In this day and age, there aren’t many reasons for researchers to engage consumers with merely a clipboard and pen. This is an archaic modality to collect information from consumers regarding products or services, and it takes weeks for the information to be manually inputted. As consumers, we’ve been trained to know what they are for, and consequently we instinctually want to avoid them.
We have discovered that our customers (retailers, restaurants, hospitality and market research firms) are finding significant value in moving away from this modality, onto the mobile survey devices. The value of doing is enormous; here are some reasons why:
- Consumers Love It! Don’t underestimate the value of this; consumers would much rather engage a slick piece of technology versus a clipboard, for instance. It is highly likely you will see a quantifiable increase in your take rates.
- Real-Time: No longer do you have to “wait” for the information to be faxed/mailed to a central location, sheets given to temps to input data and then start your analysis. Devices have 4 different ways in which they can connect to the internet, and data is uploaded immediately.
- Program Management: I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a project in which edits weren’t being made to the survey questions all the way up to the actual day the project was going to start. This is extremely cumbersome with paper surveys, but it is a non-issue for mobile survey devices since our software communicates with the devices in real-time. Thus, you can be sitting at the comfort of your desk – pushing edits to it in real time – with the devices spread across the nation/world.
- Multiple Surveys: Rifling through papers to find the right survey is disruptive at best. However with mobile devices, there are no limits to the number of surveys that can be hosted on a device. So, just imagine you have a customer who would rather participate in his native language; well, he would simply select it from a multilingual menu on the device, and he’s off and running!
It is high time to discard this archaic mode of paper surveys. Embrace the technology of today by using mobile devices! Have you had a bad experience with paper surveys? If so, tell us about it in our comments.
