In April, Virgin Mobile adopted a $50
unlimited calling plan that Boost Mobile pioneered in January as an
approach to attracting budget-conscious but talkative customers. The economic
crisis has also boosted the number of consumers making mobile phones their only
phone. For consumers with unlimited plans, the cost of one more phone call is
perceptually zero, and the length of calls doesn’t matter. That is a paradigm
shift from historical perspectives on phone calls as a costly means of
communication.
Email and web access are perceived as free,
although customers do pay a monthly fee for unlimited Internet access, analogous
to unlimited calling plans and in some cases even delivered over the same phone
lines. Isn’t it likely that eventually telephone calls will be accorded the
similar perception that calls are free?
Ironically, the perception of web surfing as
free may change, at least on mobile phones. A recent report from
Alcatel-Lucent indicated that web browsing is using 69% of the available
bandwidth on mobile data channels, while email uses only 4%, and the situation
may get worse as mobile phone users begin to watch streaming video or download
entire books. The Wall Street Journal speculated in its May 11 issue that
wireless service providers might have to abandon unlimited data plans and charge
for usage. Subscribers may then prefer their unlimited voice calling plans to
tolls on their data channel usage whenever possible.
VoIP calls from PCs, using services such as
Skype (an eBay company), have had their strongest adoption for
international calling, but their use is growing slowly for domestic calls, and
VoIP calls are largely perceived as free. Google Voice offers a similar
low-cost option for consumers who want a single permanent telephone number that
can transfer calls to any phone (SSN, April 2009, p. 1). VoIP telephony for
consumers contributes toward lowering the cost of a phone call.
Costs for companies receiving incoming calls on
local or toll-free lines have also been dropping. The trend toward unlimited
calling for consumers makes it more tenable for companies to use lower-cost
local numbers instead of toll-free numbers for access to services. Microsoft is
offering low-cost VoIP services as an option with automated voice services
through Tellme (SSN, May 2009, p. 1).
As the paradigm shift toward free or low-cost
telephony develops, it could have implications for automated phone services,
including those using speech technology:
§ Stay on the line,
please: Customer service lines could increasingly adopt a philosophy that,
once a customer’s initial reason for calling is resolved, the service should
encourage continued interaction to inform the customer about other options or
the company’s offerings in general (“upselling” or “cross-selling” being
examples). Customers could be offered outbound alerts on the availability of
some upcoming product or reminders relevant to the company’s offerings. Part of
this “conversational marketing” (Editor’s Notes, SSN, August 2008, p. 5) could
be funded from the company’s advertising/marketing budget, and conventional
creative talent, could become involved in designing the interaction, supporting
technical experts.
§ Call me for fun:
Some telephone “services” could be ones that customers call for
entertainment, a practice certainly common in web surfing. Some calls of this
genre will be motivated by conventional advertising. These services could be
made unique by making them interactive, as opposed to passive listening, so that
callers can call the same number often, yet have a different experience each
time.
§ Call me for
information: One aspect of a web search, both on PCs and mobile phones, is
that it returns a list of items. These lists are getting longer and less precise
as the Web grows, and even Google has recognized the need to make the results
more specific to the inquiry. In a Founders' Letter, posted on the Web by Sergey
Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology, Google, said, “While I am proud of
what has been accomplished in search over the past decade, there are important
areas in which I wish we had made more progress. Perfect search requires
human-level artificial intelligence, which many of us believe is still quite
distant. However, I think it will soon be possible to have a search engine that
‘understands’ more of the queries and documents than we do today.” Understanding
can be improved by dialog, asking questions when there is an ambiguous search
request or one that will return too many options. Speech has some advantages
over text entry or text dialog: (1) one is more likely to provide more
information in an initial query when speech is used, since it is easier than
typing; and (2) back-and-forth dialog is quick and natural with speech. Speaking
at a conference in May, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said
he expects Apple to offer a lower-cost iPhone that doesn’t require a data
plan, a remarkable option for the phone that is often considered the model for a
data phone. The lower-price iPhone would be a combination music player and
phone, among other features, and could still surf the Web when a WiFi connection
was available. Without a data plan, voice calls that provide services such as
directory assistance or information services will become more popular.
It is easy to become enamored with clever
GUI-based designs such as the iPhone. If the voice channel is perceived as free,
it opens opportunities to exploit the trends cited.
