Sourcing quality respondents for surveys is crucial to enabling the most accurate and actionable insights. This proves to be quite a costly, time-consuming process, especially when combined with other tasks such as preparing a brief and experiment set-up. Conjointly partners with several panel providers to provide our users with high-quality respondents that meet a range of differing needs.

Cint is one of our trusted platforms that provides and facilitates thousands of panels from across the globe that are deep-profiled and extensively quality checked. We caught up with Jessica Murdoch, Vice President of Sales and Customer Success in Australia and New Zealand at Cint to discuss topics from behind-the-scenes of the insights industry, including quality assurance practices, technological advances, the nature of the industry, and future trends.

1. What are you currently focusing on in your new role?

I’m excited to be leading Cint’s regional Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) office, especially in a phase of digital transformation. I have seen automation accelerating in ANZ across the Insights industry, particularly since last year. This transformation is driving companies toward lower touchpoint business models, as well as a need for speed, quality respondents and global insights. One of my key goals is to ensure we continue providing expert guidance on sample and technology solutions that are leading this digital transformation and continue providing the best service in the industry.

2. Who typically signs up to complete surveys? What is the average lifetime of the respondent with a panel service?

This is an interesting question, as each person who signs up to complete surveys has his or her own motivations for doing so and their behaviours vary widely. Respondent lifetime participation varies for each panel supplier, based on metrics like survey quality, frequency, rewards and more.

One of the important things to understand is how much sampling is changing in the digital age. There are fewer and fewer respondents sourced from “research only” panels. Far more come from wider rewards communities and other online publisher/media sites. Invite-based panels are declining and being replaced by real-time engagement of participants. This clearly changes our concept of a panellist’s “lifetime” since s/he can dip in and out of surveys without being part of a classical panel (though opted in, of course)!

Automation has given us new capabilities to dynamically profile respondents to improve targeting, track respondent behaviour to boost overall quality, and integrate directly with more recruitment sources. Programmatic execution has changed the siloed recruitment landscape into an automated and integrated network. It also allows us to work in real-time on respondent engagement and satisfaction, using technology to optimize the respondent’s probability of a great experience increases the likelihood of a respondent participating in another study.

3. What innovative measures do you use to match clients with the right sample and technology solutions?

As I mentioned above, Cint has made a real commitment to improving respondent engagement by utilizing deep targeting data to match the right surveys with the right respondents. This approach uses automation to ensure proper targeting, improve the user experience and yield better, more accurate data. We’ve found that this boosts the likelihood of qualification and completion.

When it comes to matching clients with the right sample, Cint has the world’s largest sample exchange with over 100 million registered consumers in over 150 countries. This unparalleled reach allows us to deliver insights from the world’s most remote corners.

When it comes to matching clients with the right technology for them, we have a whole host of options to meet specific needs. For example, on the demand side, we offer market-leading tools for buyers including: AccessPro by Cint, an end-to-end workflow application tool for sample procurement, sample management and supply chain management. We also have a demand-API ‘upstream’ offering which integrates with other third-party platforms; and Connect by Cint, a programmatic ad effectiveness solution.

On the supply side, we leverage our best-in-class supplier APIs and bundled toolkit, including AI-driven yield management, AI-fraud detection and dynamic profiling. Many clients implement these tools alongside the Engage by Cint solution for suppliers wishing to host their panel assets on Cint’s free-to-use panel management technology.

4. How do you keep up to date with industry trends to ensure you continue to source the right respondents for your clients’ ongoing needs?

We are always on the lookout for both scale and diversity of sources. This is coupled with our dedicated sales and customer service teams and our innovative technology. For example, there has recently been an increased consumer interest in eGaming and eSports, so Cint is actively working on introducing advanced profiling and targeting within the platform to cater to this need.

In addition, as mentioned at the beginning, in ANZ, we are seeing an acceleration of automation. Now more than ever we are in a position to fully support our clients’ needs, thanks to support from a team of sales engineers and enhanced technology from acquiring P2sample last year.

5. How do you ensure high quality of survey responses and minimise the risk of ghost completes?

At Cint, we take data quality seriously. The highest quality respondents are those who are real, unique, representative, and engaged. Our most concise quality KPI is the measurement of our share of completes reversed, a number that has stayed steady around 5 percent. One way we ensure high-quality responses is through an advanced approach to mitigating fraud.

Our AI-driven, dynamic approach uses billions of data points, demographic and behavioural, to detect and combat fraud. Sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms analyse anomalies and patterns in the data, which could encompass, for example, user “surges” involving specific demographics, IP ranges or completion time frames. This proprietary AI allows proactive detection and mitigation of fraudulent activity. When it comes to ghost completes, or what we call “redirect link fraud”, Cint recommends implementing a combination of Server-to-Server callbacks and link encryption in order to minimize negative impacts on quality.

6. How have you seen the insights industry change and develop over the years to become more diverse and inclusive?

Over the years, I’ve seen companies become more diverse and inclusive because first of all, it’s ethical, and second there is evidence to show that it makes good business sense. I started working in the industry ten years ago in London, where the landscape was already quite diverse. I have been in Australia for five years and my experience has been positive, although there is still a lot of work to do to accelerate positive change in the industry, it is becoming more diverse and inclusive as years go by.

In terms of gender equality specifically, groups like WiRe are bringing diversity issues to the forefront and people are paying attention. For example, when it comes to gender equality at Cint, I’m proud to say we have a higher-than-average number of women in leadership roles.

7. What challenges have you faced as a female leader and how can the industry work to overcome these?

I’ve been lucky in the fact that I have not faced challenges in my career that I perceived were specifically related to being female. Brought up by a single mother, I’ve always viewed challenges simply as “challenges” - independent of gender. This is not to say that I don’t understand that female leaders do face a certain number of obstacles due to gender inequality, especially in sales environments in the industry.

My advice to other women leaders is to focus on your end goal, and the practical steps you must take to get there. Obstacles can weigh us down mentally and emotionally, so it is important to have “mental guts” in order to shine and have a positive result.

8. What new developments or changes are you expecting for the industry in the coming 2 years?

The industry is transforming faster than ever before. Some even say the current global crisis is pushing an even greater need for change, as people seek speed and connectivity in every area of life and work. Over the next two years, smart market research companies will continue taking large steps to reduce the gap between technology and how market researchers use it.

Already, AI is being used to battle fraud and boost data quality and automation at scale is creating vast process efficiencies across the board. The big picture is that technology implementation like this leaves insight professionals free from mundane tasks in order to focus more on strategy, creativity and holistic innovation. This will allow us to deliver accurate insights more quickly.