New User: Message Length on Comments Type

[Jon Starkenburg]

When using comments type, the system appears to only accept a message of about 10 seconds in length. Is there a way to have the system accept longer messages.

Secondly, (and less importantly) is there a way to disable the comments read back function. In other words after the user leaves the comment, can it just move on to the next step instead of reading back what they just left.

Thanks,

[support]

Hi Jon,

We have turned up the sensitivity on the comments questions for IVR so that they don't time out as easily as before. We suspect that the IVR question was cutting off because it thought that you were finished speaking. It should now be more tolerant of quieter phone connections.

As for reading the IVR comments back, we will take into consideration an option to turn it off, although we have generally found it important to let the user of a phone IVR survey know that they have been recorded and that they can edit and delete their recording before it is submitted. Could you supply us with a particular use case where you would not want the user to confirm what they have recorded?

[Jon Starkenburg]

Customer would just be leaving a message (like a voicemail) so they may not want to bothered with having to listen to the message they just left.

I also would want to limit lost reponses that would be caused by customers that don't wait to hear the read back so they hang up before the response is "completed" (I seem to recall that unless the customer completes the response all the way through, call responses are not kept). If that is correct, do you lose all the responses, or just the current response the customer does not complete?

Thanks,
Chip

[support]

Hi Chip,

From the IVR scenario that you described, all responses would be lost since the IVR survey would fail to be completed.

To avoid this scenario, you could use our "transfer (phone only)" question type for IVR to transfer the respondent to a phone number that goes straight to voicemail.

We will consider implementing a voicemail feature for a future release of our IVR survey application.

Regards,
Plum Support

[Jon Starkenburg]

Did a little testing and answered my own question. I see that the responses are not retained unless the customer stays on the line until the end of the call. Any way to have the system collect responses (at least those that have already been entered) even if the customer does not stay to the end?

Unfortunately, if this is not correctable, I don't think we can use your service, as I think we will have many customers who will either not leave a message or will not wait for the play back (and they will assume the message has been recorded anyways). In those cases we lose all the information from the call (Caller ID and language chosen are still valuable even if no message is left).

Any solution?

[Jon Starkenburg]

Our posts passed each other. This is a bummer. You're idea to transfer out to an external voicemail is interesting, but we lose the connection between the caller ID , four digit customer identifier, and the voice message. Having to go through the report generated by your system and match up voicemails on our system defeats the purpose.

Just to be clear, I don't really need a separate voicemail option, what I really want is for your system to capture data as it goes, and not require that the call be completed to record that data. This is just one simple application, but I think most applications I would consider creating would be severely hindered if data is only retained for those customers that complete the entire survey.

Let me know if you come up with any bright ideas.

[support]

Hi,

We are planning on implementing an IVR feature in our next release of our IVR survey application that will allow you to save completed IVR question responses even though the respondent hung up before completing the IVR survey. We will give you an update once this IVR feature has been implemented.

Regards,
Plum Support

[support]

Hi Jon,

This IVR feature has now been implemented and is available for you to use.

For more information on this refer to the Plum IVR survey documentation found here:

http://surveys.plumvoice.com/admin/docs ... ne_Options

Regards,
Plum Support