DJS Research Ltd

Sifting through my emails early one Wednesday morning, I received a short, but joyous email. It was from our Operations Manager of CATI Services, Michelle Flanagan, and it simply said: “Can we do a piece on how fabulous my team are?”.  

I leaned back in my chair, smiled, and thought, ‘how brilliant is this!’, before pinging back a definitive "YES!". Absolutely.

Part of the culture here at DJS, particularly since becoming employee-owned, is to celebrate our colleagues and their achievements, and appreciate everyone’s contribution to the bigger picture. And there's no doubt that CATI Services plays a huge role in the company's bigger picture.

Since the pandemic, CATI has changed the way it operates, transforming from an in-house team based at our offices in Strines to fully-remote with around 60 interviewers based around the UK -- and even as far as Spain (thank-you, Tricia!). 

Collectively, in the last year, they have surveyed over 20,000 participants from around the globe, dialling around 70,000 numbers and interviewing in several languages (French, Spanish Italian, German and Bulgarian to name a few).

Michelle, who herself was a CATI interviewer before moving to head up the unit, knows first hand how hard the team works, and sees their dedication every day. While she could have sent thank you cards (we launched a peer-to-peer scheme last year, with 109 cards sent out to date!), she wanted to go one step further, and tell the world how great her colleagues are. And so we put togther a little video to celebrate our brilliant CATI Services team, with Michelle's top 5 reasons why CATI ROCKS! 

CATI and beyond…

CATI Services has also been the start of careers elsewhere at DJS Research, with around 20 interviewers side-stepping into research, data or joining the CATI management team.

CATI alumni Maggie Shelley last year moved from her role as principal interviewer into the research team, and has found her CATI training invaluable.

"Making the transition from CATI to research support was relatively straightforward and really enjoyable,” she said.

“In my role as a CATI interviewer, I did quite a few depth interviews and script checking -- and a lot of script timings. It taught me many of the skills I'm now using in research."

If you’d like to know more about working for our CATI Team as a telephone interviewer, take a look here and get in touch!