Case 07. Training and Supervising Field workers

Situation

Paul Converse operates a marketing research company, serving a variety of clients from business and industry. Since he is located in a community where there are a number of colleges and universities, he relies on college students, as temporary employees, to staff his phone bank when he has a telephone survey to complete for a client. When he begins a new job, he will brief the telephone interviewers about the job and the procedures he wants them to follow in completing the survey. He does not, however, use phone equipment that would allow his on-site supervisor to monitor the calls for quality control, nor does he conduct random follow-up on the completed interviews to verify the accuracy of the information recorded. He assumes that the interviewers will perform their duties in a competent and reliable manner.

Questions

1.    Can college students be expected, reasonably, to competently perform
         telephone interviews with no more than an hour or two “briefing” on
         a pending job?

2.    Is Paul Converse providing adequate supervision of the telephone
         interviewers as they complete their calls?

3.    Does Paul Converse have any ethical responsibility to his clients to
         engage staff that are properly trained and supervised?

     Reflect on the above questions and form your own answers before clicking the Discussion key to review the commentary provided with this case.

Discussion

Having a full-time staff of interviewers with extensive training and experience may be prohibitively expensive and unnecessary for someone owning and operating a small marketing research business. It is not uncommon for such businesses to rely on a pool of “temporary” staff that they can call on, when needed. In this situation, Paul Converse relies on local college students for his telephone interviewers.

Mr. Converse may be right in assuming that college students provide an educated corps of workers who can easily grasp the detail needed to perform telephone interviews for any particular job. However, given the extent of briefing prior to the job, the level of supervision during the job, and the degree of follow-up to verify the accuracy of the data, it does not appear that Paul Converse is particularly concerned about the quality of the data collected.

It is his ethical responsibility as a professional to provide a quality product to his clients. Given this, he should be providing more extensive training of the interviewers prior to their use on a job. This would include instruction related not only to the mechanics of completing calls, but to the importance of confidentiality of information as well. In addition, new interviewers should have close supervision and feedback to verify their competence. Finally, as standard practice, a small percentage of every interviewer's work should be validated through a call-back to the person interviewed.