3 Horribly Costly Intercept Interview Mistakes to Avoid
Here at DSG Associates, we’re obsessed with market research strategies like intercept interviews because of their effectiveness in getting valuable information from different kinds of customers, whether they recently shopped in your store, ate in your restaurant, or just walked into your facility.
But intercept interviews need to be optimized to ensure the accuracy of the surveys and validity of the results. If you would be doing this anytime soon, here are a few of the costly mistakes you want to look out for so you can avoid them;
1. Interviewer biases
Biases in the interviewing process are mostly unconscious but surprisingly common. These kinds of biases happen when interviewers, often unknowingly, express their personal opinions during interviews; thereby, causing the respondents to shape their answers in a specific way.
Most interviewers facing this challenge are usually unaware that they’re somehow influencing the respondent, ultimately swaying their responses to be different from the true answers. Two things are important to avoid these mistakes. The first is to ensure that questions are properly structured. Then, secondly, interviewers should refrain from giving their opinions before and after a question is answered.
2. Inadequate knowledge of the survey
The heart of every intercept interviewer is the interviewer themself. It is therefore very important that the interviewer be quite knowledgeable and familiar with most of the issues being researched. This knowledge should help the interviewer take note of every important factor that could introduce bias into the process.
Being familiar with the interview will influence a lot of things from knowing what questions to ask, wording these questions properly, and knowing the order and pattern of questions, among others. Interviewers will be better off going over the survey thoroughly before heading into the interview. Instructions about everything involved in the interview should not come as a surprise to the interviewer on the interview day.
3. Clerical errors
Finally, there can also be issues with clerical errors.
Clerical mistakes committed during the interview can have big impact on the validity of the survey’s responses and results. If the interviewer incorrectly fills an answer in the wrong box, you know it would impact the integrity of the overall results.
Interviewers have to make sure they’re getting the right answers from the respondents. And in instances where respondents might be required to commit to a single response out of multiple options, they can probe further to arrive at a response.
Also when reporting answers to open-ended questions that interviewers have provided in their own words, it’s important to ensure that these responses are recorded verbatim without trying to interpret the responses or adding or subtracting from them.
Conclusion
There is a myriad of ways through which businesses get feedback from their customers. And there is a reason why intercept interviews remain one of the top options for serious brands looking to unlock data with market surveys and research strategies.
Intercept interviews help you get your customers’ attention, obtain real-time responses, and reach diverse demographics. However, it has to be properly set up and highly structured to avoid random errors and unconscious mistakes. This is the only way to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of the surveys, devoid of misleading and inaccurate results.
At DSG Associates, we’re experts at intercept interviews, customer surveys, mystery shopping, and a variety of other effective market research and survey services.
If you’re keen on exploring how any of these can benefit your business, our experts at DSG Associates will be more than happy to help you get started. Contact us today at DSG Associates. We’re just a message or phone call away!