The Magpi mobile app on Android
For about 1000 years, we’ve had a standard process for data collection: send data collectors to the field with paper.
In the past 15 years Magpi and others have made progress in digitizing that data-collectors-in-the-field process, allowing field staff to use smartphones and tablets instead of paper and clipboards. That produces a lot of efficiencies compared with paper, but still involves the great difficulty and expense of fielding the data collectors.
Magpi provides both SMS and IVR (interactive voice response) tools for collecting data — both of which eliminate the expense of sending collectors to the field. In fact, we’ve previously documented how SMS can reduce survey costs by 80%!
But the two groups that we definitely cannot use those SMS tools for are:
those still using landline phones (often the elderly in developed countries)
the less-literate
IVR, also called voice data collection, fills these gaps — allowing remote data collection from even illiterate or less literate populations, and from touchtone landline phones.
Magpi Makes it Easy – and inexpensive
Most of us have used basic IVR systems — for example, when calling large corporations. “Press zero to speak with an operator” is something that all of us have done at some point. The idea is simple: the IVR system typically “speaks to” us with recorded or dynamically generated audio, and we respond by pressing the phone’s number keypad. Unfortunately, until recently IVR was so expensive to set up and deploy that only large corporations — or the government — could afford to us it.
With Magpi IVR, we’ve changed all that. Now with any paid Magpi subscription — starting at just over $400 per month for the annual Pro — you can set up and deploy voice data collection for just pennies per call. No programming, no technicians, no consultants, and no need to interact with the mobile phone companies.
And the best part is that you don’t have to learn anything new.
LIMITED To numeric responses — for now
If you’re experienced in creating and deploying forms using the Magpi mobile apps, you know that you’ve got the choice of text questions, numeric, GPS, barcodes, images, and a lot more. Well, for Magpi IVR (at least for now), you’re limited to one kind of response: numbers.
Just like the expensive corporate IVR systems work (“Press 2 to pay your bill…” or “Enter your date of birth as a six digit number…” etc.).
Creating an IVR survey
You create IVR surveys in Magpi just like any other Magpi form (questionnaire). You can create IVR surveys in more than 15 languages, including English, French, Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian. As long as you can type the questions in the appropriate language, Magpi will read the questions out loud correctly in that language. In some languages, like Spanish, you even have the choice of read-out-loud accents for deployment.
With IVR you’ll have to keep in mind that there is no human data collector involved: the respondent is interacting directly with the Magpi system. So your pre-arranged responses will need to include all the courtesy and conversation that a data collector might have added “in the field”.
The diagram below illustrates some of this difference on different platforms.
More on cost
With IVR, the entire cost of the phone call is paid by the Magpi subscriber who deploys the IVR survey, rather than by the respondent.
Just a few examples of the per-minute call cost: Kenya = $0.24, Myanmar = $0.36, and US/Canada/Mexico = $0.01. And most short surveys only take a minute or two: just pennies per respondent.
For more information on the cost of deploying voice data collection, read “Getting More Data for Less Money” on the Magpi blog, or contact us.
Questions?
We always welcome feedback. If you have any suggestions, contact us, or schedule a demo!
Remote data Collection Guide
Learn how to use SMS and IVR to collect more data, for less money
Note: This blog was originally published on January 2017. It has been updated to include a new feature of unlimited digits in IVR responses.
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