Courtright urged the Federal government to: support in-person insights businesses in the same manner as the hospitality and leisure industry; provide loan repayment relief; consider continuing support for small businesses in the industry after the crisis; and to streamline regulations such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

She stated her concern that the insights industry’s in-person business has been drastically diminished or shut down. “The high-profile public example is the suspension of field activities for the 2020 Census, but it is being replicated all across the country in our industry,” she wrote, also citing focus group and interviewing facilities and call centres for telephone polling.

Courtright added that not all “businesses and personnel can transition to insights work via other modes and methods…Shuttered businesses and their employees have been forced to wonder when they will return, or if the business can survive long enough to ever return.”

“In times of business turmoil, we encourage everyone to measure. When the world is shifting due to disruption of innovation, we over-invest in methods to understand. In times of crisis, it’s more important than ever to listen, learn, and understand. If we are to advise executives and decision makers across the business, public policy, education, and not for profit landscape, we must have the pulse of the population,” she wrote.

She concluded that the work of the insights industry has never “been more important as we continue to monitor the sentiment of the population and the likely impact on the policymakers, businesses and advertisers who rely on our insights to guide their planning.”