Frequently Asked Questions (Part
5: BroadcastByPhone)
1. What's the difference between
the Standard Edition and the Professional Edition?
2. Why is there a long silence before BroadcastByPhone starts to talk?
3. Why do I get a message saying it failed
to connect to Voicent gateway?
4. I have a large call list that
cannot be finished in a day. I set up the broadcast as recurring calls
every morning. But the calls always start from the beginning
5. What is a "Call Till Confirm"
broadcast?
6. How
can I add a column to the call list?
7. How
many phone calls can the system make in an hour?
8. Can I do broadcasting from a remote
location?
9. Where can I buy desktop computers with
3 or 4 PCI slots?
10. Do you offer a turnkey solution?
1. What's the difference
between the Standard Edition and the Professional Edition?
The major differences are: 1). Professional edition supports interactive
touch tone response and voice message; and 2). Professional edition
is capable of playing different messages for human pick up vs.
answering machine; and 3). Professional edition can customize and
personalize your telephone message using a built-in Message
Designer; and 4). Professional edition supports call transfer to any
phone like your cell phone.
The standard edition of Voicent BroadcastByPhone is
only capable of broadcasting one pre-recorded voice message to the
entire call list. You can not play different voice messages during
broadcast. No response can be recorded from the recipients. The
Professional version of BroadcastByPhone has a “call till confirm”
feature that can be used in a call escalation process. It also has
the ability to “automatically schedule call for next day” if the
current call list is too long and cannot be finished before the
cutoff time.
With Professional Edition, the system can:
1. Your customer can press a key, such as 0, to have the call
transfer to a live agent or your cell phone. For example, you can have the call transfer to your
cell phone, so you don't have to wait by the phone for your customer
to call in.
2.
Collect confirmation or response from recipient. The person
who receives the call can, for example, press 1 to confirm, press 2 to
cancel, and press 3 to leave a voice message. You can design the
confirmation prompt anyway you like.
3.
Play different message for answering machine and for human
pickup. This feature can be used for callers who wish to play
different messages to human and answering machine. Sometimes, you only
want to leave messages on the answering machine. So you can specify no
audio file for human pick up, and have a real message played when it
is answered by an answering machine or voice mail system.
4. Use multiple phone lines simultaneously. This can dramatically
increase your outbound call volumn.
5.
Use text-to-speech and speech command. You can include any text
information in the spreadsheet for your message. The audio for the
text will be automatically generated by a text-to-speech engine. For
example, your message can start with "Hi John...", where John is the
name column of your call list. You can also include speech
command/response in your message. For example, to replay the message, the
person who receives the call can replay the phone messages by saying a
voice command like Play It Again. If you have important
information like your name or phone numbers that need the person to
write it down, the replay feature will allow them to repeat the info
and have enough time to do so.
6.
Broadcast personalized messages include each person’s name,
a specific message just for that person, either using text-to-speech
or pre-recorded audio file. It can play different messages to
different people. Examples: "Hi, [Mr. Gate], [happy birthday],
this is John Green. Please vote for me for my next election. If you
want to hear this message again, please say Play It Again. The
words in italic with a bracket […] can be replaced with any words you
choose
Voicent BroadcastByPhone also has an
Enterprise Edition.
It contains all features provided by the Professional Edition, and it
supports remote access and multiple gateway machines.
2. Why there is a long
silence before BroadcastByPhone starts to talk?
Make sure your recording does not have silence at
the beginning. If so, you can use the Microsoft Sound Recorder or
other tools to cut off the beginning silence.
Please also check Voice
Modem FAQ if you are not using a supported voice modem. You can
also take a look at the Troubleshooting Guide by selecting Help >
Troubleshooting from the program main menu.
3. Why do I get a
message saying it cannot connect to Voicent Gateway?
Please take a look at the troubleshooting guide from
Help > Troubleshooting... from BroadcastByPhone program main menu.
4.
I have a large call list that cannot be finished in a day. I set
up the broadcast as recurring calls every morning. But the calls
always start from the beginning.
You
should select the checkbox “automatically schedule calls for next day
if not finished” in the Start/Schedule broadcast dialog. This feature
is only available in the professional version.
Recurring calls are used for events like monthly meetings. It always
starts from the beginning of the call list.
5. What is a "Call Till Confirm"
broadcast?
This is a broadcast mode that is usually used in the
call escalation process. For example, support engineers John, Joe,
and Jason are the people to notify when the alarm goes off. If John
is available, there is no need to notify Joe and Jason. To set up
the “Call Till Confirm” broadcast, select the checkbox “Stop
broadcast after getting confirmation code” and set the confirmation
code in the next edit box. If John is not available when called, the
program will call Joe; and if Joe enters the confirmation code, the
program will not call Jason and broadcast will stop automatically.
It is
possible to use this mode from the command line interface. If you have
an alert system and a call escalation process, you can easily
integrate it with Voicent BroadcastByPhone. Please refer to the
program help file for details.
6. How can I add a column to the call list?
Select a cell or column where you want a column to
be inserted. Select Edit > Insert Column... from the program main
menu.
You can also use the Message Designer to create a
message that requires additional columns. The column will be added
automatically after you select the message for for call list.
The section titled "Use call specific audio file or
text-to-speech item" describes the steps to create a new message
template that needs additional columns.
Once you have designed a new message template,
select Broadcast -> Select Message from the main menu, choose the
desired message template and the new columns will be added
automatically.
7. How many phone calls can the
system make in an hour?
This depends on how many phone lines you have and
how long your message is. For a typical 30 second message, on
average, you are looking at making 1 call per minute, and 60 calls
per hour on a single line.
The processes of making calls are similar to a human making phone
calls. It first dials the number and waits for the other end to pick
up the phone. If it is answered by an answering machine, the system
listens for the whole message and waits for the beep. It then plays
your message.
The only way to speed up the dialing is to add more
phone lines. This is not a limitation of a dialing system, but the
nature of the telephone system.
8. Can I do broadcasting from a
remote location?
Yes, you need
Enterprise Edition
to do so. With Enterprise Edition, you can also broadcast from
multiple computers from different locations simultaneously.
See
Enterprise Edition
for more information on how to make large call volume using many
computers that are located at different locations.
9. Where can I buy desktop
computers with 3 or 4 PCI slots?
Voicent offers desktop computers that can have up to
4 PCI slots to support a 4-line simultaneous dialing system.
10. Do you offer a turnkey
solution?
We offer software solutions and voice modems. We do
not sell computers.
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