msm@silvlis.com (Michael S. Maiten) (05/11/89)
Recently, I was asked to participate in a marketing focus group
regarding business traveler's telephone usage. It turned out that
the company sponsoring the research was AT&T. The nine people in our
group (who were each paid $50) came from various backgrounds; the
moderator was an employee of an independent market research firm.
Most of the two hour session was spent identifying the telephoning
patterns of the various participants. A special focus was made on
alternative operator services and the problems experienced.
One thing that AT&T is investigating is a special recording to be
played just before entering your calling card number; the recording
would identify the service as AT&T. It was implied that there would
be some sort of an advertising campaign that if you didn't get the
recording, you could then dial 10-ATT for an AT&T line.
[Surprisingly, most of the participants did not know of 10-ATT].
The main complaint that most people had with the recording was not the
idea, but the execution. The recording was about twice as loud as the
touch tone sounds and had some (in the opinion of 100% of our group)
terrible electronic music with a loud voice saying something like
"Thank you for using AT&T".
The current scheme is that you get a recording stating simply "thank
you for using AT&T" after you enter the calling card number. AT&T
wanted to know our reactions to having it before entering the number.
About 75% of the group said that they would hang up and redial using
10-ATT if they got the message before entering their calling card
number. No one said that they would redial after entering the entire
long string of digits (as in the present type of recording).
At one point in the discussion, they wanted to know our reactions to a
sign, which all telephone companies would be forced to post on pay
phones, that would specify that you could reach AT&T using 10-ATT! No
one thought that was a good idea as it seemed that AT&T had gone a bit
too far.
They even had some proposed signs which businesses would post to
indicate that all telephones inside were official AT&T telephones.
(Like we accept Visa, Master Charge, and AT&T!).
All in all, an interesting session. It will be interesting to see if
any of the things presented for our opinions will ever see the light
of day.
--
Michael S. Maiten Internet: msm%silvlis.com@sun.com
Silvar-Lisco, Inc. Nameservers: msm@silvlis.com
Telephone: +1 415 853-6477 Usenet: {pyramid,sun}!silvlis!msm