War of the Robots: Numerunique’s Victory
12/09/2019
After solving the issue of phone harassment in a personal context, unwanted professional calls were becoming increasingly unbearable. Especially calls that go nowhere; no one on the line, and then they hang up.
The context of a professional position is trickier. You still need to welcome clients and prospects and not reject administrative calls. Ultimately, the solution is even simpler:
- Welcome message: “Hello, if you’re not a robot, press 6, thank you!”
- 6: it rings.
And it works. So well that you can finally answer even genuine (i.e., non-robotic) solicitations politely.
Apparently, this doesn’t surprise any legitimate callers to numerunique: there hasn’t been a single comment about the welcome message.
So, it’s a robotic system (the Interactive Voice Server) that neutralizes another robotic system (telemarketing call centers).
This is a victory for numerunique, but a bittersweet one; somehow, it’s sad to have to resort to this...