Asking the public for their opinions has become too expensive: Dozens of call centers conducting public surveys are closing in Russia.
The reason for the closure was the tightening of federal law: trying to combat telephone scammers, the authorities obliged All commercial structures must label their telephone calls (from now on, the company name must appear on the telephone screen during a call).
Call center representatives claim that implementing such a service will make their operations unprofitable: sociological surveys sometimes require up to 1200 random calls to obtain a single vote. The amendments to the law increase costs by 20-50 times.
News of call center closures is coming from all over Russia.
🔸 In Tomsk, for example, close two companies that have been conducting research for government agencies, marketing agencies and banks for many years.
🔸 About its closure said and the largest call center on Ural — “Fund Socium” (he called his work under the new conditions “economically unprofitable”).
🔸 The Institute of Public Opinion "Kvalitas", which is actually the main sociological service in Voronezh region, plans to work for some time longer, but already assesses the situation as “critical.”
"It will be insanely expensive, confessed his director told journalists Alexander Romanovich. - I suspect that there will be no customers for such research."
🔸 Putin and Medvedev have already asked for help requested The largest association, "Group 7/89," which includes 46 research companies from 32 cities (more than 4 employees, 55% of all telephone surveys in the country). According to this organization, at least 18 companies (including Perm, Novosibirsk и Vladimir).
In its appeal, the Association emphasizes that call centers helped regional party branches build supporter pools, engage citizens in the elections, and record their attitudes toward the candidates' agendas, initiatives, and programs. Discontinuing this work could leave parties without objective data on the real sentiments of the public ahead of the 2026 State Duma elections. Furthermore, the effectiveness of governors and municipal authorities would be jeopardized.
