The most reliable way to recruit Australian businesses into a research survey is to call them: find the right person, explain the study in plain terms, ask for agreement, then send the survey link while they're still expecting it. Email invitations and online panels cost less per contact, but in controlled experiments web-only invitations get lower response than other survey modes. If the call is pure research with no commercial element, it is a research call under the Telemarketing and Research Calls Industry Standard 2017, which has its own calling hours and identification rules.
Why is it hard to get businesses to respond to surveys?
Businesses are harder to survey than individuals, and the research says so. A 2022 review in Human Relations by Holtom, Baruch, Aguinis and Ballinger looked at surveys published in management journals. Average firm-level response rates were 37% in 2010, 34% in 2015 and 55% in 2020, against 55%, 55% and 68% for surveys of individuals. The authors put it simply: "the lowest rates are observed at the firm level."
Those are published academic studies, so treat them as a best case. A study that struggled to get responses is less likely to be published at all.
A few things push business response down:
- The right person is hard to find. The survey needs the owner or finance lead, not whoever reads info@.
- Someone guards the door. Reception staff filter calls and email for a living.
- Nobody has to answer. The ABS asks its business questions under the Census and Statistics Act 1905, and businesses must respond to its compulsory surveys. A university or research firm has no such lever.
- Monthly surveys need commitment. Joining a monthly panel means giving you time every month. That decision is easier to make in a conversation than from a cold email.
Phone, email or panel: which recruitment method works best?
Each method has a place. The question is which gets you the right respondents, in the numbers you need, with a sample you can defend.
| Method | How it reaches businesses | Strengths | Weaknesses | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phone recruitment | A trained caller finds the right person, explains the study and sends the link during or straight after the call | Reaches named roles; handles questions live; gets a clear yes or no; can book a callback | Higher cost per contact; needs trained callers and compliance controls | Business panels, longitudinal studies, hard-to-reach sectors, samples drawn from a defined list |
| Email invitation | An invite and reminders sent to a list | Cheap to scale; easy to track opens and clicks | Lands in generic inboxes; easy to ignore; the Spam Act applies if the email has a commercial purpose | Large lists where low response is acceptable, or as a reminder after a call |
| Online B2B panel | A panel company sends the survey to its existing members | Fast; no list building | You don't control who is in the panel; harder to recruit specific named businesses or small regional firms | Quick reads on broad business opinion |
| Phone first, then email | Call to recruit, then send the link and reminders by email | Combines the personal ask with easy completion | Needs good data capture on the call | Most recruitment projects, especially monthly or repeat surveys |
The mode research backs this up. A 2020 meta-analysis by Daikeler, Bosnjak and Lozar Manfreda in the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology pooled 114 experimental comparisons: web surveys got response rates 12 percentage points lower than other modes. You don't need to run the whole survey by phone. Let the call recruit and the web form collect the answers.
What rules apply to a research recruitment call in Australia?
The Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 covers both telemarketing calls and research calls. Research calls are calls made to conduct opinion polling or standard questionnaire-based research. A call recruiting a business into a university or market research survey, with nothing being sold, fits that description. Add a sales offer and it becomes a telemarketing call, with stricter hours.
| Rule | Research call | Telemarketing call |
|---|---|---|
| Weekdays | 9am to 8.30pm | 9am to 8pm |
| Saturday | 9am to 5pm | 9am to 5pm |
| Sunday | 9am to 5pm | No calls |
| National public holidays | No calls | No calls |
| Say who is commissioning the call | Can be given later in the call, on request or before it ends | At the start of the call |
Times are the recipient's local time. Every call, research or not, must also:
- Open with identification. Give the caller's given name, the employer's business name and the purpose of the call as soon as the call starts.
- Answer questions about who you are. On request, give the contact details of the caller's employer, the name and contact details of the organisation that commissioned the call, and who handles complaints.
- End the call when asked. If the person asks to end the call or says they don't want it to continue, end it immediately.
- Show a working number. Calling line identification must be on, and the number shown must take return calls for at least 30 days.
The later-disclosure rule for research calls helps when telling respondents the sponsor up front could bias their answers. You still have to name the sponsor if asked, or before the call ends.
The Do Not Call Register. Business numbers aren't eligible for the register, which only takes numbers used mainly for personal purposes (and fax numbers). The register's industry guide says research calls with no commercial element can generally be made to registered numbers anyway. Wash your list if any part of the project is commercial. Our guide to Australian cold calling laws covers the register in more detail.
Privacy. Names, work emails and phone numbers of the people you recruit are personal information. Organisations covered by the Privacy Act must give a collection notice under APP 5 at or before collection, or as soon as practicable after. The Privacy Act doesn't cover public universities, other than the ANU and private universities, so a state university will usually work under its state's privacy law and its ethics approval. Your calling partner should use the wording your ethics approval specifies.
What should a survey recruitment script include?
A recruitment script is a structure, not a speech. It should take under two minutes to get to a yes, a no or a booked callback.
- Open. "Hi, it's Sam calling from Nousu Collective on behalf of a university research team. I'm calling about a monthly survey of Australian businesses." Name, employer, purpose. If the study is blinded, say you'll name the sponsor before the end of the call.
- Find the right person. "Who looks after the finances or day-to-day running of the business?" Ask reception for the name, then the best time to reach them.
- Make the ask. Who is running the study, why this business was chosen, what's involved (how many minutes, how often, for how long), what they get back (a results summary, an incentive if offered) and how answers are kept confidential.
- Handle the real objections. "We're too busy" is the common one. Answer it with the time commitment, not a pitch. "Is this a sales call?" gets a clear no, and you offer to name the research team.
- Confirm details. Spell back the respondent's name and email address. Check the business name and their role.
