Block That Call
CHICAGO-BASED AMERITECH unveiled a service in Chicago and Detroit last month specifically designed to block telemarketers’ calls. The company is the first Baby Bell to develop such a service; it has two patents pending on the technology.
When an unidentified call comes into a subscriber, “Privacy Manager” asks the caller to record his or her name. If the caller refuses, the call is disconnected. Otherwise the service tells the name to the subscriber, who, using the phone’s keypad, can take the call, ignore it or play a recorded message asking to be put on the marketer’s “do not call” list.
“What we want to do is give our customers solutions to the problems at the top of their minds,” says spokesman Bill Pendergast. “And unwanted calls at dinner time is at the top of their minds.”
Ameritech is charging $3.95 for Privacy Manager, plus the cost of caller ID with name, with which it operates.
In testing the service, Ameritech found that about seven in 10 unidentified callers hung up when their calls were intercepted.
John Calk, vice president of marketing and business development at APAC Teleservices Inc., the Deerfield, IL-based service bureau, says: “In our opinion this technology is not a lot different from any of the other technology that’s been available to block unwanted calls. It’s an expensive service for glorified call blocking.”
Calk says APAC wouldn’t be in business if telemarketing didn’t work and 6% to 12% of consumers APAC contacts for its clients buy something. One of those clients is Ameritech-APAC does the regional Bell holding company’s inbound and outbound telesales and some of its customer service.
But Ameritech’s Pendergast says “the vast majority of our telemarketing is inbound, off direct mail.”
Eric Rabe, spokesman for Bell Atlantic, says his company offers various products to stop unwanted calls, such as caller ID and “anonymous call rejection.” Bell Atlantic will probably come out with a service similar to Privacy Manager, he said. “It’s clear to us that customers are concerned about this issue.”
Rabe says Bell Atlantic is not worried about upsetting its telemarketing customers because revenue from them is “nothing compared to what we make from the residential customers.”
Michael Llach, a spokesman for the American Telemarketing Association in Washington, DC, said the group had no opposition to the technology. “We’ve always supported people having choice in the calls coming into their homes,” he said. “And this increases efficiency so telemarketers don’t waste their time calling consumers who aren’t interested in their products.”
Pendergast said Ameritech hopes to make Privacy Manager available across its five-state region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin) by the end of 1999.
