Automated telephone surveys

Automated surveys are used to collect information and gain feedback via the telephone and the internet. Automated surveys are used for customer research purposes by call centres for customer relationship management and performance management purposes. They are also used for political polling, market research and job satisfaction surveying.

Many large organisations outsource their customer handling to call centres where another organisation deals directly with their customers. Automated surveys give independent evaluation of the outsourced service from the customers themselves. In call centres automated surveys are used to improve service quality and increase customer loyalty.

The process of setting up an automated telephone and web survey system is as follows:

1. Design survey questionnaire(fat)

2. Record voice prompts and test the survey

3. When the survey goes live, customers who contact the call centre will be asked, either by the agent or by a voice recording, if they would like to give feedback on the quality of the service they received. Customers who agree to take part are transferred to the survey at the end of their call. Transferring calls to the automated survey system can be done manually by the person talking to the customer, automatically using a VRU (Voice Response Unit). Relevant information about the call (agent ID, caller telephone number, etc) is attached. The customer is then presented with a set of pre-recorded question, and asked to respond using the telephone keypad. They can also leave verbatim comments.

4. Data and recordings of verbatim comments are saved and compiled on a secure server. The information can then be accessed online.