Lenny Tropiano <lenny@icus.icus.com> (07/22/90)
In July 1990 issue of INBOUND/OUTBOUND magazine, devoted to ANI
("Improving the way America does business"), there was a column called
"Yellow Pages ANI Directory".
They stated, that there's not an industry or business that couldn't
use 800 lines and ANI to forge closer ties to its customers. Here are
but a few examples of how industries might use ANI.
SPEEDING UP ORDER PROCESSING
Pizza Delivery
"Desperate for some pizza? Call the 800 pizza ordering number.
As the call answers, the pizza company says, "Hello, Mr. Smith,
would you like what you ordered last week? You still live at
123 Elm Street with that big black dog?"
THE FREQUENT BUYER IDENTIFIER
Manufacturer
"90% of our sales are made by 10% of buyers. These frequent
buyers generate a lot of revenue for our manufacturing company.
How do we treat these important buyers like royalty?
When they call, we get their ANI. We bounce them quickly to the
top of the queue. We send them our most knowledgeable sales rep.
We also hae identified 15 very special customers. When they
call, we ring bells and alert our sales manager. If he's around,
he gets on the phone and thanks them for the order -- even though
they didn't ask for him. It's a nice touch. Our customers love
it. High tech, high touch."
AUTOMATIC DEALER ORDER ENTRY
Food Wholesaler
"We sell food to restaurants and small supermarkets. The owners
of these businesses have no time to dilly-dally ordering from us.
Most of their orders are the same from one week to the next.
We've set up an automated ordering system with ANI and a voice
processing system. Our buyers call up. Our machine starts with
the presumption they want what they ordered last week with minor
exceptions. With a touchtone pad, they can easily make their
exceptions.
Better yet, the system works 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Many of these people simply can't order during business hours."
THE ANI TECHNICAL SUPPORT CENTER
Software
"When you wanted technical support from us in the past, you needed
to register your software's serial number on business reply cards.
An awful system. You often had to wait a week or two before you
could make your first call.
Now no more. All software registration is done over the phone.
We no longer check serial numbers. ANI does it automatically for
us. It tells us instantly if the caller is a registered user, and
which of our other products he's bought.
Even better, we only offer free service for 90 days. With ANI
we can put our reports and target telemarketing campaigns to
get our users to subscribe to our extended software support."
------------------
[Lenny's opinions -- although some of these ideas sound nice in practice,
I'm wondering what happens to companies that have a PBX or many inbound
and outbound telephone numbers, will the systems mention above keep
track of all the numbers, or will I be FORCED to call from one extension
only, each and everytime I call. It could be a problem, don't you think?]
| Lenny Tropiano ICUS Software Systems lenny@icus.ICUS.COM |
| {ames,pacbell,decuac,sbcs,hombre,rayssd}!icus!lenny attmail!icus!lenny |
+------ ICUS Software Systems -- PO Box 1; Islip Terrace, NY 11752 ------+friedl@uunet.uu.net (Stephen J. Friedl) (07/23/90)
In article <9989@accuvax.nwu.edu>, lenny@icus.icus.com (Lenny Tropiano) writes: > In July 1990 issue of INBOUND/OUTBOUND magazine, devoted to ANI > ("Improving the way America does business"), there was a column called > "Yellow Pages ANI Directory". This was a special supplemental issue put together by Harry Newton and MCI Corp., the latter of whom is pushing their real-time ANI service. I happen to like Harry Newton a great deal, and the issue at hand was really excellent -- very enlightening -- but when one reads advertising concealed as editorial, one must be aware that one might not be getting The Whole Truth. Stephen J. Friedl, KA8CMY / Software Consultant / Tustin, CA / 3B2-kind-of-guy +1 714 544 6561 / friedl@mtndew.Tustin.CA.US / {uunet,attmail}!mtndew!friedl
root@joymrmn.UUCP (Marcel D. Mongeon) (07/26/90)
In the Bell Canada tariff which has Caller ID (actually they call it
Call Management Services - CMS) the tariff indicates that the service
is *NOT* available on "Trunk" lines although it is available on
individual business service. Given that CLID or ANI has more uses for
business than otherwise, is anyone aware of the reason for this
restriction?
Marcel D. Mongeon
e-mail: ... (uunet, maccs)!joymrmn!root or
joymrmn!marcelm