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< An Upi Production 1990 >
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Reprinted In File Form On February 13, 1990
Orignally Publised In Toronto Star Monday February 12, 1990
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PHONE CALLING TO THE FUTURE
By Bill Reno
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
LAS VEGAS - There is no limit to what the telephone can do for a
business of any size. Those who do not learn to use the power of voice
processing will not survive in tomorrow's marketplace.
That was the message that emerged here last month from Infotext 90, a
convention for the voice processing industry.
Voice processing has grown from a start in 1983 to a billion dollar a
year business involving thousands of enterprises.
The industry produces computerized information, entertainment and
customer services delivered over the world's most pervasive medium: The
ordinary telephone.
Callers in the U.S. can access a seemingly endless array of services,
such as used car prices, legal advice, dating tips, sports scores, job openings
and cat lore. Trivia games with cash prizes, fantasy baseball leagues and
cross continent personals are some of the more popular phone entertainment
offerings.
Phone Lines
Most of these services were developed by individual suppliers who have
knowledge and entertainment concepts to sell and can be reached on pay per call
phone lines.
Callers are billed the cost of the services by the phone companies,
which keep part of the revenue for use of the line and pay the rest to the
information provider.
Caller pay lines have special number prefixes, the most common being
976, which cover a single area code, and 900, which can be accessed by callers
from anywhere in the U.S., except Alaska and Hawaii.
Callers to these numbers are all billed the same rate, regardless of
the distance of the transmission. A New York based 900 service giving up to
the second commodity prices, for example, will cost callers from Manhattan to
Seattle precisely the same amount per minute.
About 100 services are available on 976 phone lines from Bell Canada in
Ontario and Quebec. The majority of the lines are the often controversal adult
fantasy lines, which are on the wane in the U.S. because of market saturation.
The 900 service is not yet available in Canada, except for automated
polling or call count lines, which are actually routed into the U.S. over the
AT&T network.
Bell plans the introduction of full 900 service in Ontario some time in
1991.
Essential links in the delivery system are the telephone service
bureaus - agencies which thousands of phone lines from the carriers.
The lines are then connected to specialized voice processing computers
and re-rented to the information providers, who promote their services to their
target audiences, typically through radio and television advertising.
Fortunes have been made almost overnight by information providers know
in the industry as infopreneurs, who understand what information or
entertainment callers will pay for and how best to package and promote it.
One dramatic example of sucess in this new industry is Arthur Toll, a
former airline executive who founder Gateway Telecommunications in 1987 with
two answering machines costing $70 each. Last year his company, which now
includes a service bureau, advertising agency, equipment manufactor and media
production house, had gross billings of $39 million (U.S.) and is currently the
largest provider of 900 services in the U.S.
Voice Processing
While the voice information industry was launched by individual
infopreneurs like Toll, established businesses sre rapidly, and profitably,
incorporating voice processing into marketing and customer service programs.
Already in wide use is the dealer location service, where callers enter
their postal code into their touchtone phone to hear a short advertisment along
with the address and phone number of the nearest dealer.
Also becoming popular are phone entry contests and product sample
request lines. The caller is normally asked to answer a few basic market
research questions, which the business uses to build present and potential
customer databases.
A case study presented at the convention demonstrated how Revlon used a
$100,000 (U.S.) phone sweepstakes to stimulate calls to an automated
advertising and market research 900 number.
Phone Bills
Since the callers paid $2 on their phone bills to enter the contest,
most of the costs of the program were covered by the entrants themselves.
Among the several Canadians attending the convention was Mandle Cheung,
president of Computer Talk Technology in Richmond Hill, a major designer and
manufacturer of voice processing systems in this country.
Cheung was impressed by the inventiveness of Americans in creating new
applications, but felt there was nothing to learn from then on the technology
side.
"Everything the Americans are doing with developing the hardware and
software itself, we do as well, in some cases better," Cheung said. "We feel
we have more appreciation for how small and medium sized businesses can exploit
this exciting new technology."
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02-13-90/003 Copywrite 1990 By The Lost Avenger-All Rights Reserved