Wow, it seems politic uses for the phone aren’t just limited to campaign messages and voting reminders.
(DISCLAIMER: This note is not intended to promote a particular party or candidate, I’m simply using it as a case-study for interesting uses of the phone for UI purposes)
Just today I received an email from Sarah@PalinTalk.net with the following text:
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks, what with TrooperGate and Neiman-MarcusGate and Obama-Is-Maybe-A-TerroristGate and, darn it, I just really need to talk.
Give me a call at 888-372-7908 or go to www.palintalk.net and I’ll call you (or anybody else you think I oughtta talk to).
Now, don’t worry – I won’t share your phone number with anybody else (like that Dick Cheney),,, it’ll just be between you and me.
Sarah”
So just for kicks I decided to go to the website where it once again offers the same telephone number or allows you to enter your own so “she can call you”.
I decided not to provide my own number (for obvious reasons) and decided to call instead (afterwards I obviously realized my attempt to protect my privacy went out the window since they could just as easily collect my ANI).
At any rate, I have to say the experience was definitively interesting. They attempt to engage callers in a very natural conversation – the first thing you hear is “Hello? This is Sarah?” and then the system waits for you to say something. Afterwards, “Sarah” asks you what you consider to be the most important issue in this election. To make the interaction more relevant, it seems they prepared some generic topics and phrases so they can respond in a more intelligent way (which didn’t work too well for me since I said “I don’t know” and it got misrecognized as something having to do with “terrorism”, go figure).
The error handling is very interesting as well. Some times it simply ignores the error and moves the caller along under the assumption that you said something relevant that can be followed up with a generic comment such as “That’s what I was hoping you’d say” or with a question such as “Alright, and do you think we should…?”
When the caller doesn’t say anything, it’s hilarious. Sometimes, the system will respond with “Helloooo?” or “I know it’s hard to talk to someone important…”, in some cases they even simulate side-speech as if talking to someone else on the side saying “They’re not saying anything. I think it may be Rummy again…”
Mmm, I wonder… what would happen if I press 0 or demand to talk to an operator?
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