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Telemarketers Use Emotionally Intelligent Software
eldavojohn writes "There's a new kind of software that's being used more and more. It's software that detects emotion and now it's being used in call centers. It's a $400 million industry according to Forrester Research that relies on volume, pitch and even the words & phrases being used. Are we inadvertently getting closer to software that can understand us by filling the needs of telemarketers who need to know when I'm upset that they just interrupted my dinner?"
I don't see anywhere that mentions telemarketers at all (except in the "summary"). The article only mentions call centers, which are more likely to be customer service centers than someone trying to sell you carpet cleaning.
This could potentially be a good thing for the public. If you could measure how upset people get by certain people, then you could fire the ones that make people the most upset. Of course this could also lead to other problems as the goal of support is to solve peoples problems, not make them feel nice.
It could also be a bad thing. Imagine if your called up customer service a few times in a bad mood, and the system flags you as a problem child (or maybe you're just a false positive as it isn't perfect). You then always get treated like you're a jerk.
AccountKiller
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You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
There's your mistake - you don't want them to remove you from their lists.
You want them to add you to their do not call list - the one they are required by law to keep.
"Add me to all your do not call lists."
www.eFax.com are spammers
I hate to break it to you, but telemarketing is based upon the solid business case that it does in fact work. Companies would not be engaging in telemarketing if it weren't for the fact that it has a decent ROI when compared to other wide-reaching marketing campaigns. This article, while definitely not the most recent one out there, speaks of the 5-15% success rate.
As annoying as we find SPAM (both the food and the email), telemarketers, and mass mailings, they do show a return on the marketing investment. Yes, some people are turned away from the product or service because of the annoyance, but plenty of others buy into it to keep this machine running.
One of the best ways to hurt their bottom line is to eat up their time, so that they waste valuable time trying to convince you (or your baby daughter, or your drunk dorm buddies, or your shoutboard, or your own hold music) that the sale is worth it. If their returns dropped low enough, they would stop doing it as it became an ineffective business model.
Not that I have the patience to do that more than once a or twice a month.
Or you could use the following:
I present to you the number for your free annual credit report-
1-877-322-8228
The number to stop receiving pre-approved credit card offers and other junk mail-
1-888-567-8688
And the number to stop receiving solicitations telemarketers-
1-888-382-1222