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Technology VS. Technology

Have you ever answered your phone at home to find that no one is on the other end? Then after 2.7 seconds of silence, a telemarketer for one of the major long distance companies or one of the major credit card companies butchers your last name and starts with the script of the week. This experience is an example of one of the most popular new marketing devices available to resort developers today; Auto dialers or predictive dialers.

Auto dialers make telemarketing productive regardless of the day of the week or the time of day the call is being made because a computer recognizes and ignores answering machines, busy signals, and PBX systems.

The computer also eliminates the time waste by having telemarketers listen to rings with no answer by compiling a log with the day and time each number was called with no contact. The computer then dials these numbers at different times on different days of the week. The most sophisticated auto-dialers available today recognize when the target prospect has answered the phone and sends the call to a telemarketer along with all pertinent geographic and demographic information via computer, in milliseconds.

The other advantage of using auto-dialers is a tremendous reduction in the cost of leads to be called. You can purchase any number of databases on CD-ROM, pop the CD into your dialer and you are off and running.

Having spent many years and countless dollars generating paper leads to support telemarketing, I admit the auto-dialer advances are very exciting, but they do have their drawbacks. They are quite expensive to purchase, as the up-front investment ranges from $300,000 to $500,000, according to several developers. Further, dealing with computer-operated system brings with it the normal computer related problems; bugs, glitches, downtime, to mention a few. However, the newest challenge on the horizon comes from the telephone companies themselves. In September 23 edition of USA Today, Ameritech Corporation announced the development of a new product called "call-block."

"Customers are screaming for it" said Ameritech CEO Richard Notebaert. For $3.95 per month, call-block will intercept calls made to your telephone and a digital voice will ask callers to identify themselves. If the caller refuses to answer, call block automatically hangs up. If the caller complies with the request, the call is forwarded to the subscriber who can then accept or reject the call. In tests, seven out of ten callers hung up when their call was intercepted.

I am not sure what happens when their computer asks my computer to identify itself, but I don't think it's good. Those of you who are currently operating some type of auto-dialer system are probably already working on overcoming this new obstacle. If you are considering the purchase of a new auto-dialer system, you might want to ask the dealer about their plans to our-tech the phone companies.

In spite of all the hi-tech advance, the old fashion paper leads generated through a box program or at some highly attended event provides a reference point to start your conversation (With the real person or the digital person). The target prospect actually give you their name, address, phone number and other pertinent information and they will remember being at the event and registering to win the fantastic prize.

Having a reference point of contact before the call is made will become more of an advantage as we move forward with technology. I guess we will hang on to our trade show display for another year.