Are Robotic Sales Reps The Wave of The Future?

Over the past few months, I have spent more time working from my home office and whenever I hear my land line ring (versus my cell) I think just one thing, “telemarketer”, and usually ignore it. One thing that’s surprised me is the number of companies that are using pre-recorded messages for their calls instead of human beings.

This piqued my curiosity….As someone who’s managed a number of human, outbound sales teams I wondered how this approach could actually work. So, I put on my market research hat to learn more.

What are Robo Calls?

Automated outbound calling goes by a number of different names: voice broadcasting, automated IVR calls, robo calls and marketing with voice.

Most of the voice broadcasting companies offer a basic service, where their computer dials your target list of phone numbers and when someone answers, they play your recording which is either personally recorded by you – or a computer generated version.

After someone answers your broadcasted call, they have a few options: they can listen and hang-up, press a button to get a live operator or press a button to leave a message.

Because the dialing is automated, users can test different versions of messages to see what generates the best result. (Similar to how marketers can test the effectiveness of different website landing pages – often called A/B testing.)

Many companies also offer services that directly target voicemails or answering machines, without even ringing the phone- often called “back-door delivery”.

One company I found, VoiceLogic.com, calls this their VoiceMail Courier service. Per their website: “We take a personal message recorded by you and navigate complex business phone systems to deliver the message to the right contacts voicemail box. When your contact hears the message, they assume you called and left them a message.”

Another application of voice broadcasting, is tying messaging to trigger events. (I wrote about Sales Trigger Events in an earlier blog post.) For example, you could schedule a trigger phone call when an order ships, when a product is delayed or even to thank a new customer for their first order.

In addition to business applications, voicebroadcasting is a technique often used by politicians to drum up votes and to take polls. Check out some samples on “ConnectCallUsa”. The sample recordings are actually pretty good.

How much do these services cost?

There are two common cost models for voice broadcasting services. You can pay a fee per connected call or you can pay a fee per lead (ex. when a customer chooses to speak to a live operator) For example, Voicebroadcasting.com charges $3 to $10 per interested lead and CallFire.com advertises that businesses pay only 3.5 cents per call, per minute.

Marci’s Conclusion..

When I started researching this topic, I admit that I had a negative attitude about the automated call concept. I mean who wants to talk with the robot “Jane, from Verizon”. After learning more about it, I do think that there could be a place for automated calls in certain situations, only used to enhance traditional (human) sales processes. I particularly like the idea of leaving voicemails, assuming that a human, not automated recording is used.

Addendum October 12, 2009

Upon further research and feedback from readers, I uncovered that a new law was passed on September 1, 2009, which prohibits some types of B2C, robo-calls,  unless the salesperson has obtained written permission from the consumers to place the calls.  You can learn more on About.com.

However, I am not aware of any laws that prohibit the B2B calls.

What do you think? Please add your thoughts to the comments section.

Copyright October 2009, Marci Reynolds, All Rights Reserved