Author Archives: mark

Faria Rahman of OpenView Labs, the strategic and operational consulting arm of  Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners, shares some good advice about when it is appropriate to use phone interviews to gather accurate market research data. The entire article, “When Do Phone Interviews Make Sense for Market Research”, is available online.

As proponents of phone interview recording and Skype interview recording, which we deliver to our Evoca subscribers every day, we would like to share some highlights. To begin, Faria says,

“If the type of research you’re doing is complex…

Phone inter­views can be much more effec­tive if you’re doing a study that requires your respon­dents to answer multi-step ques­tions (e.g. imple­ment­ing an enter­prise appli­ca­tion). That’s because it is far eas­ier to walk each respon­dent through the set of ques­tions over the phone. In a focus group envi­ron­ment, that process will get con­fus­ing and chaotic.”

Faria references the blog article, “10 reasons to chose telephone interviews over focus groups” by Jacob Brown of In-Depth Technology Research, to drive the point home regarding the advantages of one-on-one phone interviews versus focus groups — which sometimes turn into “group think.” Read more