Phone Broadcasting, Telephone Town Hall, Robo Calls, Computer Fax Blog

International Robo Calls to African Countries, Such as Nigeria

2010-06-16T20:53:39Z

Yes, we provide international robo call service (otherwise known as voice or phone broadcasting or phone blasting) to countries such as Nigeria, South Africa and other locations. There are many applications, including political robo calls and with elections coming up, many campaign organizations plan to incorporate this technology within their tactical blueprint.

We have the capacity to deliver hundreds of thousands of automated calls quickly and efficiently. For these types of calls we call per dial, so we remind our customers to make sure they have a clean and properly formatted list of phone numbers. Many times, because of internal costs within the destination country, mobile calls will have a higher rate than calls to landline phones. Robo call jobs are paid in advance with money wired into our accounts, and lists and recorded messages are email or FTP'ed to us. Jobs start at any specified time you want.

So if you are looking for a robo call provider who can deliver a high quantity of automated calls to a specific country around the world, give us a call and we can get back to you with a quote. Let us know how many landline and mobile numbers you have on your list, and what your time frame is. We'll do our best to help you with your project. Just click on the Contact Us button on the upper right of this page and leave us your contact information. We'll get right back to you.

Tele-Town Hall - Town Hall Meetings Over Phone - Becoming Increasingly Popular for Voters to Stay Connected with their Representatives. In New Jersey, Participation More than Doubled

2010-06-07T14:44:52Z

Tele Town Hall meetings over the phone are becoming increasingly popular and are being embraced by voters who are taking a more active interest to interact with their elected officials. Case in point: Recently it was reported that the teleconference held in the 12th District in New Jersey, hosted by Senator Jennifer Beck, Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon, and Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande, to discuss aspects of New Jersey's FY 2011 State Budget was attended by nearly 4000 citizens -- more than double the participation that had occurred a year earlier. Residents are finding that the meetings over the phone are much more convenient and a big time savings over attending live meetings at local venues. Elected officials are finding it more useful, and helpful, to engage thousands of citizens, rather than just a few who show up to the physical meetings.

"By doing a tele-town hall," said Beck, "we can reach out to thousands of our constituents, whereas at most a few hundred might be able to attend a meeting during the week. This year, more people are feeling the pressure of difficult, but necessary, budget cuts, and it is vital that we remain as receptive as possible to their concerns. Bringing the town hall to the people makes it possible to get the kind of feedback we got tonight, while keeping ourselves informed about the specific concerns our constituents have."

"Last year," said Casagrande, "we had 1,700 people stay on the line for the entire call. This year participation more than doubled, which is exactly what we were hoping for. Those who weren't able to ask questions because of time constraints were able to leave a message so we could get them the answers they needed. We'll be doing the same kind of follow up we did last year with each and every message that was left. We have always encouraged people to come to us, but sometimes we have to go to them to really get a sense of the most pressing concerns."

"The three of us would all like to make it to every meeting of our local governing bodies and school boards," said O'Scanlon, "because the more we know about local concerns, the better we are at our jobs. However, attending every meeting is not very feasible in our large district. Last night, we were able to hold a district-wide community forum without anyone having to drive 40 minutes or more out of their way. The concerns we heard last night may never have made it to our ears without a meeting like this one."

One of the benefits of Tele Town Hall services and conducting a town hall teleconference is that voters can be invited to call in themselves at the designated time. Anyone can join in just by picking up the phone. Moreover, the service can dial tens of thousands of voters, inviting each one to participate just by touching a number on their keypads.

You can learn more about town hall teleconferencing and how it works here:

http://www.orangepoint.net/town_hall_teleconference.html

Call Center Directory

2010-05-16T23:04:58Z

In addition to our online dialing service, here is a link to a directory of call center companies:

Call Center Directory: Call Center Directory is the No. 1 online resource for information regarding call center industry.

Telephone Town Hall: Best Practices for Teleconferences

2010-05-07T13:15:17Z

The Congressional Institute, which is dedicated to helping Members of Congress better serve the nation and to helping the public better understand public policy debates and the operations of the national legislature, has conducted an extensive survey and has compiled a number of "best practices" for those who use Town Hall Teleconference services. Here is the list of their findings and suggestions to maximize the effectiveness of the call.

For more information on our Town Hall Phone Conferences click this link: http://www.orangepoint.net/town_hall_teleconference.html

NOTE: TTH stands for Tele-Town Hall

1) Limit the geography of outbound calls to particular cities or towns near one another, as opposed to taking a smattering from all over the district. When you spread the outbound calls far and wide, and then on the TTH announce where each caller is from, you undermine the intimacy that a TTH call offers. Geographic diversity within the district leads listeners to think there's a huge number of people on the call--an impression you don't want to leave if you don't have to. You want people to think you are calling only people who live near them, and that you're focused on that localized community's concerns.

