12 Reasons for Choosing Us
✔ We bring rigour and thought to your data-collection needs
✔ Transparent and collaborative approach
✔ Access to a wealth of sector knowledge, data-collection expertise, broad-ranging case studies and methodological advice
✔ A specialist team of over 500 native language interviewers expert at engaging credibly with your target audience
✔ Specialists at targeting Healthcare Professionals, C-Suites, Key Decision Makers, Opinion, Leaders, Key Account Customers, & niche or mainstream Consumers
✔ Quantitative questionnaire advisory service to provide robust sense and logic check
✔ All UK and International research conducted from one central location in London
✔ Single point of management contact throughout
✔ Sophisticated telephone and online scripting and data-processing
✔ Digital recording of all interviews and recruits
✔ Expert sampling, database and panel management guidance
✔ Frequent and tailored project progress updates focused on our clients’ reporting requirements with the ability to track fieldwork progress in real time via online reportal
Our Experience/ Expertise
Kudos Research has proven expertise in delivering premium client-centred Qual and Quant data-collection, and combines rigorous quality controls with a diligent work ethic to ensure that research is conducted to client specifications.
Working in partnership with clients, Kudos provides a bespoke service that recognises their individual research requirements, matching the skills and experience of the project management and interviewing teams with the profile and needs of the target audience.
Every year, Kudos conducts research for hundreds of different clients across a broad and diverse range of industry sectors. Specialising in high level B2B and healthcare studies, we pride ourselves on achieving very high sample conversion rates, and in particular excellent response rates amongst hard to reach respondents such as Senior Business Decision-Makers, Financial Directors, Leading Opinion Formers, Policy Elites (including MPs and MEPs and Civil Servants), CEOs/CFOs, Brokers, Tax Directors, IT Directors, High Net Worth Individuals HCPs, healthcare specialists and healthcare payers/payors.
Our Call Centre Team
Our biggest call centre assets are our teams. We are very proud of our teams of supervisors, quality control monitors and interviewers.
Wherever appropriate we are keen to promote senior interviewers to supervisory positions, capitalising thereby on their fieldwork skills awareness and transfer. Upon promotion supervisors are given a structured training which includes team management and motivation, project and quota management, sample supervision, analysis and reporting, data protection laws, and industry and quality standards monitoring.
Interviewers are recruited and invited for training by our experienced HR team which works closely with Kudos' management and is continuously briefed on project requirements.
We screen interviewing applicants before inviting them to a full IQCS-approved training day (www.iqcs.org). The training covers all aspects of interviewing principles and techniques, including how to deal with a variety of respondents and their gate-keepers, question types, probing techniques (in particular related to open ended questions), data protection and expectations in respect of quality standards. Trainees’ competence is assessed at the end of the training day and successful trainees are invited to become part of the Kudos panel.
Once interviewers have worked on a variety of projects and have an established skill-set, a follow-up training on depth interviewing techniques and hard-to-reach respondents may be added to the initial training. We have a pool of four experienced trainers who select the best trainees for Kudos' panel of elite interviewers.
Our interviewers play an ambassadorial role for you, expertly engaging with your target audience and achieving excellent response rates both with hard to reach audiences and with the ‘softer’ target respondent groups, as part of our CATI data collection.
Kudos interviewers exhibit:
- Excellent telephone manners
- Agile thinking
- Proven business interviewing skills
- Customer satisfaction expertise
- Fluency in native language and dialect
- High levels of articulacy
- Skills in collecting high-quality open responses
Our Project Management
Centralised project management for multi-country projects provides you the highest levels of consistency, applied learning and harmonisation of processes across all markets.
Kudos Research is a company partner member of the UK MRS (Market Research Society) and is also a member of AQR (the Association of Qualitative Researchers) and of ESOMAR. Kudos Research recruiters, interviewers and moderators are accredited under the Interviewer Quality Control Scheme (IQCS) which sets industry fieldwork quality standards. Both Telephone Centres at Kudos Research work to a documented quality system accredited under ISO 20252 quality standards.
