As Coronavirus continues to impact people and businesses across the UK and globally, we want to reassure both our clients and prospective clients regarding our Business Continuity Plans and the approach we are taking to allow us to continue supporting you when it comes to your research needs during this period.
We will hold Skype and telephone meetings with our clients in place of face-to-face meetings to ensure projects continue to progress along planned timescales. Should Public Health England (PHE) and the Government release new advice around home working, social distancing etc. we would expect to see some changes within our business which we have detailed further down in this article.
What can you do to keep your research project on track?
- Move as much of your quantitative market research methodology as possible online. Online surveys will be relied on more heavily during the Covid-19 outbreak as a way of achieving robust samples even when the population is having to self-isolate or is in a state of lockdown.
- For qualitative market research, we can offer an extremely effective alternative to face to face focus groups: Web Communities from Turquoise is a cost effective qualitative tool that allows you to create online research communities that are as modern and engaging as the participant’s favourite social networks.
We are ready to adapt in the in the following ways…
Remote working
All members of the Turquoise Thinking team have mobile capabilities to work from home and fulfil client needs remotely. Therefore, research requirements including online capabilities, scripting/hosting, qual recruitment, telephone depth interviews, web communities, enquiries, quotes, order processing, data processing etc. will continue as normal with Project Managers working through remote working systems.
CATi research
Currently we are reducing the number of CATi booths we operate to enable sufficient spacing between individuals. However, this is not affecting delivery of any current CATi research booked at this time. In some instances, it may require slight lengthening of research timings to accommodate the dynamic nature of this period.
Face to face research
We are starting to see some preference of some respondents for not attending research requiring face to face attendance such as groups and depths. Your Turquoise Project Manager will discuss any issues with you and look for alternative solutions to keep projects on track. Equally, should a lockdown scenario be implemented we would also expect to see some further temporary impact on recruitment and implementation of face-to-face depth interviews, focus groups and CATi during the period of the lockdown; where rational in relation to research requirements, and feasible, we will recommend alternative methodologies such as telephone depth interviews as opposed to face to face depths as an alternative, qualitative web communities etc. For CATi we would implement CATi interviewer remote home working to achieve interviews.
Data collection
With the current situation we anticipate seeing some variation in data collected, which will reflect different patterns of behaviour exhibited by the public at large. None of your data is at greater risk during remote working and our security systems and procedures remain in place as usual.
Questions?
As always, we remain committed to supporting you with your market research needs during this uncertain and challenging time. If you have any questions, please get in touch at info@thinkturquoise.com