How much is your privacy worth?
Posted by: eolvera, in Speech Industry, Customer Experience
Monthly phone service: $49.99. New phone: $19.99. Privacy: Priceless.
Is it really priceless? If you had to put a price to it, what would it be?
A new start-up called Pudding Media thinks it has an answer for that, and it is a lot lower than you would think: free calls.
In a very similar way to how Google found a way to monetize search via intelligent and targeted ads based on either regular web searches or by the content’s of their GMail email inboxes, Pudding Media is attempting to do something similar by using the telephone.
Nowadays, we’re all used to those messages about how “your call may be recorded for quality purposes”, which we now at the end of the day doesn’t provide any real benefit to the actual caller. But in this case, it is not only about quality anymore but about finding new ways to reach consumers while we have their attention.
Flagged as “enriched phone conversations with relevant and interesting content”, the way their offering works is that you’re offered a web-based phone service where you can dial a number and engage in a conversation for free. The trade-off of course is that by doing that, you agreed to allow Pudding Media to eavesdrop on your conversation so that relevant ads can be displayed on your screen during your conversation. Speech recognition software monitors the calls, and then their system decides which ads to present based on the content of that call.
Since the whole system is automated via the use of speech recognition, their response to the question about privacy is that no calls are recorded and no humans are involved in any part of the process, so your calls are safe. Nevertheless, to me it is a step closer to my original question of how much is your privacy worth, specially because from an advertiser’s perspective, they are offered flexibility in targeting, placement and format of advertising based on demographic information, location and even context of the conversation. Furthermore, ads can be placed before, during or after a call or a message is retrieved, and can be displayed on your computer screen, delivered as a message or as actual audio prompts that are streamed before the call connects.
Considering some of the bad press self-service automation has received, I would love to see this concept applied in more proactive, less advertising-driven ways. For example, imagine a multi-modal experience obtained by expanding the live chat capabilities most service websites offer now to allow for someone to pick up the phone and talk to someone on the other end. Then, while the conversation takes place, the website could be updated with relevant information about a particular issue, a list of FAQs while the calls is on hold, and why not even offer discount coupons based on how long callers have to wait in line, or even gift certificates if the system identifies the caller has been calling multiple times regarding the same issue.
Now, that to me would be priceless.
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