2) Expand your selection criteria for phone numbers to call. Most of the people in our focus groups who had not participated in a tele-town hall would very much like to attend one.

3) Give constituents advance notice that the calls are taking place. The ideal amount of lead time is one week. You can leave a brief, automated voice message with the approximate time they can expect to receive a call on a given evening.

4) Limit calls to weekday evenings. Sixty-four percent of respondents in our survey who had participated in TTHs said that weekday evenings were preferable either to weekends or daytime during the week. The best time on a weekday night varies from person to person, but with older people you generally want to start a bit earlier (7:00 p.m. or so), and for parents with children you want to start later (8:30 or so, after young kids go to bed). Do not start a call any later than 8:30 p.m.

5) For those districts with pockets of "challenging constituents," be sure to conduct TTHs with those constituents, too. There is considerable goodwill built up by merely doing TTHs and showing that you're listening, even among those who oppose your point of view.

At the beginning of the call

6) During the automated message inviting people onto the call, indicate at what time the call will end. This will give people a sense of whether they want to make the time commitment, and know they're not signing on for hours of conversation.

7) Announce you plan to limit the scope of issues in the first half hour to three or four hot-button issues that you specify. This gives you more control over the agenda and ensures that issues that are on most constituents' minds are addressed in full. It also signals to listeners that people with narrow agendas won't dominate the call. But also be sure to announce that at an appointed time during the call (at 20 minutes past the hour, for example) you will welcome calls on any subject.

8) Take a few minutes at the beginning of the call, before taking questions, to talk about what you've been doing recently in Washington and what you're going to be working on in the next month.

During the call

9) Get callers with personal concerns off the call immediately by referring them to staff. Show all appropriate sensitivity, but tell the caller that they should call a specific person at the office the next day, and give that staffer's first name and phone number. Listeners get very impatient will calls that have no perceived bearing on their lives, or that go on too long.

10) Remind participants the call is live and not recorded. The easiest way to do this is to periodically say what time it is, or announce how much time is left for people to call in.

11) Conduct an instant survey with call participants (by instructing them to push the keypad on their phones) to get immediate feedback on pending issues before Congress. The more interactive you can make the call, the longer people are willing to listen. Remember: The top reason people say the TTHs enhance their view of their Congressman is that they show that someone in Washington is paying attention to their concerns. Building upon that sentiment is crucial to strengthening your TTH outreach.

12) Indicate that the calls are not screened. About half the people in our focus groups thought that the calls were screened. You build considerable goodwill by signaling that you do not screen your calls and you welcome all comers. Our most skeptical people said that merely saying you don't screen the calls is still not enough. The best way to get this point across: Use a bit of humor. Wait until a hostile caller gets on the phone, and when he or she is done with the question, say something like this: "Well, as you can probably tell, we obviously don't screen our calls..."

13) If you know a caller personally, don't make it sound like you're old buddies when he/she gets on the line. When that happens more than once on a call, it leads some listeners to conclude that the call is staged and not spontaneous. Keep in mind: Most of the folks on the call don't know you personally, and it sounds surprising to them that you might know multiple people who are randomly calling in. You might say something warm but innocuous to a familiar caller, such as: "I'm delighted to have you on the conference call tonight."

14) Use the TTH as an opportunity to drive people to your website. Most have not visited it, but they intuit there's useful information there. Also encourage them to sign up for your e-newsletter while on the home page. What you should absolutely not do is use the website as a crutch during the TTH; in other words, do not tell a caller that the answer to a question can be found on the website. Answer the question in full on the call, and then say that if they want even more detailed information, they can find it at your site. And be sure to give out the URL (website address).

15) Remind participants that they can put you on their speaker phone if they have one. We heard some people say it was annoying to have to hold a phone to their ear for an hour, so you can do them a favor if you gently remind people that they may have that speaker option on their phone. You can also turn it into a family event, where you can encourage parents to bring their kids in to listen in the same room.

16) Mention the fact that you're one of the first people in Congress to use this new technology, and that you've been leading others in Congress to adopt it as well. Constituents like to hear evidence that you're able to persuade other Member of Congress to do something; it shows you have some clout to get things done, even if not issue-specific.

17) Cite how previous TTHs have influenced your thinking on specific issues--even if they didn't necessarily change your overall position. We heard from some TTH participants that being on the call sounded "more like the Congressman was giving out information as opposed to answering questions." You want to convey that you are truly listening, and that you are empowering them merely by asking questions of you on a call.

