Interviewing Service of America (ISA) is a research data collection and information provider with major presences in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. ISA also serves international markets with its comprehensive telephone and online interviewing products and services. Founded in 1982, the company employs 125 full-time people and more than 700 data collectors, supervisors, and quality assurance staff.
To leverage its growing international presence, expand its client base, and maximize profitability linked to the increasing demand for Internet and telephone data collection, ISA must:
Working with SPSS Inc., ISA has expanded its client list to include more big-name clients. It has also added Internet research and reporting capabilities with open, flexible products that help streamline client communications and enable ISA to deliver more reliable results in less time. This gives clients clean, tabulated results in the format they need to further investigate and query the data, making their own tables on their desktop—quickly and easily.
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Working with multinational suppliers, global FORTUNE 500 corporations, and various advertising and public relations firms, ISA has been in the business of international market research for nearly two decades. The telephone and Internet data collection and processing firm is well established in the area of computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). In 1999, ISA launched its Internet data collection services, which include several online screening techniques and real-time interviewing.
As ISA moves forward and competes more aggressively, it is narrowing a gap in its client base between the “biggername” conglomerates and the “mom-and-pop” market research firms.
One strategic decision to support the growth involved a recent alliance positioning ISA as the exclusive supplier to BigBang.com, an Internet marketing firm that helps its clients target and deliver Web-based marketing campaigns.
Another was expanding ISA’s relationship with SPSS Inc..
Having used SPSS Inc.’s Quantum for data tabulation since 1993, ISA executives decided early on to put the known flexibility of this industry-leading product to work for them.
Oliver Karp, ISA’s vice president of data processing, described why he works with Quantum: “It is comprehensive and consistent, providing everything we need to check, clean, and manipulate the data. This helps us turn around projects more quickly for our clients, and more recently, helps us expand the kind of clients we work with.”
Clients expect to receive results in a usable and understandable format, and that's where SPSS Inc. products are strongest. For example, the products are much more open in terms of writing code than any of the competitive products we've worked with.
Oliver Karp
Vice President of Data Processing
ISA
“By recently expanding our relationship with SPSS Inc. and its products, we immediately opened up more opportunities to work with larger clients, as well as add to our client base,” said Michael Halberstam, ISA president. Over the last year, the number of large, well-known customers at ISA is up 20 percent.
Once data is cleaned and tabulated, Karp said he believes the next vital step toward meeting client needs is quality data analysis. Using Quanvert, Karp and his team accomplish in-depth analysis with relative ease. They can also support more complex requests from large clients by working with a scalable solution that can grow as the business grows. A third significant plus is ISA’s ability to deliver results in exactly the format that clients demand.
“Clients expect to receive results in a usable and understandable format, and that’s where SPSS Inc. products are strongest. For example, the products are much more open in terms of writing code than any of the competitive products we’ve worked with,” Karp explained.
Often, Karp added, “Clients use the results we provide immediately, with no extra steps involved. This is an immense benefit, for us and for them.”
For ISA, meeting client needs in this way meant the difference between sustaining a client relationship and losing it to the competition. Karp said ISA secured business with a large research conglomerate because it offered results in SPSS format—a way that ISA’s competitor could not.
SPSS Inc. had proven to have such reliable products that when it was time to invest in a Web survey infrastructure, ISA chose SPSS Inc.’s Quancept Web as the backbone of its Internet interviewing services.
“Going with the industry leader meant a lot to us,” said Halberstam. Quancept Web provides a seamless link to other SPSS Inc. products such as Quantum. This eliminates the need to reformat, adjust, or duplicate efforts between data collection, tabulation, and analysis processes—another invaluable time efficiency.
About a year after installing Quancept as part of an endto- end market research solution, the decision has proven profitable. Halberstam believes Internet research—which grew 100 percent the first year and represents about 10 percent of ISA’s total business today—will continue to contribute significantly to the company’s bottom line. And by continuing to leverage the efficiencies of Quancept Web, Halberstam is confident ISA can support future growth.
“Take a business interested in learning more about its online clientele. Using Quancept Web, we can easily set up and analyze results from a Web survey, quickly giving the business owner answers that reveal insightful connections, such as who’s buying what, when. As a result, the business can make slight adjustments—in staffing, operating times, overall offerings, and special promotions—to better meet current and future customer needs, and increase sales,” commented Halberstam.
Karp said, “The Web survey process is a sound investment for the business owner, since we can avoid fees associated with traditional telephone surveys, such as repeat calling or multiple questionnaires. For example, when compared to traditional telephone interviewing, if we take the same survey and field it over the Web, we could potentially save clients anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent in total costs.”
Whether using SPSS Inc. products for the Web or for more traditional survey methods, Halberstam restated his confidence in teaming with SPSS Inc.: “They are well respected in the industry—working with them gives us exposure to clients we didn’t reach before. And with its large R&D group, SPSS Inc. shows its dedication to the industry. It’s why we believe working with them will help us gain more large clients, build upon our reputation for quality, and help us grow both our traditional and online business—in both the United States and internationally.”
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