From the beginning of fieldwork, the survey website contained a list of FAQs and provided information about the survey.
A dedicated telephone helpline based in Edinburgh and email address ([email protected]) were available for participants to contact if they had any queries about the survey.
Sport England also direct other participant queries to Ipsos using their dedicated email address ([email protected]).
In a typical month, around 400-450 enquiries from members of the public were received and responded to, of which 52% were emails and 48% were telephone calls to the Active Lives helpline. Of these, less than 1% constituted a ‘complaint’.
Common queries received included participants asking to opt out of the survey, requests for paper questionnaires, general queries about the survey and questions regarding the voucher incentive.
Since the survey launched, telephone queries were first recorded by an answer machine and a member of the research team returned the call when they had identified an appropriate solution to their request.
Emails sent to the Active Lives inbox were first answered with automatic responses, which included the most commonly asked questions and answers. Each query was then followed up individually.
After the 7th wave of the survey during Year 1, a dedicated helpline team was set up and trained by the core research team to respond to both telephone and email queries to ensure the highest levels of customer service to those enquiring about the Active Lives survey.
The research team had collected a large amount of data on the most common queries and their solutions and wanted to streamline the process of responding to participant feedback.
To do so, the helpline team used a specific list of FAQs to help participants with their enquiry or alternatively forwarded them to the core research team on a case-by-case basis. A third-party supplier was also involved with queries relating to issues with specific voucher codes.
Each query was logged in an Excel spreadsheet and a specific code assigned to identify the nature of it. Opt-outs were recorded separately and removed from the sample using their unique reference number to avoid further mailings.
Postal queries were processed in the same way as email or telephone queries depending on the nature of the enquiry and the information available.