Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

VoodooVox to Target Call Center Industry with its In-Call Media Service

October 09, 2007

Throughout the U.S., at any given point during the day, there might be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of callers waiting on hold.

Unfortunately, most of the organizations keeping these callers on hold -- service providers, retail chains, pharmacies, corporations, non-profits, doctor’s offices, radio stations, call centers, you name it -- are delivering stale messages such as: “Your call is important to us. Please remain on the line, and someone will be with you shortly,” and perhaps some piped-in music which may or may not be tolerable.


But now, thanks to the power of Internet Telephony and Web technology, organizations don’t need to bore their precious callers to death while they wait patiently for a live person to pick up the line. With the advent of “ad-supported telephony,” callers on hold can have a more engaging experience – and the companies keeping them on hold can benefit through new revenue streams and increased customer satisfaction.

Leading the way in this emerging field is VoodooVox. The company’s Web-based technology enables it to inject interactive content, mixed with targeted advertising, into any call stream, fixed or mobile. The company claims its hosted In-Call Media service, which is ideally suited to businesses that handle high call volume, helps reduce call abandonment rates and increase customer satisfaction.

VoodooVox’s technology holds great promise in that it could one day be used to deliver free, ad-supported telephony services, including free mobile services, to consumers. In fact, the technology is so promising that the company just recently announced it received $8.1 million in Series D financing led by Softbank Capital. Existing investors Apax Partners, Disney’s Steamboat Ventures and Village Ventures also participated in the round.

During a recent interview, company CEO Scott Hamilton said VoodooVox’s In-Call Network “does for telephony what DoubleClick did for Web traffic.” Clients (or “call publishers,” as VoodooVox calls them) benefit because their callers (or customers) don’t need to be bored while they’re waiting on hold – and advertisers benefit because they can deliver their messages in a subtle manner to a totally “captive” audience. Currently, more than 400 radio stations are using the VoodooVox’s technology to deliver advertising to their callers and to keep them informed and entertained while they’re on hold.

As Hamilton explained, the technology facilitates targeted advertising in a manner that isn’t too unlike how today’s cable and IPTV operators deliver targeted television advertising to viewers. As we’ve seen with cable and IPTV, targeted advertising can now be delivered to subscribers with pinpoint precision. For example, many cable companies are now delivering local advertising to their subscribers through their local cable networks: i.e., a local business can deliver television ads directly (and only) to those residents who live within the immediate area of where the business is located. Although VoodooVox’s In-Call Network doesn’t quite pack this level of sophistication, it certainly could evolve to deliver this capability, through the power of IP.

With In-Call, callers on hold can have the option (with emphasis on the word option) of getting the day’s headline news, the latest sports scores, or the local weather report, simply by pushing the keys on their phone. Each of these reports is preceded by a brief (8 to 10 second) advertisement, which gives the caller the option of learning more about the product or service being offered. Should a caller be interested in the product or service, they can opt in using the keypad and hear more about it – and then perhaps even purchase or sign up for it, which is where the revenue generating piece some in. All of this facilitated through the company’s SaaS delivery model: The content is hosted by VoodoVox in a secure hosting facility.

Even more compelling is that, through the use of Web 2.0 widgets, a “call publisher” can offer callers access to a secure web site where they could play video or trivia games -- either on their own or perhaps against other callers who are waiting in the queue -- or engage in other activities while they’re on hold. This has the effect of making a three to five minute wait on hold fly by, thus improving customer satisfaction. “This is about tying a visual experience that allows the hold time a more enjoyable experience,” he said, adding, however, that not very many of the company’s clients are making use of this capability as of yet.

Hamilton said radio stations have been an ideal testing ground for the technology because they often see huge spikes on their request lines, resulting in long hold times.

“A top radio station will see 100,000 to 200,000 calls in a day,” he said. “And all of those calls hit a busy signal until our technology came along. When we answer a phone call, we answer it in an automated fashion, in the voice of the station, and collect the data. But there’s a lot more you can you do than simply collect data: Perhaps when we’re collecting request information or responses to polls we can promote a CD launch, or a TV tune-in reminder, or a movie release … As it turns out, this works fabulously well. So well in fact that that we had to go out and get more phone calls from other industries because we had no more calls to sell outside of our radio constituency.”

