Polling Made Easier with USSD Solutions

Recently, Data Collect research agency carried out a successful poll in Slovakia over USSD telecommunications technology. Although the name itself isn’t recognisable by many outside the industry, mobile subscribers do know and use USSD technology to top up their prepaid airtime, or check credit balance on their phones.

Enterprises such as Data Collect can use it for other purposes, thanks to its simplicity and the great fact that it reaches any mobile phone, regardless of generation and Internet connectivity.

Interactive polls on mobile phone screens

What did this poll – carried out by expert researches – look like? Instead of having sheets of paper with questions, or an online questionnaire to click through, everything happened on mobile phone screens. Respondents navigated through a series of questions that appeared before them one after another as they made their way through the USSD questionnaire.

The questions and their flow were set up with the Infobip USSD polling system. It is a user-friendly interface, called Infobip Questionnaire, where researchers can easily create any number of new polling campaigns, edit questions, define their order and even use their own, custom brand logo. Different question flows can be triggered, depending on the answers received earlier in the process.

The reporting system enables instant polling campaign result representation, both graphical and downloadable. When combined with an easy-to-use interface it makes the creation and handling of polling campaigns much easier.

High response rates

The research was the first of its kind conducted in Central Europe. Technical solution was provided by Infobip, and out-of-the-box thinking by Data Collect was not without reason – the poll had 500 unique responses, which translates into a response rate of 25-36%. It is considerably higher than what is usually achieved in direct email marketing, for example.

Revising response rates across a variety of channels for existing consumers, it turns out the figures are as follows – 2.47% for postcards, 4.26% for catalogues and 12.95% for telephones. All this strongly suggests that USSD technology has vast potential in becoming the preferred channel for conducting surveys and polls in Slovakia.

As a technology native to the GSM network, USSD works on all types of mobile phones – from the most basic feature phones to the most advanced smartphones. Importantly, it doesn’t use the regular mobile operator band for voice and Internet services. USSD has no transactional costs for the end-user in Slovakia, making it a perfect solution for local companies looking for quick customer feedback.

Visit us in Bratislava

To find out more about our USSD services, visit Telekomunikacie 2014 to be held in Bratislava from January 28 – 29, where we will be presenting on application-to-person (A2P) messaging solutions and their significance in today’s enterprise communications.

Jan 27th, 2014
2 min read