Quality is assured - every interview is digitally recorded. We adhere to ISO 20252 and IQCS standards and all interviewers are fully IQCS-trained and are in turn monitored by trained staff with the necessary local language and market research skills.
Throughout fieldwork the project leader implements a variety of quality check, including live monitoring by supervisors and quality control monitors and rigorous checking of all open response data as well as analysis of call and sample statistics. Additionally, debriefing sessions may be convened involving interviewers and clients, to garner more anecdotal feedback on matters relating to the research topic or affecting the progress of fieldwork.
This process can at times be invaluable in resolving matters arising, supporting the quality of data and interviewing, and also providing additional insight to clients to shape their reporting.
With the respondent’s permission, recordings can be digitally shared with clients. As well as helping to keep quality expectations aligned, listening to recordings can serve to enrich the data collected with the added insight and immediacy that the spoken word can sometimes provide, the tone of the conversation adding greater depth to the numeric responses collected.
Our Quality Control
At Kudos Research we attach great importance to quality assurance of the deliverables from this project. Our approach to quality assurance aims to develop and deliver work of the highest quality.
We do this by:
• Ensuring we understand fully the requirements of the research and of the target audience
• Providing executive interviewers who are well qualified and have appropriate experience with the research and the audience
• Establishing close and harmonious working relationships with key project stakeholders
• Secondary checking of all verbatim responses collected to ensure these are full and complete
• Validation, error checking and sense checks on the interviewing deliverables to ensure robust survey data
• Regularly reviewing and refining quality assurance to continually improve processes and ensure quality
We implement rigorous internal processes to ensure robust, high quality data.
Our fieldwork is IQCS and ISO20252 accredited and fully compliant with industry and government codes.
Clean and Reliable Data
Interviewing is centralised from one location to ensure harmonisation of processes and quality across markets and to facilitate communication flow on fieldwork progress.
Data is therefore collected and stored in a single secure location, and a single quota for each project is managed centrally.
At the start of the data collection process, the quality of the data is ensured by rigorous checking of questionnaire wording, logic and structure. Further downstream, once data collection is completed, we provide output which is as clean and accurate as possible.
Our data processing team will liaise with you regarding your table specifications and /or their data map. If there are very specific or non-standard requirements, we encourage discussion of output format needs during the survey set-up phase; this helps us enshrine such requirements in the structure of the survey program / script, and to ensure that we are able to meet your specifications accurately and efficiently.
In order to meet deadlines for finalised output, we offer interim data and / or tables at a suitable point whilst fieldwork is still ongoing. This will usually take place after a good proportion (for example, 40 – 50%) of interviews have been completed and/or most of the analysable quota segments are populated. This ensures that interim data contains all or most of the attributes of the final response data.
Our Progress Reporting
Transparency and good communication are key to a smooth and successful running of projects and essential to ensure good relations between project shareholders.
Your dedicated project manager will discuss your preferred way of receiving feedback on project performance. Some of our clients prefer a quick call in the morning, a summary email or a detailed report in an Excel-based template. We deliver the form of fieldwork reporting that suits you best.
Hands-on feedback is guaranteed. If things are not progressing according to plan we will suggest solutions in a timely manner. We know that our clients have to report to their clients and trust us to deliver updates that are both accurate and timely.
Our Data Security
We have a Security Plan in place which operates to the requirements of ISO/IEC27001 and ISO/IEC27002 as well as the 2018 UK Data Protection Act and the UK Market Research Society Code of Conduct.
All company data is fully backed up each day to our second data centre in a secure location, providing a fully-archived service. An email is generated automatically to inform our IT team if the backup is not successfully performed. Additionally, all live data is fully mirrored, providing complete business continuity and disaster recovery. This mirror operates in real time with changes being mirrored instantly.
All servers are connected to uninterruptible power supplies and each machine has been assessed for redundancy, with RAID arrays, redundant fan systems, network cards, and power supplies being installed as necessary. All servers are covered by service contracts while routine maintenance is carried out.