- Send the link while you're talking. Ask them to check their inbox before you hang up. If they can't, book a time to call back.
- Log the outcome. Agreed, declined (with reason), callback booked, wrong person, business closed, do not call.
For reception scripts, our post on getting past the gatekeeper has examples that work with a research framing too.
How many times should you call each business?
Plan for several attempts per business, spread across different days and times, before you mark it unreachable. If reception gives a better time, book a callback and call at exactly that time. A no is a no: log it and suppress the number for the rest of the project.
Our analysis of the best time to cold call in Australia, drawn from 218,000+ dials into Australian businesses between November 2024 and April 2026, shows how connect rates shift by hour and day. It was sales calling, not research, but the patterns of when business owners pick up are worth using.
How do you measure a survey recruitment programme?
Track the funnel from list to completed survey, and for a monthly survey, track retention too.
| Metric | Definition | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Records attempted | Businesses called at least once | Whether the team is working the list |
| Right person reached | Calls that reached the target role | List quality and gatekeeper handling |
| Agreement rate | Agreed ÷ right person reached | Whether the ask and script work |
| Link sent | Agreed businesses that received the link during or after the call | Data capture quality |
| First survey completed | Agreed businesses that completed wave one | Whether agreement was real |
| Wave retention | Businesses still completing in month two, three and beyond | Panel health |
| Refusal reasons | Coded reasons for each no | What to fix in the script |
| Data accuracy | Share of captured emails and names with no errors | Whether invitations will arrive |
Report agreement against "right person reached", not every dial, or a list problem looks like a script problem. Check sample balance weekly by state, industry and business size, and steer calling towards the gaps.
Should you run recruitment in-house or with a calling partner?
Small studies can run in-house if you have spare people to train. Larger studies, or those with a hard deadline, usually need dedicated callers.
At Nousu Collective we run calling programmes for research and data projects. Our callers are Australian and work in-house in Sydney, with no offshore teams and no subcontracting. We recruit and train a dedicated calling team for each programme, and launch typically takes 3 to 4 weeks from sign-off. Programmes are quoted per project and priced per completed outcome, such as each business recruited, not as a monthly retainer. We can quote scenarios by volume. For ongoing meeting booking, see our outsourced SDR service.
Frequently asked questions
Is a survey recruitment call a research call or a telemarketing call? It is a research call if its purpose is opinion polling or standard questionnaire-based research and nothing is being sold. Research calls can run until 8.30pm on weekdays and from 9am to 5pm on Sundays. If the call includes any sales offer, treat it as a telemarketing call with the stricter hours.
Can I call businesses on the Do Not Call Register for a research survey? Business numbers can't be registered, so most business numbers aren't on it. For numbers that are, the register's industry guide says research calls with no commercial element can generally be made to them. The Industry Standard still applies to every call.
Do I have to tell businesses who is running the survey? Yes, but for research calls the commissioning organisation can be named later in the call, on request or before the call ends. That helps when naming the sponsor first could bias answers. The caller's name, employer and the purpose of the call must be given at the start.
What response rate should I expect from a business survey? Published organisational studies averaged firm-level response rates of 37% in 2010, 34% in 2015 and 55% in 2020, according to Holtom and colleagues (2022). Treat those as a best case. Expect lower from cold, voluntary approaches, and measure your own agreement rate from day one.
Is phone recruitment better than email for business surveys? For recruiting named businesses into a panel or repeat survey, usually yes. A call reaches the right person and gets a clear answer. A meta-analysis of 114 experiments found web surveys got 12 percentage points lower response than other modes. Most projects work best calling first, then emailing the link.
How long does it take to launch a survey recruitment programme? At Nousu, launch typically takes 3 to 4 weeks from sign-off. That covers recruiting and training a dedicated calling team, building the script with your research team, setting up data capture and checking compliance.
Sources
- Federal Register of Legislation, Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 (F2017L00323), sections 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 14: https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2017L00323/asmade/2017-03-28/text/original/epub/OEBPS/document_1/document_1.html
- Explanatory statement to the Industry Standard 2017 (definition of research calls): https://legislation.gov.au/F2017L00323/asmade/2017-03-28/es/original/pdf
- Do Not Call Register, Industry guide: https://www.donotcall.gov.au/media/1212/dncr-industry-guide.pdf
- Do Not Call Register, Register your numbers: https://donotcall.gov.au/consumers/register-your-numbers/
- OAIC, Chapter 5: APP 5 Notification of the collection of personal information: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/australian-privacy-principles/australian-privacy-principles-guidelines/chapter-5-app-5-notification-of-the-collection-of-personal-information
- OAIC, Rights and responsibilities (who the Privacy Act covers): https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/the-privacy-act/rights-and-responsibilities
- Holtom, B., Baruch, Y., Aguinis, H. and Ballinger, G. A. (2022), "Survey response rates: Trends and a validity assessment framework", Human Relations 75(8), 1560 to 1584: https://www.hermanaguinis.com/pdf/HRresponserates.pdf
- Daikeler, J., Bosnjak, M. and Lozar Manfreda, K. (2020), "Web versus other survey modes: an updated and extended meta-analysis comparing response rates", Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology 8, 513 to 539 (data record): https://www.psycharchives.org/handle/20.500.12034/4188
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Business Surveys Collection Notice: https://www.abs.gov.au/about/legislation-and-policy/privacy/collection-notices/business-surveys-collection-notice
- Nousu call data: 218,000+ dials into Australian businesses, November 2024 to April 2026, published in Inside 200,000 Cold Calls.
Book a 30-minute call
Planning a business survey and need respondents? Book a 30-minute call with Harry Constant, our founder, and we'll talk through volumes, timing and a scenario quote.