Moderately awesome – tales from the front line of webcam interviewing
In this article, Guy Pascoe explores the pros and occasional cons of using web platforms to replace good old TDIs.
Most of us who worked in market research in recent years will be familiar with video interviewing, and likely have moderated / watched / taken part in online IDIs or even groups.
The old days
Back in the day we had to mail out webcams, spend frustrating hours helping respondents set up, and spend a lot of money in the process. But it worked pretty well, even then, and we could all see the potential… it was just those pesky $$$. They were priced as the next best thing to face-to-face, but we all knew they were really just a marginal (though very nice) upgrade on a good old telephone interview.
In the same way, despite the success of Skype and then FaceTime as social communication tools, videoconferencing for business stubbornly refused to take hold – proprietary systems, expensive equipment… it all just seemed too hard, even though we knew the potential.
Welcome to 2020
Now it’s 2020, and with a burst of acceleration thanks to ‘you-know-what’, we’ve reached 88mph and gone back to where the future was supposed to take us (don’t think too hard on that analogy, like the movie, it’s not exactly watertight). We’re all talking online the whole time for both work and fun, often via webcams.
Here at Purdie Pascoe, we’ve been conducting some webcam interviews that are straight replacements for face-to-face IDIs. Nothing beats actual ‘IRL’ (ask your kids), face-to-face interactions, of course, and when the objectives justify the budget, I’m sure they will still have their place. Personally, I can’t wait until we’re able to get back to central facilities on a regular basis. Those days in the backroom help bring the research to life, and they also provide an unparalleled opportunity for an agency and a client to get to know each other better.
But the webcam replacements are pretty darn good. We’ve sent out prototypes to clinicians and watched them unwrap them like it’s Christmas morning before trying them out on camera for us. Just like Christmas, some are excited by their new toys, some are visibly disappointed. Inevitably, connections are occasionally glitchy, pets and children are prone to distract both respondent and moderator, lighting can be sub-optimal or even downright weird - but ultimately, it works.
Then there are the ‘regular’ interviews that would normally have been done by telephone. My preference now is to do them via one of the web platforms, typically either Zoom or Teams. This article was going to be a detailed comparison of these two, and I may yet write about that, but both work very well. Subject to any internet issues, the sound quality is generally far superior to telephone, screen-sharing is super-easy, and there is a built-in chat function.
Learning points
There has been a learning curve of course. For example, clients who already have a Zoom account have often found themselves entering an interview with their name on full display. We’ve worked out how they can change this before joining, but it’s not instinctive and adds a fiddly step. Another caveat – chat messages sent to the whole group (rather than just to the moderator) can be seen by the respondent…. we found this out when a doctor answered a question posted by a client before I’d even spotted it. Luckily, we haven’t yet had to deal with any messages like ‘Wow this guy is boring, I’m going to go and make myself a coffee’.
But my major concerns have been allayed. The first was that respondents now have to proactively dial in rather than waiting to be called, but they’re generally proving pretty good at that – and as long as we have a back-up number to call if they do need prompting, it hasn’t been a problem. The second was access to the platforms, with some firewalls being understandably limiting, but this hasn’t proved to be a barrier.
Dilemma - webcam on or off?
That just leaves the potentially awkward dilemma of whether to leave the webcam on or off…remember, these are regular interviews that don’t need the video element, but of course adding video inevitably increases the quality of the interaction, and only recently we would have paid a large premium for it. GDPR is another consideration – in Germany, for example, we’re not able to share even a voice recording with our clients, let alone a video of a respondent.
My approach is to start with my webcam on, and to hope that prompts the respondent to turn theirs on too for at least the introduction before I start recording the interview. That really helps build rapport. Based on a small sample so far, I’ve found that doctors in the Netherlands and (to my surprise) the UK are generally very happy to do this, doctors in the US can be a little more reticent; one factor may be that they often opt to do interviews incredibly early on in their mornings! Once we’ve broken the ice, which unfortunately at the moment often means a comparison of the COVID situation in our respective locations, I’ll then turn off my camera and ask them to do the same before we start the recording.
What next?
As we all (clients, respondents, moderators) get more comfortable with these modalities, we’ll no doubt explore further capabilities, such as more interactive screen-sharing. Some of them offer the tantalizing prospect of free transcripts, but the quality of the ones produced by Teams thus far is frankly risible. Apparently, the transcripts on Google Meet are much better, but frustratingly you can’t download them afterwards, an epic fail which will hopefully be remedied sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, we will carry on learning and experimenting. Talking to clinicians, especially about cool new stuff, is a real privilege. Any tools that make it easier for us and them, and more accessible for our clients, are worth their weight in gold.
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