Use cases · 4 min read

CATI Telephone Surveys by Industry: Use Cases from FMCG to Healthcare

How different Indian industries use cati telephone surveys: FMCG, healthcare, BFSI, automotive, real estate, edtech, retail and technology.

See case studies

Quick answer

CATI Telephone Surveys is used across Indian industries: FMCG for launches and packs, healthcare for prescriber and patient insight, BFSI for customer journeys, automotive for buyer needs, and technology for B2B demand.

At a glance

Guide type: Use cases · 4 minute read
Method covered: CATI Telephone Surveys
Research family: Quantitative research
Typical timeline: 2–4 weeks end to end, which makes it the fastest route to a representative read
Typical sample: 300–800 completes; budget eight to twelve dials for every completed interview
Written for: Category teams looking for precedent · Agencies pitching a sector · Anyone asking “does this work here?”

Key takeaways

Every industry adapts the method to its buyers
Specialist audiences need specialist recruitment
Regulated sectors need compliance-aware research
Cross-industry experience brings fresh perspective

Reader intent

Who this guide is for

Three readers arrive here with different problems. Each should be able to act on this page without reading all of it.

Category teams looking for precedent
Where cati telephone surveys has moved a decision in sectors adjacent to yours.
Agencies pitching a sector
Use-case patterns that travel across categories, and the ones that do not.
Anyone asking “does this work here?”
Sector-by-sector applications, with the typical question each one answers.

FMCG

Research for packaged foods, home care and personal care brands across general and modern trade. Typical cati telephone surveys questions: Which pack sizes win in rural markets? How are D2C brands changing loyalty?

Healthcare

Insights for hospitals, diagnostics chains, clinics and health-tech platforms. Typical cati telephone surveys questions: How do patients choose a hospital? What drives diagnostics loyalty?

Pharmaceuticals

Prescriber, chemist and patient research for Indian and global pharma companies. Typical cati telephone surveys questions: How do doctors pick between brands? What is the trade margin structure?

Banking & Financial Services

Customer, channel and product research for banks, NBFCs and wealth managers. Typical cati telephone surveys questions: Why do customers switch banks? How is credit demand changing in Tier 2 cities?

Insurance

Research on purchase journeys, agent channels and claims experience for insurers. Typical cati telephone surveys questions: What stops people buying health cover? How do agents influence choice?

Automotive

Research for car, two-wheeler and component makers, from concept clinics to dealer studies. Typical cati telephone surveys questions: What features matter to first-time buyers? How are dealers performing?

Electric Vehicles

Adoption, charging and pricing research for India's fast-growing EV market. Typical cati telephone surveys questions: What stops people buying an EV? Where is charging infrastructure needed?

Real Estate

Demand, pricing and buyer research for developers, REITs and brokers. Typical cati telephone surveys questions: What price can this micro-market support? What amenities do buyers value?

How Market Research India can help

Market Research India designs and runs cati telephone surveys projects across 50 Indian cities and 30 industries. A senior research director leads every study, and our own supervised teams handle the fieldwork. You get clear recommendations, not just data tables.

Share your objective and we will send a scoped, fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours, with a recommended method, sample and timeline.

What goes wrong

Common mistakes in cati telephone surveys

Most disappointing cati telephone surveys studies fail for reasons that were visible in the design, not in the fieldwork. These are the ones we see most often, and what to do instead.

01
Calling only during office hours
A sample collected between 11am and 5pm over-represents people who are not at work. Spread dials across three time slots and include weekends.
02
Dialling a stale list
An unchecked database burns the budget on dead numbers before it reaches a respondent. Clean, dedupe and test-dial a sub-sample first.
03
A script written for the eye, not the ear
Long scales and nested brackets work on paper and collapse on a phone call. Read every question aloud before it is programmed.
04
Monitoring too few calls
Without live listening on at least 10% of calls you cannot tell a refusal conversion from a leading prompt. Audio-audit a further sample afterwards.
05
A questionnaire nobody piloted
Routing errors, ambiguous scales and a 35-minute runtime are cheap to find in a 30-interview pilot and expensive to find in the full dataset.
06
Fieldwork without an audit trail
GPS tags, timestamps, audio snippets and back-checks are what let you defend a finding when a regional team disputes it. Specify them in the contract.

Run through this before sign-off

Your checklist before you brief anyone

A working sequence for a cati telephone surveys project. Most of it costs nothing, and it saves the two weeks a re-field would take.

1
Clean, dedupe and screen the number list against do-not-call registers before dialling begins.
2
Keep the interview under 12 minutes and read the script aloud before programming it.
3
Train interviewers on refusal conversion, with a scripted response to the three common objections.
4
Spread dials across morning, evening and weekend slots, with at least four attempts per number.
5
Live-monitor 10% of calls and audio-audit a further 10% with supervisor notes attached.
6
Publish the sample design, response rate and weighting scheme alongside the numbers.
7
Agree in writing who acts on each finding, and by when, before the debrief ends.

Need cati telephone surveys?

Get a scoped proposal within 24 hours.

Explore CATI Telephone Surveys

Answers

Frequently asked questions

The questions buyers ask us most often before they commission cati telephone surveys.

Do you have industry specialists?

Yes. We have dedicated teams covering 30 industries.

From guide to project

Where cati telephone surveys actually gets commissioned

If this guide has settled the method, these are the pages worth opening next: the service itself, and the markets where cati telephone surveys is most often run for our clients.

Keep exploring