CATI and Callision: A Great Team
The passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a water shed moment in American history that made it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, sex, or religion. The law’s promise of equal protection for African-Americans, and the challenges in securing these rights, echoes through American society to this day. Other aspects of the law reverberate as well; in June of 2020 the US Supreme Court upheld that the law also protects employees against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The passage of the Civil Rights Act was the beginning of a new age of government funding for social programs from Medicare and Medicaid to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Trails System. There was also a rise in funding for social research at universities and policy centers leading to a boom in public surveying that carried over into the private sector.
Investments in technology such as Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing, or CATI, led to hundreds of market research firms and government contractors joining companies like Gallup in using the telephone to gauge consumer preferences and political opinions starting in the 1970s.
CATI’s use of computers to generate questionnaires and collect data from phone calls has made it possible to analyze information and optimize the interviewing process. Now, a half century later, CATI software features branching logic that dynamically adjusts interview scripts based on responses, algorithms to enhance data accuracy, and all manner or data sorting and analysis options.
Today the market research industry in the U.S. is worth more than $22 billion, and built largely on the affordability and accuracy of CATI. With so much riding on the integrity and accessibility of data, companies that conduct telephone surveys need a rock solid telephony solution that integrates seamlessly and scales reliably.
Callision provides services for the world’s leading research firms and integrates with an array of CATI products combining the flexibility of web-based calling with market research best practices. Features like Dynamic CallerID allow research firms to match their subject’s region code and prefix which can boost answering rates up to 35%.
Callision’s easily configurable recording technology allows researchers to back up their data collection methods with cloud-based audio files that seamlessly integrate into popular file systems. This provides a secondary set of data that can be used for reviewing the quality of interviewing methods and constructing supporting datasets.
Callision’s analytics provide researchers an additional layer of insight with data that can be filtered and analyzed with powerful one-touch filters and exported to a variety tools. All calls can be played back and reviewed or monitored at a glance.
As an industry, market research faces a future filled with change and professionals in the field cite keeping up with innovation and technology as prime concerns while emphasizing that communication is still the most important aspect of their work. Callision is focused on streamlining technology so that our customers can communicate with clients, employees, and the public worry free, allowing a clear connection to consumers and access to crucial data.
