I was just sitting down for dinner after a long day, when my phone rang.

“Hello.”

“You have been chosen at random to participate in a political survey being conducted in your area.”

“How much time will it take?”

[Pause] “About 12 minutes.”

I thanked her for calling, explained I didn’t have that kind of time for a survey today and went on with my meal. The next night she called back, and feeling sorry for her, I took the survey. My 12-minute survey lasted 18 minutes — and companies wonder why their survey completion rates are so low.

People lead very busy lives. We are so busy in fact that we can’t afford to watch live TV. We record everything, and if we are lucky, catch up on our shows before falling asleep sometime around midnight. We watch movies “on demand” and stream short clips of our favorite shows online while we eat. Who has nearly 20 minutes for anything anymore, let alone answering someone else’s questions?

The first step to a truly effective survey should be to determine how much impact, or inconvenience, it will have on the survey taker. Five minutes is doable; most people have 5 minutes. But when you hit 10, 15, or even 30 minutes — and yes I have had 30-minute phone surveys — you infringe on their limited discretionary time. Any more than 5 minutes and you fall into the realm of work, and no one likes to work for free with little or no result.

So why are these surveys so long? Like everyone, when a company pays for something they want to get the most bang-for-their-buck. This means they will ask any and all questions to “take advantage” of the service they are paying for. Unfortunately, this shotgun approach not only results in fewer completed surveys, it potentially results in flawed results as people try to rush through the questions just to get done.

To be truly effective, surveys should be concise and focused on what information is pertinent. If you feel there is a lot of information to cover, make several surveys that run simultaneously. You can group questions that relate to each other into the same survey; let’s face it, not all 50 questions asked in a 30-minute survey relate to each other. While several surveys may cost more, the results will be more reliable, and therefore more valuable. You should never make a decision based on bad information; it will always end in bad results.

Looking back on my political survey mentioned above? I am the kind of person who finishes what I start, but after sacrificing time with my family to answer enough questions to write a book, you can be sure I will be reluctant to start another survey. And that is a large part of why people are reluctant to take phone surveys — they just require too much time. If you want reliable data, and want to achieve stellar completion rates, keep the time impact to a minimum. Remember, they are giving you valuable information, essentially for free; don’t make them sacrifice for you, unless of course you are paying … then feel free to call me anytime.