That’s why the company recently branched out and started working with some of the leading providers of calling cards.

“That’s another tremendous high call volume industry,” Hamilton said, adding that calling card company IDT, which handles 150 million phone calls on a monthly basis, is among VoodoooVox’s clients. “And when a call is happening from there, we know where it is originating from and we know which country it is going to -- we even have age and gender demographics on the particular calling card product. So if, for example, a caller is dialing from New York to the Dominican Republic, it’s a great opportunity to let the caller know that American Airlines has introduced a new low rate service between JFK and Santa Domingo and ‘press nine now to hear more information about this new flight.’ So that’s a good example of ad supported content that is introduced in the call stream.”

As the next step in its evolution, VoodooVox is now gearing up to target the call center industry.

“There’s a different flavor of this that we’re going to be introducing for call centers,” Hamilton said. “We know that there are all kinds of initiatives in place for call centers to process calls in a timely manner, but the fact is, there is going to be a call hold challenge. So what we’d like to do with our on hold network is, rather than having the call center play a looped message about the importance of the call, let us come in there with the on hold network and let the caller decide how they spend their time while they’re on hold: So they can press 1 to hear headline news, press 2 to hear sports scores, press 3 to hear local weather ... or if we have a downstream view into the queue, and we see that its an average three minute hold time, we’ll play a three minute summary of the information. So the idea here is to really attack C-sat (customer satisfaction), by dropping in content that makes the hold time a much more palatable experience.”

“Now with networked telephony what we can do is, sitting outside in the cloud, publish content to these call centers, they can pick and choose what it is that they want to offer,” he continued. “So they come to us and say, give us the one minute loop, the three minute loop, and if the hold time goes beyond that, then let the caller decide from this category of content. So, if you’re running a call center, you can say, ‘I don’t want them to hear entertainment news, or the news of the weird, I just want them to hear headline news, sports scores and the local weather.’ So we can now publish to wherever they hold people ... whether its a switch in the cloud or a switch in the call center.”

Hamilton said in his view call centers have everything to gain and nothing to lose from using VoodooVox’s technology. He said once they learn it’s for free and that it reduces call abandonment rates, improves the caller experience, and generates revenue he expects to see widespread adoption.

“The value proposition I have for the call centers is that it is a pretty low bar to clear, to provide a better hold experience than simply playing ‘your call is important to us’ over and over again,” he said. “We realize it’s never going to be as good as talking immediately to the right customer service agent who can handle your phone call, but we hope it’s the next best thing.”

He added that for many call centers it will be more convenient “to just have someone else come in and be responsible for the caller’s experience while they’re on hold.”

VoodooVox has already attracted the attention of some major advertisers, including Disney, however the company is hoping to attract many more. The company currently uses a blend of licensed and in-house content – the in-house content being primarily the news reports, which are read by the company’s “news reporters.” For licensed content the company has already signed deals with ESPN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal Business Report and other media companies.

Hamilton said call publishers also have the option of using VoodooVox’s content without any ad support – for a fee. “We don’t feel that will be as popular among the call centers … but it’s certainly something we could entertain,” he said.

Things are looking on the up-and-up for VoodooVox, which announced just yesterday that Jones MediaAmerica has been awarded a three-year contract to serve as the exclusive In-Call Media sales representative for US-based radio and television broadcasters. The agreement is expected to generate $2.3 million in ad sales for VoodooVox over the first year, and more than $10m over the course of the entire contract.

"Jones MediaAmerica is the largest independent national radio sales organization in the US, and it is also a recognized leader in new and emerging audio advertising markets such as online radio, podcasting, and now In-Call Media,” Hamilton said in a press release. "Broadcast media is one of many high-call volume industries that can benefit from In-Call Media, and we anticipate this new partnership will significantly fast-track our growth in this sector."

"Jones Media America is committed to delivery of new solutions for our vast network of advertisers," said Gary Schonfeld, president, Jones MediaAmerica, in the release. "Radio stations have a unique relationship with their audience, millions of whom interact with the stations by phone on a daily basis. In-Call Media represents the perfect way to reach this audience with unique material, such as targeted marketing messages to ad-supported mobile content like ringtones, games and graphics, and even full music tracks."

For more information about VoodooVox, visit http://www.voodoovox.com/.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and Assignment Editor for ContactCenterSolutions. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.



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