Hello and thank you for joining us for our next installment of our blog, as we start to dive into our product offerings. Today we’re going to discuss our Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, Talk and Lookup, SeeBotRun’s legislative database.
But why call when we can use social media?
We believe that every form of activism has a time and place. Everyone should choose a way to communicate that is comfortable for them. But we collectively know that some events will push us out of our comfort zones and into more direct action because they are just too important to ignore.
Two great times to take advantage of directly contacting Legislators:
- When time is of the essence! If your calling action can pull every office staffer off of their duties and put them on the phones, people will take notice.
- To give a collective voice to the marginalized. Lifting those voices and giving them a direct line to their government is POWERFUL.
Features
Attributes, Segments, and Webforms
Talk has a listing of predefined values or create custom data points (we call them Attributes) to fit your organization’s needs. These data points can be attached to actions (e.g., entering a zip code) and then sent to Segments, grouping users together automatically as responses are collected. For future targeting actions (and more), use those segments to have your lists already built.
Combined with our webform creator, the Attributes created in Talk will provide validation out of the box, and sequence builder components will only accept valid data based on the criteria you set.
Sequence Builder
With a wide array of components, branching logic options, and the ability to connect to third party services, Talk is the flexible calling tool you’ve been looking for.
Basic Components
- Speak: A great way to provide audio when no pre-recorded audio is available, AND we offer English, Spanish, and French language.
- Play: Single click to add your audio files.
- Pause: Create a more natural cadence to the call by adding in slight pauses to the process.
- Hangup: A best practice at the end of each call to ensure your callers aren’t lost or add additional minutes to a call.
Outbound Dialing
- Lookup: Available at both the State and Federal levels for representatives, this is a robust component that allows you to construct the targeting. Filter based on district, state, or ZIP code, or filter based on an attribute entered by a caller.
- Dial: Allows you to determine the targets — legislative or otherwise. If you have multiple targets, you can upload a dial list of contacts or manually enter and save for future use. And if that list changes, easily edit those numbers even on active campaigns.
Branching Logic
- Conditional: A control that will look at a set of logic based around a user’s attributes, and allow the sequence to branch in different paths. This can be combined with attributes previously set on a user, collected earlier in the sequence, or recently collected from a webform.
- Forward to Sequence: A control that will forward users to another sequence. This allows for sequences to be built around smaller functional sets, and helps with reusability.
Data Collection
- Collect Attribute: This control prompts the user (either with an audio file or text to talk) and asks for either dual tone or audio input. If the latter is used, the system will attempt to convert the data to text. Once collected, the data will be stored in the selected attribute for the user if valid, or prompt the user if the data is invalid.
- Tag Attribute: This control silently tags the user with a set value for an attribute. This also supports dynamic values, such as an increment/decrement function or the current date/time.
- Add to Segment: Adds the user to the specified static segment.
- Menu: A listing of menu items allows for attribute tagging based on the selection provided. Provides a request message and invalid response (audio or text to talk), with branching logic for each of the menu items provided.
- Record: Prompts the user to record audio that can be saved and accessed within the system.
- Notification: Allows clients to setup GET/POST requests to external APIs with custom XML or JSON formats.
Reports
Reporting is absolutely crucial. We built Talk to store data in a simple format to allow flexibility in creating reporting details. Our reporting system allows you to dive deep into callers interactions. You can track where callers are connected and how long at every level. Each caller will have their own profile and data attached for each calling action.
We also support auto generated reports that can be exported from the system. This currently includes a call summary report and rep summary report. The call summary report allows filtering by numbers, a date range, and grouping by day, month, or year. The rep summary allows for the same options, but provides details on the representative connected to, if a call contained a rep lookup component. This information will be archived with the call as well, so that it remains accurate even as representatives change.
Future Plans
And we’re not done yet! In addition to general improvements with scalability, we’re looking to expand features to help our clients in many different ways.
New Components
We love having feature rich components ready in our sequence builder. In addition to our current offering, we’re working to add the following components:
- A/B split: Test your calling efficacy before launch!
- Random component: Allows branching logic based on either predefined split that tracks interactions, or a random selection specific to each user interaction.
- Date based components: Want a different message depending on the day of the week/time of the day? Need a custom message once a campaign ends, without having to delete components first? These components can easily handle these cases.
- In platform voice recording: Record audio on your computer and right into our system. No more having to create and upload audio files, just record them directly into Talk!
SHAKEN/STIR
We’re pleased to announce that we’re working on providing SHAKEN/STIR call authentication compliance for our customers as an advanced feature. We strive to deliver the best security practices and believe that this, combined with URL restrictions on webforms delivers that!
Developer Tools
While we’re busy working on many new features within our application, we also have a couple items planned for developers as well!
- First party SDKs in a variety of popular languages.
- Fully documented API (the same one that powers our application right now).
We’ve covered a lot of ground here, and are really excited to be able to share with you all of what we’ve been working on with SeeBotTalk. If you would like to talk to us about any specific needs or features, or would like to see a demo, please contact us.
