satisfaction program.  Now let’s look at how the resulting survey data were impacted by the transition from a fully phone-only methodology to collecting some portion of the completes online.

For the past twenty years, DDG has been collecting data for a massive, multi-utility customer satisfaction study. Because many of these utilities service residential customers in geographies that are heavily rural, where Internet access is not a guarantee, this study has heretofore been conducted using a telephone data collection methodology. However, as TCPA restrictions on the use of predictive dialers, decreasing penetration of land lines, and flagging telephone response rates have made meeting monthly targets more and more challenging, DDG undertook a significant redesign of the study to allow for multimode data collection. For the first time, online interviews would supplant some of the telephone interviews.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 was designed to protect consumers against unwanted telemarketing calls.  It imposes a variety of restrictions on the hours telemarketers are allowed to dial, and requires that solicitors adhere to federal do-not-call legislation as well as maintaining DNC lists of their own. These limitations do not impact market research companies because the intention of our telephone calls is not a solicitation.  High quality call centers already limit the hours they make calls to consumers, and honor every do not call request they receive.