Voice Surveys for NGOs in Ghana: Setup and Who They Miss
If you run a programme in Ghana, you need to hear regularly from the people it serves, and many of them cannot fill in a written form, do not own a smartphone and live too far away to visit every month. Voice surveys for NGOs in Ghana address part of that problem. An automated call plays recorded questions in the respondent’s own language, and they answer by pressing keys on any mobile phone, including a feature phone with no internet. Because nothing has to be read, it suits beneficiaries with low literacy, though a phone survey will still miss some people, and field visits remain necessary for them.
How can an NGO in Ghana collect feedback from beneficiaries who cannot read?
Call them with an automated voice survey. Each question is spoken aloud in a language the beneficiary understands, and the answer is captured as a keypad press, so the respondent needs access to a phone and the ability to listen, not the ability to read. It works best for a short set of fixed-choice questions sent to people you have already registered. Use it alongside field visits rather than instead of them, because some of the people you most need to hear from are also the hardest to reach by phone.
What is an IVR survey, and when does it work for programme monitoring?
An IVR (interactive voice response) survey is an automated outbound call with no staff member on the line. The respondent hears a recorded question and presses 1, 2 or 3 to answer. Our guide on when voice surveys beat written ones covers the general case, including how voice compares with web and SMS forms.
For programme monitoring, an IVR survey suits the questions you ask repeatedly and that can be answered with a choice: whether an item arrived, whether a training session was attended, whether a service was used, and how satisfied the person was. It suits less well the questions where you need someone to explain a problem in their own words. Those still need a conversation.
What a national IVR survey in Ghana found
One national test of automated voice surveys in Ghana is described in a 2018 study published in PLOS ONE. Over a 27-day period in February and March 2017, researchers called randomly generated mobile numbers across the country and invited adults to take an IVR survey. The survey produced 9,469 completed interviews and 3,547 partial interviews.
It had a response rate of 31% and a cooperation rate of 81%. The response rate is measured across the whole sample, while the cooperation rate counts only the eligible adults who were actually reached. Read together, the two figures suggest that getting the call answered by an eligible person was the harder step, and that most people who did answer went on to finish.
The researchers also tested their design before the main survey. Opening with a brief greeting in Twi and then offering the choice of survey language in random rather than fixed order kept more people on the call. A shorter introduction kept more people listening than a longer one, and multiple-choice questions worked better than asking people to key in a specific number, such as their exact age. All three findings are worth building into your own survey.
Keep the study’s scope in mind when you use these figures. It surveyed the general adult population by dialling random numbers. It did not survey a programme’s own beneficiaries.
Who do phone surveys miss?
The same study found that the phone sample skewed away from the people who are hardest to reach. Younger, urban, better educated and male respondents were overrepresented, and fewer women, rural and older residents completed the survey than in household surveys.
If your programme serves rural women or older people, plan around that finding from the start. A voice survey that returns encouraging results may simply be reporting the views of the beneficiaries who were easiest to reach.
Your situation does differ from the study in one respect. The researchers dialled numbers at random, while you would be calling people you registered, who gave you their number and know your organisation’s name. Our reasoning is that this should narrow the gap, because the call is expected and comes from an organisation the beneficiary already deals with. The 2017 study did not test a registered list, so treat this as reasoning rather than a research finding. It also does nothing for someone who has no phone, or whose only access is a phone that belongs to another member of the household.
You can design the survey so that you see the gap rather than miss it:
- At registration, ask each person which number reaches them directly and what time of day suits them, and record it alongside their sex, age group and community.
- Record the questions in the languages your beneficiaries speak, not only in English.
- After each round, compare who answered with who you registered, by sex, age group and community. Call the people who did not answer again at a different time of day before you count them as missed. Where a group’s response is still low, follow up with that group through visits or community meetings.
The comparison in the last step is what tells you whether the survey is hearing from everyone you serve, so build it into every round rather than doing it once.
Field visit, SMS or voice call: which fits?
Each method asks something different of the beneficiary and of your team.
| Field visit | SMS survey | Voice survey | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who it can reach | Anyone your staff can travel to, including people without phones | People with a phone who can read the message in the language you write it in | People with access to a phone, including feature phones, who can listen in a language you have recorded |
| What it asks of the respondent | Being available when staff arrive | Reading the question and typing a reply | Listening and pressing keys |
| What it does poorly | Frequent check-ins across a large, scattered caseload, because every round needs staff time and travel | Reaching people who cannot read | Reaching people without phone access, or capturing long explanations |
You will usually get the clearest picture by combining them: voice calls for frequent, short check-ins, and field visits for the groups the calls under-reach and for questions that need a conversation.
What language should a voice survey in Ghana be recorded in?
Record it in the languages your beneficiaries speak, and let each person choose. If you record each person’s preferred language at registration, you will know which recordings you need before you start, whether that is Twi, Ewe, Dagbani, English or another language. A short language menu at the start of the call then lets each respondent pick, as in the 2017 study’s design.
VoiceConnect plays prompts in any language by playing a recorded audio file you upload for each prompt. The work is therefore in the recording: one clip per question, per language. Use a fluent speaker of each language, ideally someone who phrases the questions the way people in the community speak, and play each recording to a few beneficiaries before the full round to check that it is understood.
How to set up a beneficiary feedback survey by voice call
- Collect numbers and consent at registration. Tell people that you will call them, roughly how often and what about, and that taking part is voluntary. Record their preferred language and the best time to call.
