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When PC technology bites back Sometimes, using a PC to do what a human normally does can have quite the opposite effect from what’s intended, as David Dorn has discovered. Are you familiar with the term “solution”? It’s bandied about in the IT industry an awful lot – “Widgets’r’Us has developed the perfect solution for the de-bumphicating enthusiast” would be how you’d often see it. The word generally means that a combination of hardware and software can be made to do a job that, perhaps, hadn’t existed before. Sometimes, it’s even worthwhile! One “solution” was invented quite a while ago – and it answered a need that a certain type of company has, at least insofar as that kind of company was concerned. What the “solution” didn’t take account of, though, was how the hapless recipient of its computing power would react. Let me explain. No doubt you’re aware that computer based telephony exists. You can’t buy a new PC without a voice enabled modem being squeezed into the case somewhere, and such modems inevitably come with software that allows you to use it as a telephone, an answering machine, fax – you name it! Some also come with a weird piece of software that will allow you to set the PC to dial up a number, or a set of numbers, and play a pre-recorded message once the other end picks up. Going back a few months to the floods of the winter, such a facility was used to warn residents of at-risk areas that the waters were rising and to advise them that heading for the hills might be a good idea. It saved time, it made sure that the message was delivered without the possibility of a householder engaging a human being in a long conversation that might have meant that other householders wouldn’t get the warning in time. For that purpose, the solution was a “good idea”. For that, maybe, but telesales operations have cottoned onto the idea, and have taken it a step further. Bad idea? Maybe not! One thing those folks that always ring you up to sell you double glazing while you’re watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer hate is to get an answering machine or a fax machine. They want a human to answer the phone. So, what one company in the Durham area has done is to tweak the early warning idea a touch and apply it to their business. They’ve recorded a message that says “Please press 1 on your telephone keypad” to go out when an automatically dialled number answers. They then apply this to a large database of telephone numbers that they’ve got from wherever. Their computers do the rounds, dialling number after number, queuing the engaged ones for later, and playing the recorded message to the ones that pick up. If you’re a human being picking up on one of these calls, you might well be tempted to do as the message asks you. If you do, the software at the company end hears the tone, and promptly switches the call to the telesales operator’s headset, so that they can then, in this case, extol the virtues of their financial services. If your answering machine gets it, it won’t “press 1”, so the software will time out, and go onto the next number on its list. Clever, isn’t it? It filters out calls that the telesales people don’t need or want, and, if you, the potential customer, know how it works, you can just hang up, knowing that it’s a nuisance call. People being people, though, someone, somewhere in the Durham area, decided to have a bit of a laugh at the company’s expense. They put it about that, by doing as the message asks, and tapping the “1” key, you instructed the telephone system to accept the charge for the call. This is very much in the same vein as the 90# hoax that has been doing the rounds for a couple of years (that one let it be known that if anyone asked you to key “90#” on your phone you were giving them access to your line, and they could then make calls that were charged to your bill. It’s a load of tosh – it doesn’t work, and neither does the “press 1” thing.) So, a local radio phone-in show that makes use of my services every so often got inundated with calls from residents of County Durham all claiming to have been scammed by this company, and tricked into paying for a marketing call. They were irate. They were fuming. Indeed, they were hopping mad! They had all been taken in by some wag’s idea of a joke, and no-one had thought of checking it out to find out whether the rumour was true – that pressing “1” had the effect of adding the cost of that incoming call to your phone bill. Just to be sure, I’ll say it again. It doesn’t. BT has confirmed to me that it doesn’t. It can’t, it never will, they say. The folly of it all, though, is that the financial services company had, unwittingly, played right into our hands – that’s you and me, the hapless recipient of sales calls we probably don’t want. By using this method of confirming that a human has picked up the phone, they’ve given the game away – they’ve announced that they are a sales operation, and we then have the chance to not “press 1” and thus avoid having to tell them, politely, of course, to hi themselves hence and never darken our telephone lines again. Their astounding “solution”, meant to make it easier for them to talk to human beings has, in more than one way, rebounded on them, and in all sorts of ways made it more difficult for them to get what they want. Sometimes, just sometimes, I love the way computers work! Have your say - click here |
