Privately branding Navigator

by brian | on Feb 14, 2012 | No Comments

Navigator, CfMC’s project and interviewer management interface, can now be branded to include your company’s logo and branding elements.

Customized Navigator Interface Screenshot

What’s more, these branding capabilities are included at no additional charge.   Navigator itself is also included for users of Survent v8.5.1 and up.

The step-by-step tutorial  is part  of our Getting Started set of documentation.

Learn how to customize:

  • Background colors
  • Logos
  • Buttons
  • Font size
  • Font color
  • Border color
  • Header
  • Footer

 

Once signing into Navigator, click on the Help tab and look for the Getting Started section in the left navigation bar.

A software update is not required to perform these tasks, but some experience with .CSS is preferred.

Navigator logo

CfMC Adds to Dialer Support Team

by brian | on Feb 01, 2012 | No Comments

CfMC welcomes Joshua R. Flores to the CfMC Support Team.  Josh, who joined CfMC late in 2011, brings with him a fresh perspective and augments our current support offerings, especially in the area of telephony and support of predictive dialing operations.

Joshua R. Flores

Josh has significant knowledge in call centers and was an early explorer into the benefits of using the Asterisk telephony platform for large telephone and business operations.  He played an active role in the open source development efforts of Asterisk, implementation and maintenance of the system at Discovery Research Group, and was a significant contributor to the launch of CfMC’s Celeus dialer.

In addition to his experience with large-scale telephony and the Celeus dialer, Josh knows the Survent specification language, has managed  CATI projects, and is experienced in setting up and maintaining cloud-based IT systems. 

Josh joined the CfMC support team in late 2011 after nine years of employment with Discovery Research Group (DRG), a leading quantitative research services group and long-time CfMC user.  DRG specializes in full-service research and utilizes CfMC’s software to implement its telephone, web, and mobile interviewing data collection methods.

Vaughn Mordecai, DRG President, recently had this to say about Josh : “Josh Flores will be an excellent addition to the CfMC support team.  He adds a knowledge of dialing systems that is unrivaled in the Asterisk telephony space.  He played a significant role in our execution of the Celeus dialer at Discovery and was a strong contributor to its development at the Alpha and Beta levels for CfMC.  Josh will add a level of support to this product that was largely unrealized prior to his addition.  He has a strong desire to assist others, improve systems, and innovate new solutions.  He will be an excellent resource for the CfMC user base.”

Jim Ratto, Manager of Support reports that; “Even in the short time Josh has been with us he has already made a significant contribution because of his vast experience with not only CfMC products and services, but also with how they integrate with the technologies that are needed to run a call center. His knowledge of telephony in particular is a welcome addition to both our dialer support and development teams.”

More about Josh Flores: Linked In profile

April 19-20 : CfMC Users’ Conference (SF, CA)

by brian | on Jan 23, 2012 | No Comments

April 19-20, 2012 | San Francisco, CA

We are now accepting reservations for the 29th Annual CfMC Users’ Conference in San Francisco, California.  REGISTER NOW

Tips and Tricks

Get the skinny on CfMC developments straight from the industry-building technologists – and learn about whats so special about CfMC software.

Conferences in our home town come with an added benefit – direct access to most of our development, support, and management staff!

This year, we return to our 2-day format.  Our agenda continues to evolve, but you can check out our latest agenda draft here.  Feel free to suggest additional sessions or changes.   This is also a great time to schedule custom or group training sessions.

Users’ Conference Registration Rates:

  • Early registration rate of $175 before 2/28/2012
  • Late registration price of $200 starts on 3/1/2012
  • When 2 or more people register, a discount of $25 is applied to all full registrations.

Conference Hotel Information:
This year’s conference will be held at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in San Francisco, just a block from CfMC HQ.

Room rate: $179 single/double per night. Rates are good through the weekend as well.
Room availability is limited so we encourage attendees to book early.    Please note, you must be registered to attend the conference to receive this rate.

Marriott Reservations 1(800)-321-2211 or (415) 947-0700
Reservation code: mhcmhca
Register Online 

 

Stay and Play: Weekend entertainment options, based on interest, include golf, Alcatraz tours, and more.  Contact us if you would like to join up with a group to see the City.

New Management and Resources for CfMC Europe

by brian | on Dec 27, 2011 | No Comments

CfMC Europe is pleased to announce our new Managing Director, Daniele Pizzocchero

Daniele Pizzocchero, Managing Director, CfMC Europe

CfMC Users and marketing research industry contacts will recognize Daniele’s name – he was our lead technical support person for CfMC Europe from 2004 – 2010. He returns to CfMC in the role of Managing Director and will be the primary contact for services in the UK, Europe and Africa.