At the end of the call

18) Remind callers they can push a particular key on their phone and leave a message at the end of the TTH, and a staff member will call back soon with an answer (and actually follow up). When offering this, it would be very useful to have your TTH provider dial an automated, immediate reply call to each person leaving a message, indicating that the constituent's message was indeed received, that you look forward to reviewing it, and that a live person from your office will be calling back within 48 or 72 hours. We heard concerns that people had left messages and were uncertain for days whether they were received. ALSO: In a couple of instances people left messages and never received a follow-up from staff. This left a very bad impression in the minds of constituents.

19) Announce that you will be uploading the audio of the tele-town hall onto your website, so those who missed part of it can download it. (You can easily convert it into a podcast that's downloadable.)

Other recommendations

20) Aim to reach each household once per quarter. More often is too often; less often is not enough. At the end of each call, announce in what month you will be calling them again.

21) Limit each TTH to one hour, maximum.

22) When you dial phone numbers where no one is home, and leave a message indicating you were inviting them to a TTH, give them a way to learn about what you're doing in Congress. The best way is to send them to your website and let them download the audio of the TTH or possibly a transcript. Merely leaving a message saying that the constituent missed the TTH is not viewed as having any intrinsic value.

23) Do not invite guest experts to join you on the call. Constituents want to hear you and you only.

24) Do not indicate how many people are on the call. They assume there are far fewer than there actually, and you don't want to dilute the intensity of "touch" that comes with TTHs.

25) Take these calls seriously, and study how to get them right. At least half the people we spoke with who have participated in TTHs said the main way they determine whether they're satisfied with your job performance is based upon the TTHs.

Latest OrangePoint Press Releases Keep People Informed of Latest Trends and Technology

2010-04-08T21:28:34Z

Here are some of the latest OrangePoint press releases which we send to the world via the PRLog service. The releases help provide information for those looking up specific services and keywords on the Internet.

Tele Town Hall Conference Service Improving Communications

Robo Calls - Political Phone Calling to Voters Best Practices

Broadcasting Messages Over Phone is Fast Solution

Voicemail Blast Makes Phone Broadcasting Notifications Easy

If you are interested in any of these topics, please give us a call at 888-387-8636 and we'll fill you on the details.

More Tele-Town Hall and Town Hall Teleconference Press Releases

2010-03-21T18:23:28Z

Here are the latest Tele-Town Hall (otherwise known Town Hall Teleconferencing) press releases we've issued to keep everyone ahead of the curve:

Tele-Town Hall Conference Empowering Citizens to Participate

Town Hall Phone Conferencing Helping Politicians Reach Out

Tele-Town Hall Meeting Service Gaining in Popularity

Virtual Telephone Town Hall Meetings Get Voter Input

Telephone Town Hall Services Allowing Citizens to Participate

Call Blast Voicemail Gets Notifications Delivered Fast

Outbound Voicemail Blast

2009-11-23T21:33:44Z

Launching an outbound voicemail blast is easy to do. Best of all, you don't need any special hardware or software. Very simply, you take advantage of our online platform (some call it PaaS, or Platform as a Service) and launch your call blast immediately or schedule it for a time in the future. In a nutshell, this is what you do:

1) Give us a call and set up your account in a few minutes.

2) Compile your phone list in a speadsheet (Excel works fine).

3) Upload your list or have us do it for you.

4) Record your message over the phone. We can help with that too.

5) Click send.

That's it. And within minutes you'll have your pre-recorded message sent to thousands of contacts -- either delivered to live answers or by having your message left on their voicemail. Not only will your message be sent immediately, but you will also save a fortune in postage and paper. (If you are sending messages by email, you can save as well, but remember, not everyone has email, checks email or likes email. On the other hand, everyone has a phone.)

So the next time you are interested in sending notifications or alerts by voicemail blast, otherwise known as phone broadcasting or phone blast, give us a call, and we'll do our best to make sure your experience is a positive one. We think you'll be surprised at just how easy it is, whether you decide to handle it yourself or have us do it for you.

For more information you can click here: http://www.orangepoint.net/phone_broadcasting.html

Telephone Town Hall Lets You Speak to Thousands

2009-11-20T21:57:05Z

Telephone town hall has become a remarkable technological advancement that has enabled political and organizational leaders to get more than 20,000 people on a conference call at the same time. Previously, getting several hundred people on a call and maintaining quality was a challenge -- but the new telephone town hall technology has leapfrogged that and can accommodate tens of thousands.

