March 22, 1998

Prank Phone Calls from MCI

I don't get many calls on the line I use for my computer to call out on. So when it starts ringing it gets my attention. A couple weeks ago it started ringing several times during the day -- every day. My wife doesn't answer that line because she knows it can't be anything important. But one night I got tired of wondering what was going on so I answered.

"Hello?" I said. Nothing. "Hello?" I repeated. Still nothing. So I waited. About fifteen seconds later the phone disconnected.

An hour later, the same thing happens. I answered with the same results. The next night this process repeats itself. Then we don't hear anything for a couple days, then it happens again.

Now most people would think some sicko was playing games. But working for a company that depends on outbound telemarketing for income, I'm in on some of the secrets of the telemarketing game. One of its darkest secrets is the "predictive dialer."

If you've ever done any political campaign work, or made phone calls for your church, you know you only find about half of the people you call are at home at any given time. For a company doing a lot of phone calling, those wasted calls cost lots of money -- not in long distance fees (they pay lots less than the ten cents per minute you pay at home) but in wasted salaries for the the sales people who have to make the calls. So several years ago someone came up with the bright idea of having a computer make the call. The computer can detect busy signals and no-answers. It's a little tougher to tell the difference between an answering machine and a real person, but it can be done. (It's harder if you have a cordless phone.)

So here's how it works. In order to keep agents busy as much as possible, the computer monitors all the available agents and predicts when there's going to be someone available to make a call based on average call lengths. It also knows how it's doing that night finding people home. Based on all this input, the computer will start making phone calls -- perhaps even while all agents are busy -- knowing that before it actually finds someone home an agent will free up.

When you answer, you're saying "Hello" to the computer. The computer realizes you're not an answering machine based on the dynamics of the signal it receives from you. It instantly transfers you to an available agent while simultaneously displaying your customer information on the agent's screen. The agent hasn't heard you say "Hello" so they don't know if you're a man or woman or what. They just ask for the person whose name is now displayed on their monitor.

Sometimes the agent isn't immediately there, so there will be a slight delay between when you say "Hello" and when someone comes on. But in the worst case, the computer gets an answer at your house long before it expected to find someone home and long before an agent is available. Now you're talking to the computer, but it doesn't have anything to say.

The best of these systems (and I've only been called by one of these) will announce that you're being called by an automated system and to stay on the line until someone answers. But most of them wait about ten or fifteen seconds then hang up on you. Since these companies also operate on big internal PBX's there's often no caller ID signal, so you don't know who called. With their reputation safe they can hang up on you and know it won't matter.

At Parsons, we have our system set up not to make any calls unless there's at least one agent free. That way we never run into this situation. But apparently MCI doesn't care about its potential customers, so it makes as many calls as it can and if it has to abandon you, who cares? Certainly not MCI.

How do I know it was MCI? Because they eventually got through. And that, my friends, is the subject of another soapbox article.