- Write a short introduction and a short set of questions. The introduction should name your organisation, say what the call is for and tell the person they can stop at any time. Ask only as many questions as a respondent can answer in a few minutes, and keep each one to a single fixed choice, answered with one key press.
- Record every prompt in every language you need, as described above.
- Build the call flow. You can build it yourself in VoiceConnect’s visual IVR builder, or Arkesel’s team can set it up with you during onboarding. Either way, your team can change the flow later without a developer. Our guide to designing an IVR call flow covers how to structure menus and branches. While the flow is being built, ask the Arkesel team whether your plan gives you each respondent’s answers matched to their phone number, and in what form. The comparison in step 8 and the follow-up lists in the worked example below both depend on it, so get the answer before you call anyone. If the answer is no, agree with the team how you will see who answered before you run the pilot in step 7.
- Import your beneficiary list. VoiceConnect supports bulk import from a CSV or Excel file, with Do-Not-Call enforcement, so anyone who asks not to be called again can be kept off future rounds.
- Set calling hours. VoiceConnect enforces calling-hour and daily-limit rules on outbound calls. Set the calling hours around the times your beneficiaries told you they can talk. If those times fall into clear groups, such as mornings and evenings, import each group as its own list and run it as a separate round at the time that group gave you.
- Run a pilot round with a small group of beneficiaries, fix any question that confuses people, then call the full list.
- Compare who answered with who you registered. Set each respondent’s answers against your register and run the comparison described earlier.
VoiceConnect offers survey-only tiers that run automated surveys without live agents. Survey Lite runs surveys on a shared number, which suits a straightforward feedback campaign. Survey Plus adds a dedicated number, a branded outbound caller ID and more concurrent calls, which helps beneficiaries recognise your call when it arrives and lets a larger list be called faster. You can see how VoiceConnect handles surveys on the product page.
A worked example: checking that farm inputs arrived
The following is an illustrative example, not a real programme. Suppose a farmer-support programme in northern Ghana gives registered smallholder farmers seed and fertiliser before planting. The team wants to know, within a few weeks of distribution, whether the inputs reached each farmer and whether they were used.
At registration, field officers record each farmer’s own phone number, preferred language and best time to call. The survey is recorded in Dagbani and English and runs like this:
- A short greeting names the programme and offers the language choice.
- “Did you receive seed from the programme this season? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no.”
- If yes: “Did you receive the full amount you were told to expect? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no, 3 if you are not sure.”
- “Have you planted the seed yet? Press 1 for yes, 2 for not yet.”
- “Would you like a field officer to contact you? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no.”
The answers give the team two lists to act on. Farmers who said they received nothing, or less than expected, go to the distribution team for follow-up. Farmers who asked for contact go to the field officers. The team then compares respondents with the register by community and sex, and plans visits to any community where few farmers, or few women farmers, answered.
The same structure works for other programmes, such as a health programme checking whether a referral was attended, provided the questions can be answered with a key press.
Surveys and one-way messages are different jobs
Voice calls are also used to send information to beneficiaries rather than to collect it. In February 2024, the World Food Programme’s Ghana Country Office published a request for expressions of interest on the UN Global Marketplace for interactive voice response services, for beneficiary sensitization, information sharing and behaviour change communication. That notice describes outbound messaging, not surveys, and a procurement notice shows an intention to buy, not a completed contract.
If what you need is a one-way recorded message, such as a reminder about a distribution date, that is a separate product. Arkesel’s Voice SMS for one-way voice broadcasts delivers a recorded message as automated calls. VoiceConnect is the tool when you need answers back.
When to keep field visits
A voice survey is a poor fit, and a visit or a staffed conversation is the better choice, in these situations:
- Beneficiaries without reliable phone access. Reach them through visits or community meetings, and count them when you report how many beneficiaries the survey covered.
- Questions that need explanation. If you need to know why a borehole stopped working or why a family left a programme, a keypad answer will tell you that something went wrong but not what.
- Sensitive topics. A maternal health programme asking about pregnancy, or any programme asking about violence or household money, has to consider who else might answer or overhear a shared phone. Those conversations belong in person, or with a trained staff member who can judge whether it is safe to continue.
- Results you will report externally. Spot-check a sample of voice responses in person before you present them as findings.
Next step
If you run a programme in Ghana and want to test a voice survey on part of your beneficiary list, talk to the team about VoiceConnect‘s survey-only tiers and how setup works, and ask whether your plan gives you each respondent’s answers matched to their phone number. Arkesel is ISO 27001:2022 certified and registered with Ghana’s Data Protection Commission, which matters when you hold beneficiaries’ phone numbers. For plan details, see current pricing. VoiceConnect’s survey tools sit inside a full cloud contact centre platform, which our cloud contact centre guide explains if you later want staffed helplines or call routing as well.
IVR Call Flow Design: A Step-by-Step Blueprint for Ghana
IVR call flow design for Ghanaian businesses: rank the real call reasons, keep the menu short,…
Call Centre Quality Monitoring in Ghana: A 2026 Guide
Call centre quality monitoring in Ghana: supervise live calls, score every one, and see what the…
Contact Centre CRM Integration: How to Give Agents the Whole Customer Before They Say Hello
Contact centre CRM integration puts a caller's open tickets and WhatsApp history on your agent's screen…
