IVR Deconstructed

Case Study for a Market Research Firm using Plum Survey

A premier opinion and market research firm was looking to conduct nationwide surveys and opinion polls via an automated IVR system—to lower costs associated with call agents and CATI systems while reaching the greatest number of respondents possible.

The firm conducts public opinion polls across the globe, primarily over the phone. In addition to polls and market research, the firm also does telemarketing, mock juries, public relations, fund raising and event management. Its customers range from media businesses to not-for-profit trade groups to political parties.

Plum’s Solution
Plum’s IVR system enables the firm to create and deploy automated surveys in minutes, then view the data in real time. With Plum Survey—a hosted IVR rapid application development tool—they can create and manage automated campaigns without having to program complex, time-consuming IVR scripts.

The firm can run an infinite number of automated call campaigns simultaneously without investing in additional call-rep staff, hardware or technology (Plum’s Voice-XML-based platform runs in the cloud). The tool’s features enable the firm to dynamically control the flow of outbound calls as well as set rules for call times based on different campaigns.

New England Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady says he fibs to the press to avoid controversy. I can’t say I blame him.

Yahoo! Sports reported that he admitted his duplicity after the media made a big deal of him saying fans should “get lubed up” before a game.

This is an example of the pitfalls of the Internet and communications technologies, which in some ways are warping our sense of reality. People in the public eye can’t say anything anymore.

Days after Brady’s comment, the Patriots issued an official statement that he meant water and not alcohol. Yeah, right. Pull the other leg.

(Having lived in New England, I can tell you that it’s cold there and snows a lot—you don’t have a ton of options on a Sunday afternoon during football season, if you get my drift. If you don’t…they drink. New Englanders drink. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And they’re not ashamed of it.)

Why do we care if a football player makes a joke about rowdy football fans? (I know, he’s a role model. This is just for the sake of argument.) According to Yahoo! Sports, Brady later admitted to reporters that he’s been hiding his true thoughts from them. No way! (Sigh.) The humanity. (Sarcasm.)

“I don’t often say exactly how I feel,” he told reporters on Monday. “And I don’t often say what I think. Because you don’t want to cause controversy.”

You mean like Washington Redskins Cornerback DeAngelo Hall admitting he’ll target Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Tony Romo’s injured ribs when they play this week? And then catching flack for it?

In the NFL, there’s the media line and there’s the truth. Behind the scenes, pass rushers know exactly what might be sore on an opposing quarterback and go right for it if they have the chance. If they knock him out of the game, their team has a better chance to win.

It’s not honorable and it’s not pretty, but it’s football. Anyone who watches enough football knows this. It’s a brutal game (which is why players hide their true thoughts). Most NFL players end up limping through the rest of their lives.

(Have you seen O.J. Simpson lately? Well, no one has, but have you seen him in the last ten years? He’s hobbled. And he was one of the best running backs ever—fast. That’s what football does to the body.)

No matter what your opinion of play like that or football in general, the truth is Hall was just being honest. He admitted a truth to the media that all NFL defensive players believe. And, of course, he looks bad, as he should.

Which is why Brady usually tows the company line in interviews. Because the media loves controversy, and once the media gets ahold of something, everybody hears about it.

Because that’s the world we live in now. At Plum, we’re all for technologies like the Internet and IVR. But for a celebrity, it’s different. I imagine it can be a pain. Just ask Brad Pitt right about now.

Every company operating in the technology sphere, including interactive voice response (IVR) companies like Plum that interact mainly with voice applications, has recognized the importance and validity of Facebook in both their marketing and development plans.  Creating applications that can operate or interface with Facebook has become an increasing component of maintaining relevancy in an ever-changing tech landscape.

Facebook isn’t, however, the easiest system to work with.  Facebook pulled a Netflix yesterday (too soon?) and has once again angered users by updating the site with changes that are not being received favorably.  Facebook has gotten rid of the “Most Recent” feature on the homepage and instead is using a carefully crafted algorithm to show users what they have deemed the top stories for them.  Users have reported that this feature is random at best, and is not showing relevant content a majority of the time.

Additionally, there has been a scrolling information bar added which Facebook has titled The Ticker.  The Ticker is fashioned in the style of Twitter and offers constant updates on friend’s statuses. Profile modifications, photo additions, four square check-ins, et cetera.

According to CNN, Facebook’s goal in integrating The Ticker into the feed is to give their users more real-time updates.  Some of their current applications can experience a bit of a delay (because let’s face it, we all really want to know that Nathan thinks the Jets are going to take it tonight) so The Ticker offers 100% real-time updates so you can literally almost monitor every breath your Facebook friends take.

These types of updates that infringe upon privacy and are launched without user consent aren’t the first of such changes.  Historically, Facebook has a habit of rolling out unpopular, invasive software updates that kick off a firestorm of users threatening to leave.  From the establishment of the news feed to the integration of status updates, Facebook users have taken umbrage with the social networking site making such sweeping updates without their consent.  So is this time any different?

For starters, this is the first update Facebook has done since Google+ was introduced to much success.  The new Facebook updates reflect that the network is aware of competition from sites like Google+ and Twitter and have tried to integrate these sites’ functionality into their system.

Facebook always manages to surprise their users with updates that are a shock, that are invasive, and that require alterations to privacy settings to ensure that controls are the same as they were prior to the rollout.