The reason this is a breakthrough is because now political and organizations like non-profits can reach out to more people in less time. Moreover, the system doesn't require any hardware or software and can be activated quickly and easily. Let's say a topic is sweeping your constituency, or if you are business, a product issue as arisen that needs immediate attention. Very simply, you the telephone town hall service enables you to upload your phone lists online and the system calls out to each number. Tens of thousands of invitation calls can be processed within minutes. People who answer the phone and hear your invitation can opt-in and join your teleconference. You can see online the number of people who are logging into your teleconference. You can start talking about the issues of the day and begin inviting your participants to press a number on their keypad to ask a live question. Questions come into an operator who can talk to the questioners and screen calls, making sure you can stay on the topics you want to focus on.

Bottom line: Rather than speak to 50 or 100 or 200 people at a regular town hall meeting, you can now allow people to participate from the comfort of their homes and talk to 10,000, 20,000 or even 30,000 or more people at time. You cover more ground, make it more convenient for folks to join in and with the polling and survey features you get to know what people are thinking instantly. Why pay a pollster thousands of dollars when you can spend the same amount and get the advantage of speaking to thousands at the same while receiving your polling results in a fraction of the time?

Telephone town hall service will become more and more popular as elected officials, non profit organizations and corporate leaders discover the many advantages that the service offers. It will be a godsend to those who are interested in reaching out to those who are important to them.

Click the Town Hall Teleconferencing link at the top of the page to get more useful information about the service.

Telephone Town Hall Service Provides Instant Surveys

2009-11-20T20:57:15Z

The new telephone town hall service provides many options, but one of the most amazing features is the instant survey. It's a lot more than just numbers! Let's say you are speaking to 20,000 members or constituents and you are interested in knowing how they feel about a particular subject. And let's say you ask them to participate by saying, "I want to know how you feel about apple pie. Let's take a live survey now and those of you who like apple pie, press #1 on your phone keypad. If you don't like apple pie, please press #2 on your keypad. Please vote now." All of a sudden thousands of people are voting on the question and you can begin seeing the live results as they are compiled in real time.

But here's the amazing part... After the telephone town hall meeting, you can receive a detailed report. Depending on the completeness of the phone list you used to place the calls, your report could include the names, phone numbers and addresses of those who voted one way or the other. In other words, in this example, you can get a complete list of names and addresses of those who like apple pie. This is an extremely valuable resource for following up and sending information you know these particular people would be interested in receiving. You can send them all apple pie recipes!

You can imagine the value and usefulness of such data. Now you can get both a general survey result on the important topics of the day, but on top of that, you can get data that tells you specifically which people voted and how. This takes polling into "warp drive" by enabling you to target voters with laser precision. Until now, you might have know how sections of a city, or even a neighborhood, felt about a certain topic. But now you can narrow it down to households.

This important and critical advancement in polling technology will pave the way for elected officials and organizational and corporate leaders to keep a more exacting ear to the ground and better understand the attitudes and feelings of those they represent. It's a huge and positive step forward in a representative democracy that prides itself on the knowing the "will of the people."

You can get more information at our website here: http://www.orangepoint.net/town_hall_teleconference.html

Telephone Town Hall Teleconference for State and County Officials

2009-11-20T20:36:30Z

Until now, members of Congress seem to have had a monopoly on using the popular telephone town hall service. But that is all changing now and the technology is finding a home with state and local officials as well, and even non-profit organizations interesting in reaching out to their members. County supervisors, county executives, state legislators, and city mayors and other elected officials such as city county members, are finding that this service is the fastest, easiest and least expensive way to speak directly to their constituencies.

The concept is stunningly simple and brilliant -- a local official can start a town hall meeting from his or her office or home. The system automatically dials tens of thousands of phone numbers, inviting people to opt-into the teleconference. (If they aren't interested in joining, they can just hang up.) Once an invited person opts-in, they are placed into the conference call and can listen to the official or leader from the comfort of their home. No scheduling, no event planning, no trying to get people out of their homes to attend a physical town hall setting. The beauty if that everyone can stay right where they are, and enjoy all the benefits of hearing directly from their elected officials or organizational leaders. No one has to spend time, energy, gas, or even fight the weather to listen in and/or participate in the virtual town hall meeting by asking questions or taking surveys.

State and county officials have large districts and telephone town hall services can have a significant impact on improving name recognition, and more importantly, voter approval ratings. Since the service allows you to conduct Question and Answer sessions (in a controlled environment) and conduct surveys at the same time, elected officials have a new way to conduct outreach and keep closer tabs on what their constituents are thinking.

You can get much more information here for telephone town hall services.

