Intercepts: IT expo booth visitors, San Francisco, USA

A returning client of ours asked the FieldworkHub team to assist in arranging short intercept interviews on-site at a conference in San Francisco. The conference was for those working in a niche area of the IT sector, and our client was looking to gain quantitative feedback on visitors experiences interacting with a specific expo booth. As we have organised face to face intercepts many times in the past, we were pleased to help.

Each face-to-face interview was to last approximately 3-5 minutes, with intercepts to be held on two separate days during the conference. FieldworkHub were tasked with providing interviewers to cover both days, the necessary equipment to record participants’ answers, and delivery of the raw data. We were instructed to interview expo visitors wearing specific badges only, which excluded expo staff.

The FieldworkHub team arranged the accreditation for experienced face-to-face interviewers to attend the conference in-person in San Francisco. We ensured the interviews were fully briefed on which badge holders to approach, and conducted a test interview to familiarise themselves with the survey. We also provided vouchers as an incentive for each participant that completed their survey.

Visitors to the expo booth were asked about their experience and their answers recorded on tablets, which we also provided. We ensured to provide spares, pre-empting any technical issues.

During fielding, not everything went to plan. On day one of the conference, foot traffic in our interviewer’s designated area was not heavy enough to meet our goal. The high volume of international attendees introduced a significant language barrier, which affected the quality of the open-ended responses. As this part of the research was of extreme importance to our client, our team jumped in to encourage our interviewers to push for more detailed responses from participants on day two.

Thanks to our efforts, day two was far more successful. The client was pleased with the high quality of data they received, especially when considering the time and resources available. They praised our efforts in rectifying the situation on day one and our help in achieving their insight goals.