As much hemming and hawing as everyone does about these updates, most users power through the annoyance and inconvenience.  Why?  I don’t know.  I am not a Facebook user myself, so the phenomena is completely lost on me.  However, Facebook is or should be a component of every business’s marketing model to a greater or lesser extent and many companies, especially in the tech realm, are scrambling to figure out how they can capitalize on and integrate with the most recent changes to the site.

For a company like Plum that designs, builds and operates interactive voice response (IVR) systems, Internet connectivity is of primary importance.  While many of our systems operate telephonically, there is typically back-end integration required to make the system fully operational.  Because of these multi-layered technological interactions, Internet connectivity is just as important to a software company like Plum as telecommunications connectivity.

A while ago I did a post on state-by-state Internet connectivity nationwide detailing the various average connection speeds of cities and states alike.  A study has just been published that details Internet service speeds worldwide, broken down on both a country and city basis.  The study was conducted by a company called Pando Networks and used download speed as the primary variable for analysis and comparison.

The title for the world’s fastest Internet goes to South Korea with an average download speed at around 2,202 KBps.  South Korea is not entirely surprising as they have been one of the countries on the forefront of the tech revolution for some time now.  However, the next 9 countries in the top ten are somewhat surprising.  In decreasing order from fastest to slowest: Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Japan, Sweden, Ukraine, Denmark, and Hong Kong (not a country, but a special administrative region of China).

Four countries out of the top five are countries in Eastern Europe that many would imagine are less industrialized than their Western European counterparts.  Eastern Europe is instead eclipsing Western Europe, and the rest of the world for that matter, in developing high-speed, efficient Internet capabilities.  Conversely, the U.S. stands at just 26th in the world, with an average speed of just around 616 KBps.  The only city in the U.S. to crack the top ten in terms of Internet speed is Andover, Massachusetts.

China, the country with the most Internet users, comes in at 82nd in the world with an average download speed of 245 KBps.  And the slowest countries?  Congo, Central African Republic, Comoros, the Cook Islands and Lesotho.  Three of these countries are in Africa, while the other two are islands in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific.  Unfortunately, these countries experience very low Internet speeds for many reasons primarily having to do with their internal infrastructure.

This study tells us that there are massive discrepancies in Internet, and ultimately technological, connectivity worldwide.  Someone in Seoul can download an item in a matter of seconds, while for someone in Kinshasa it might take hours.

Everyone talks about globalization and how it is being fueled by technological innovation, but as this survey shows, there are different types of globalization and citizens in different countries are living in a technological reality quite different from others.  So how has technology changed this?  And will it improve?  Only time will tell. However, companies must be aware of these realities in order to pitch a product that is a good fit and actually have someone purchase it.

Controversy surrounds the latest high-profile cyberattack—this time on Japan’s biggest defense contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

First of all, Mitsubishi Heavy evidently knew about the attack well over a month ago although it didn’t tell the Japanese government until now. The company may face heavy fines for violating its contract with Japan by not immediately reporting the breach, according to the Guardian.

The company holds information on some of Japan’s most important military weapons, including submarines and U.S.-made F-15 fighters and surface-to-air Patriot missiles.

The attack is the first on the Japanese defense ecosystem but not the first involving defense contractors around the world. Already this year, there have been high-profile attacks on defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin.

Mitsubishi Heavy is saying that the hackers breached around 80 computers with viruses and at the very least learned some IP addresses, although the company can’t guarantee the hackers didn’t glean other information from their system.

No one knows who the hackers are yet (except the hackers and whoever hired them), but rumors abound in the media that Chinese characters were in the viruses. The Chinese have denied the accusation that they had anything to do with it.

“The Chinese government has consistently opposed hacking activities. The law strictly prohibits this,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman told reporters. “China is one of the main victims of hacking…criticizing China as being the source of the hacking attacks is not only baseless, it is also not beneficial for promoting international cooperation for internet security.”

Okay. Well, I don’t want to be cynical here, but if the Chinese government was behind this attack, it certainly wouldn’t tell anyone (no government is Honest Abe). I mean, Mitsubishi Heavy didn’t even tell the Japanese about the breach until a month after it happened. Folks aren’t necessarily playing show and tell on this.

Also (and second of all), it’s not like it’s the first time the Chinese government has been accused of fostering cyberattacks. Google had a flap with them in June over attacks on Gmail emanating from China.

And it wasn’t even the first time Google accused them, either. According to the New York Times, Chinese hackers breached Google’s defenses the year before, pushing Google to ignore China’s censorship demands and also make Hong Kong home to its Chinese search engine rather than the mainland.

Some Western experts believe China has its own civilian cyber militia hacking the world’s governments and corporations.

In a recent interview with CNN, Michael “Mafiaboy” Calce, who at 15 years old hacked and shut down Yahoo!, eBay, CNN, Amazon and Dell.com with denial-of-service attacks in 2000, voiced concern over China as a breeding ground for today’s hackers.

“Places like China actually have hacker camps,” Calce said. “They’re training you to infiltrate government secrets and whatnot.”

In a March 2008 interview, leaders of a Chinese hacker group told CNN that they’d hacked some of the most well protected sites around, including the Pentagon.

They also said the Chinese government is sometimes a client, paying them secretly to hack these sites. Of course Beijing has denied that claim.

Well. Like I said, controversy surrounds this story.