At my work I have to make calls asking for information. There can be some benefit for the company/government office being asked, but the people I call don't always see that. I find that being polite and genuinely thanking people for their time definitely helps smooth things over. Also, I intersperse that between other tasks, so I'm not doing it all at once.

Do you have some sort of notes that you can refer to, to make sure you are asking everything you need to? That might help you feel calmer and help you complete the call more efficiently. I think the more times you do it, your comfort level will increase.

It could be worse. At another past job of mine, my boss wanted us to do these surveys that would have asked for a lot of sensitive information from companies, at no benefit to them and without being allowed to say what it was for. I refused and ended up quitting due to that and various other issues.

I have wondered at times what ever happened with those surveys. I'm pretty sure it was a big failure because most companies aren't going to provide that information. Our company owner was definitely lacking in ethics. I always wondered if our company was hired to do the work because other, more ethical companies wouldn't want to do it.