huh... I have literally never met a single person that answers cold calls on personal lines, this was already SOP when I was a kid.
Seriously, who's picking up those calls?
But the better pollsters don't just call. They use various online methods as well. 538 lists the following methods, and rates a pollster higher if they use more of them:
Live — Live telephone interviews, including cellphones.
Landline — Live telephone interviews, not including cellphones.
Live* — Live telephone interviews, but FiveThirtyEight cannot confirm whether cellphones are included.
IVR — Interactive voice response, otherwise known as automated polls or “robopolls.”
Online — Poll conducted by internet; generally, this means by web browser, but it’s inclusive of text message or application-based polling of mobile phones.
Mail — By U.S. mail or other “snail mail” service.Exactly this. I'm forced to answer a lot of calls even when I think it's 80% likely that it's a spam call. I own a business and need to keep my employees fed with work. My likelihood of landing a contract with a person drops by about half if I don't pick up the phone right away.
People who don't live in countries where the problem is this bad?
I'm in the UK and I get about 1 unsolicited call a month. If I didn't pick up numbers I didn't recognize I would have missed my Doctor (this week), several new client leads and multiple friends and acquaintences that changed their number.
However, I do not have a landline at home now, and have not in many years.
It's easier to just answer given the overall chance of it being a waste of time.
If somebody really wants something, they'll call again.
Also, sending an SMS to the unknown number and asking for a name works wonders.
If someone really wants something they will take the time to type.
This is a bit of a tautology, but I guess it skews towards people who actually advertise/distribute their primary phone numbers (i.e., for business, or as a contact point for some club/group/community/org) or are otherwise in a field/business that basically boils down to networking.
I'm not sure exactly when I stopped answering calls outside of my contacts, but I know it's in the past ~9 years (and I feel like I've only been very consistent about not answering for 2-3 years). I'm fairly phone-avoidant, and almost never receive a "real" call from a non-contact.
But it wouldn't shock me if my last real-estate agent answered her personal cell if I called from a number she didn't recognize.
I somehow managed to get the name of one of the companies responsible for it. Then, I called them up — not the call center employees who were making the calls, the actual corporate office — and I told them to please stop calling me, or, real soon, I was gonna start looking for someone to sue.
The calls stopped. I don’t think I even got any this cycle.
For spam calls, I lost all pretence of politeness years ago. In the best case I just hang up.
However, I only get a spam call every 3 months or so.
The phone number on my website rings a phone on my desk. When it rings, I pick it up.