Description

Costing for a CATI survey is one of the most complicated tasks in market research, however, it is the easiest to do with our product. In fact, the price tag for a single CATI survey can be formulated within 5 to 10 minutes. You may already do costing within this short time, but our product includes the workout of all assumptions that can be related to the project and it provides you with the answer to the question "why does that CATI project cost so much?". Cost of research has never been easier to justify.

What makes CATI calculation complex and what makes it easy?

It is complex because cost heavily depends on the number and proportion of different call outcomes and the duration associated. It depends on penetration, effectivity of interviewers, the time and day the interviews are conducted, the direction of calls, the number of workstations involved, etc. Still, in our product, with compulsory assumptions it is very fast to calculate CATI project costs, because the outcomes and the processes are all mathematically modelled through formulas. Due to proper modelling, field resources can be planned, including the number of interviewers, the number of days to complete data administration and the time the call center supervisor needs to spend in the call center.

Technical details

The market research cost calculator operates with the following settings and cost implications:

• Segment of respondents [residential, business, government, any]: four segment are differentiated for reason: different segments may require interviewers of different quality. Also, members of each segment can be accessed in different hours of the day or on different days of the week [for example, residential surveys may be more efficient to conduct after business hours and on weekends. Or, if we operate with mobile phone numbers and we are to call customers of an insurance company, then we may call just about any time of the day and any day of the week. When members of a certain segment can be called is defined by the user.
  

• Level of difficulty [easy, normal, hard]: if interviewers with different skills are employed or projects are differentiated based on their difficulties, then with this option users can relate different interviewer costs to different project levels and different respondent segments.
  

• Waves: any number of waves can be defined.
  

• Call statistics and time associated: call statistics are usually checked when a project is completed. However, due to its effect on project costs, it should be predicted prior to conducting the study. How call statistics looks like is partly how the cost structure will look like in the end. MRCCtm not only requires users to make predictions on the call statistics in a percentage form, it requires users to predict the time associated with any individual call event. Also, among the many assumptions, there is the penetration rate to assume that is usually disregarded in CATI cost calculations.
  

• Days and shifts: days and shifts are to be planned so that sufficient number of interviewers can be deployed at a later time and for the purpose of project scheduling. It has effect on the cost as well, because interviewing in certain times is more expansive than in other times.
  

• Interviewers' active and inactive time ratio: a unique proportion that indicate how effective interviewers are in general. In most call centers interviewers spend about 5-30% of their time with activities not related to interviewing. 
  

• CATI system cost if it applies: if there is a system cost that can be associated eirher with interviewing time or with all time [active and inactive] then this can be factored into the total project cost.
  

• Data entry and data processing standard fees: standard fees applied to suppliers
  

• Call ratio by types of calls