The challenge

Telephone surveys have been a trusted instrument for decades—whether for political research, media polling, or market analysis. Yet, they present persistent challenges:

• High operational costs: Human agents must be onboarded, trained, and retained for campaigns that may only last a few weeks.
• Inconsistency in delivery: The way a question is phrased, the tone of voice, or even a slight deviation in timing can influence responses, creating bias.
• Limited scale: Traditional call centers can only make a finite number of calls per day, and they struggle to adjust quickly when the sample size or campaign length changes.
• Declining participation: People are more likely to hang up if they perceive the call as intrusive or scripted. Building trust and empathy in those first few seconds is essential.
• Time sensitivity: For political polls or fast-moving news cycles, delays of days in collecting and processing answers may render results outdated before they are published.

Ontopix's approach

Ontopix Virtual Agents bring a new paradigm to survey execution. Instead of relying on large, short-term teams of human interviewers, organizations can deploy AI-powered voice agents trained to:

• Deliver consistent, neutral scripts every time, eliminating interviewer bias.
• Conduct surveys at scale, 24/7, reaching respondents at times more convenient for them.
• Adapt to natural conversation: respondents can interrupt, ask clarifying questions, or need repetition—and the virtual agent responds fluidly, without breaking the experience.
• Provide real-time analytics, allowing researchers to see response trends emerging as calls are still being made.
• Handle multi-language delivery, ensuring surveys can reach diverse populations without recruiting multilingual staff.

Benefits in practice

• Cost efficiency: No recurring onboarding or training cycles for temporary staff. Once the survey design is uploaded, the agent can execute it thousands of times without additional cost.
• Data integrity: Uniform question delivery reduces variability and increases the reliability of responses.
• Flexibility: Campaigns can scale up or down instantly. Whether it's 500 or 50,000 calls, the infrastructure adapts seamlessly.
• Faster insights: Because responses are recorded and analyzed in real time, decision-makers gain immediate visibility into preliminary results.
• Improved respondent experience: Natural-sounding voices, empathetic pacing, and multilingual support make interactions smoother, reducing hang-ups.

A day-to-day scenario

Imagine a national newspaper preparing a survey on public opinion about a new economic policy. Traditionally, this would mean contracting an external polling firm, training dozens of interviewers, and waiting days for data processing. With Ontopix, the editorial team uploads the survey script, defines the target sample, and launches the campaign.

• Within hours, thousands of respondents across the country are being called, each hearing the same neutral, professional voice.
• Respondents who need clarifications are handled gracefully, while their answers are logged instantly.
• Analysts in the newsroom see live dashboards showing regional variations, sentiment distribution, and participation rates as they unfold.
• By the next morning, the newspaper not only has complete survey results but also interactive visualizations to enrich their article.

Why it matters

Telephone surveys still hold significant weight in shaping public discourse, from politics to consumer confidence. However, their credibility and efficiency are under pressure. Ontopix enables organizations to modernize this methodology by combining the reach and seriousness of traditional polling with the efficiency and reliability of AI-driven automation.

The result is a tool that not only cuts costs and accelerates timelines but also improves the quality of the data collected. For research institutions, media outlets, and political organizations, this means being able to capture the voice of the people more quickly, more fairly, and more accurately—without the operational burdens of old survey models.