Page 172 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 3

CPS1983 Chong N. et al.

Diagram 1: Decision Tree on when to visit a household

In addition to the optimal timing of contact, the mode of contact is equally
important. In certain cases, a call to remind the respondents to complete the
survey online would suffice, but for others a visit to their house may be more
suitable. For instance, if the household comprises of only elderlies, they may
have difficulty completing the survey online or over the phone (Diagram 1).
Therefore, sending an interviewer to visit the household for a face-to-face
interview may yield a more successful result. Hence, this tool is able to help
MRSD make calculated decisions on the manpower and workload distribution
while maximising survey returns.

b) Sentiment Analysis
In every business, it is important to understand the public sentiment
towards the business. It is no different with survey operations. With over 30
surveys conducted each year, MRSD sees value in gaining a better
understanding of survey respondents to alleviate their burden and cater to
their needs.
As phone interviews comprise a significant proportion of survey responses,
MRSD has adopted the use of sentiment analysis for every telephone
conversation. This would help to filter out difficult or uncooperative
respondents. Through a speech-to-text analytics tool, telephone
conversations are converted to text data. Text mining of contextual keywords
is subsequently applied. Respondents who depict negative sentiments are
then flagged out for follow-up action by a more experienced interviewer or
Team Leader (Diagram 2).

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