Easy Link to New Post at Ezine Articles

2009-09-17T23:44:59Z

We enjoying writing and submitting articles to EzineArticles.com. Not only does it expand our marketing reach to folks who wouldn't otherwise find us, but it also sharpens our thoughts about what we do and how we do it. It's a good exercise to distill all the technical jargon we surround ourselves with all day, and reformat it in such a way as to make it easy to understand and follow.

In fact, that's a big problem with suppliers and providers of IT services like us. We get so wrapped up in operations that we sometimes can get off track in making sure our services are both efficient and user friendly. If you can't understand what we're talking about, then we aren't doing our job very well.

So, if you have ever wanted to know how to send recorded messages, here's a convenient link to help you. And when you're done reading the article, there is another link that comes right back at us and puts you right on our phone broadcasting page. (Or, better you, you can even skip the article and just click on the phone broadcasting link above and learn all you want to know about how to send recorded message.

How to Send Recorded Phone Messages

Think Fax is Dead? Oh No! It's Just Shifting to a New Medium -- FOIP!

2009-09-13T15:24:19Z

The future is here and it's call FOIP (Fax Over Internet Protocol)! In simple terms, it's call computer faxing. There are some new and fascinating reports out that are projecting the computer based fax market will increase substantially from now until 2013. In fact, 2009 will be a turning point in the fax industry because it will be the first year that digital FOIP (will outsell traditional faxing technology.

The Research and Markets group is not offering a comprehensive analysis that predicts "overall fax server revenues will show an increase of 10.5% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) to $470 million in 2013." Moreover, the growth will not be in traditional fax services, but rather in FOIP technology. The report states, "This growth will be primarily the result of the FOIP market, which will gain primacy in 2009 as the market sells $145 million in FOIP servers and just $130 million in conventional fax servers. The quick rise by FOIP servers will be the result of the economic malaise, which will cause many enterprises and (VOIP) service providers to change to FOIP in order to cut costs."

So there you have it. A trend that will basically render your old fax machine to the junk heap of office technology. Not only can you cut costs with computer faxing, but even better is that your desktop computer can be converted into a mini-FOIP fax server WITHOUT any hardware or software. Amazing! Give us a call today and let us show you how easy it is to jump on this bandwagon that will revolutionize the way you conduct business. You won't know how you got along without it for so long.

Getting Your Old Fax Machine to Function on a New VOIP (Internet) Connection Doesn't Work

2009-09-13T14:34:31Z

Tens of thousands of businesses and offices are switching to an Internet based phone system to save monthly charges. It's called Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and your local cable company is standing on its head to get you to sign up for their phone service. That's fine, but one of the difficulties you might encounter is that your office fax machines won't work on a VOIP telephone network. The fax machines run on an analog technology and VOIP is digital. Two completely different worlds, that by and large, don't co-exist well.

But there is a solution! New fax technology has made it possible for you to enjoy the low costs of VOIP, and enjoy the advantages of computer faxing at the same time. You don't even need your old fax machine or fax lines anymore because you can do all your fax sending and receiving right from your desktop computer, or laptop. In effect, your problems are really a blessing in disguise, because when you convert over to the new technology you'll be saving additional resources and money, not mention having your faxes automatically digitized for printing, storing and forwarding purposes.

You can get a lot more technical information about why traditional fax machines don't work with VOIP connections, at this website: http://www.soft-switch.org/foip.html

You can get more information on the many benefits of computer faxing at our website here: http://www.orangepoint.net/computerfax.html

Inbound Faxes Stored for 30 Days -- Perfect Fax Backup Service

2009-09-08T00:17:34Z

When you sign up for our computer fax service several "nice" things begin happening. For starters, you can get some sleep at night because you'll know you'll never lose another fax again. ALL of your inbound faxes are backed up on a secured website for 30 days to protect against any disasters such as computer crashes or outages, or heaven forbid, an entire office being wiped out by a fire or natural disaster. Protecting your communications with this kind of backup is essential these days and should be a part of any business continuity plan your organization prepared. However, it is one of the last things anyone thinks about. Generally speaking, most offices are involved in some sort of computer backup program. However, how is anyone going to replace the hard copy faxes they receive that are in physical filing cabinets, if there was a fire? Now, you don't have to worry about such things. First, you can get a full month of automatic backup included in your nominal fee, and second, once the faxes are digitized and sent to you email inbox, you can include those documents as part of your normal and routine computer backup (which hopefully is offsite.) You can access your secured online account where the backup faxes are stored and log into at anytime to easily manage all of your faxes in one place. You can monitor outgoing and incoming faxes -- you can even schedule faxes to be sent at times in the future. Take a look at this new technology and join the new breed of business and organizational leaders who have taken their faxing to the next level. Give us a call. We'll look forward to helping you ever step of the way.