Daniele brings industry experience, in-depth understanding of CfMC product and solutions, and a customer-centric focus, identifying the right solution to fit the needs of research and opinion polling operations.

Jim Ratto, CfMC Support Manager, says of Daniele: “Daniele’s experience as a Technical Support Representative exposed him to a wide variety of issues issues that market research companies (especially those with phone centers) encounters in daily operations. As as support specialist, he excelled at delivering high-touch technical problem solving and always in a timely manner. ”

In addition to his CfMC background, Daniele’s education includes an MS in Computer Science, a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering, and an understanding of a broad spectrum of technologies outside of CfMC-developed solutions.

Daniele Pizzocchero
Managing Director, CfMC Europe
180 Piccadilly
London W1J 9HF
Phone: +44 (0)207 917 9505
Contact Daniele
LinkedIn

Update: CfMC now self-certifies compliance with the  US-EU Trade Compliance Center’s  US-European Safe Harbor program, ensuring that respondents are protected and heard.   See our Privacy Policy for more information.

New webCATI Demo

by brian | on Dec 08, 2011 | No Comments

What does a webCATI® interviewer see?   That’s a bit of a trick question because you can fully customize the interviewer look to your requirements.

We have recently updated our webCATI example to demonstrate some of the capabilities described below.

Click to start webCATI demo

The webCATI interviewer demo simulates an actual interviewing environment. We have included grids, rotating grids, and constant sum question types utilizing basic Survent functions such as: skip patterns, required responses, suspending and scheduling a record to be called on at a later time.

Question types/questionnaire features included in this demo: grids, rotating grids, constant sums, skip patterns, and required answers.

Tracking Interviewer Time: When managing a call center, it is important to track your interviewers’ non-interviewing time as well as time speaking with survey participants.  This demo includes the capability for an interviewer to choose to “Go to Lunch”, “Go on Break” or “Go to a Meeting” before and after completion of an interview.

Navigator Included: WebCATI users also have access to the browser-based Navigator®, our research operations management tool which enables you to manage interviewers, studies and client/partner access from anywhere.

Navigator includes a wide variety of project tracking reports including session reports which can be run on interviewer ID, Time, Counts, Completes, Resolved status and more for any time frame and across studies.  Navigator includes Phone, Quota, Sample, and Market Reports for project management and Custom Web Tables and On-Demand Tables for data analysis and results that can be shared with your clients.

webCATI® Advantages

WebCATI enables you to share projects across facilities with distributed interviewing, but it can also be used to improve the interviewing experience and the quality of data collected.

As a browser-based technology, webCATI has certain advantages over terminal mode interviewing.

Quality Control:  By taking advantage of HTML and technologies like JavaScript quality of interview can be better assured.  JavaScript can also be used for allocation questions – subtotals and even spreadsheet-style question sets with grand totals can be recorded and summed in real time for interviewers.

For example, by utilizing JavaScript technology you can ensure that if “Other” is selected the “specify” text box must also have a response.  When you have a question that requires the respondent to divide $100 among several response items,  JavaScript can also be used to ensure that all $100 is accounted for before moving on to the next question.

Users can also color-code interviewer instructions and bold/underline/italicize text for emphasis.   Both of these capabilities can be seen in this demo.

Branding:  WebCATI is browser-based, your CATI surveys can be privately branded and can use many of the same web technologies used in web surveys to add elements of quality control.

Keyboard-entry mode: We have heard some users prefer interviewers use a keyboard for 100% of the interview and not rely on a mouse.  WebCATI users have the option of programming their survey in  keyboard-entry mode which maps all survey navigation to keys on your keypad/keyboard instead of using visual response elements like radio buttons and check boxes.  Ask us for more information on this capability if you are interested.

More webCATI Features

  • Multi-modal capabilities with one robust and versatile backbone. WebSurvent and webCATI share the same data file and use the same scripting language
  • Integrated Dialer: webCATI reaches new heights of efficiency with the bundled Celeus Predictive Dialer
  • Up to 10 million sample records
  • Up to 1 million questions per survey
  • Browser and terminal modes available
  • Navigator included: Manage CATI stations and sample, report on your operations with our easy to use interface
  • Eliminate expensive overhead: Manage interviewers working remotely as if they were in your call-center

New Web Survey Demo

by brian | on Nov 17, 2011 | No Comments

CfMC webSurvent surveys are capable of just about any question type you can devise.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen an increased demand from our clients (and their clients) for more “visual” ways to ask questions.  Using visual representations of questions can involve the respondent more with the survey and can help with respondent fatigue.

In this new web survey demo, we demonstrate just a few of the more graphical types of questions that can be composed using webSurvent software and JavaScript technologies.   WebSurvent installations also come with a library of JavaScripts that can be used to bring these kinds of visual question types into your surveys.

In this Features Demo, we show several examples including:

  • Sliders – vertical, horizontal, midpoint and allocation types

    click to enter demo

  • Text Highlighting – highlight what you like/don’t like about messaging statements, product attributes, etc.
  • Drag-and-Drop Timeline – respondents can put specific actions, results, etc in order based on their experience AND set the length of the timeline to be used
  • Drag-and-Drop Rank Order – a simple ranking question accomplished by drag-and-drop, instead of numeric ranking
  • Block Scale (see image) – Adding color to your scale questions can help the respondent answer your scale questions by color intensity as well as by scale number

CfMC provides training for users needing assistance in utilizing these technologies together.  The CfMC Service Bureau can also program studies with these capabilities for you.

 

We are hiring!

by brian | on Oct 21, 2011 | No Comments

CfMC is currently seeking to fill three positions.  Our newest opportunity is with our IT team as a UNIX  Production Systems administrator.

The UNIX Production Systems administrator/specialist is responsible for maintaining crucial aspects of CfMC’s Services operations, providing technical support for the internal hardware and software used by the CfMC Service Bureau staff and ASP software clients. The PSSS is responsible for the setup and maintenance of systems used for Web-based data collection, analysis and reporting.  Users of hosted solutions include CfMC employees and hosting clients.

In addition, we are also seeking a Tech Support Engineer and a Mentor programmer.

Check out our Careers page for more information on these positions!

New cfmc.com

by brian | on Sep 22, 2011 | No Comments

cfmc.com has had a facelift!

The new cfmc.com organizes information about our company, software and services in a more user-friendly and standards-based format.

Users and followers of CfMC might be interested in some of these newly refreshed pages and site features:

  • New screen shots and product previews are now available on these pages:
  • Navigator® – 12 feature previews
  • Celeus Dialer – 2 new Agent and Study report previews
  • iPad™  and device independent previews
  • Support’s Code library can also be previewed
  • The CfMC Blog!  We now have a CfMC blog where we will be posting the latest news about CfMC software and services
  • You can now subscribe to our RSS feed (see the icon in the site footer below)
  • Site keyword searching is now enabled

CfMC team members serving in the MRA

by brian | on Sep 21, 2011 | No Comments

CfMC Continues Leadership Service

Three CfMC team members recently began serving their new terms in the Marketing Research Association (MRA).  We are proud of our commitment to the Marketing Research industry and are pleased to support the organization by sharing our talented and committed co-workers.

CfMC staff

(left to right) Marc Moran, Dan Rangel, Denise D'Andrea, and Don Wasylyk

Denise D’Andrea, President-Elect, Greater New York Chapter : This long-time CfMCer, currently charged with bringing Navigator’s features to market, has been chosen by the Greater New York Chapter of the MRA, the 2011 MRA Chapter of the Year, to serve as President-Elect in 2011, Denise will next serve as President for this fine chapter.  Denise previously served this chapter as Treasurer from 2005 to 2008.

Dan Rangel, Director-at-Large, Great Lakes Chapter:  Dan Rangel, our Research Solutions Manager based in Chicago will be serving the 2011 Membership chair for the Great Lakes Chapter of the MRA.

Don Wasylyk, Director-at-Large, NorthWest MRA Chapter: Don Wasylyk, our Senior Technical Trainer specializing in Web technologies continues his service to the NorthWest Chapter of the MRA in the area of Internet Communications, including Web, social networks, and e-mail communications.

As past president (2009-2010) with the NorthWest MRA, Brian Fowler (our COO) continues to serve as an adviser to the leadership of CfMC’s home-chapter, the NorthWest Chapter of the MRA.

CfMC has supported the Marketing Research Association for over 25 years and was awarded the first Celebrated Company Award offered by the MRA in 2006.

We applaud the MRA’s commitment to education and bringing innovation in the marketing research industry and are proud to continue our commitment through CfMC team members serving MRA Chapters across the United States.

CfMC Tweets!

by brian | on Sep 19, 2011 | No Comments

Join us on our Twitter account @CfMC_Solutions

You can also follow us here: CfMC’s LinkedIn Company page .

Licensed CfMC users can keep in touch with CfMC and each other, post “overflow” offerings, and post job offerings  via our CfMC Users Group on LinkedIn.

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