topic Elections and autodiallers in Industry News

Elections and autodiallers

rslade — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 22:15:29 GMT

We are having an election in the Great White North. It's probably going to be close. (We have a choice between someone who is economical with the truth when in trouble, and one who flatly lies in election attack ads. Plus a few more who have no realistic chance of forming government.) So the various parties are doing everything they can to "get out the vote," particularly their vote.

We have had three calls from one of the local candidates this morning, two from the "get out the vote" ranks, and one machine call with a recorded message. (I was expecting more calls from our local Green Party candidate who, for some reason, holds the record for the number of nuisance calls during this election. But I digress.) The first was from the "get out the vote" office. When I answered and said hello, there was dead space, and then the sound of the office in the background, sounding like the typical "boiler room" of old. Being old, I figured it was just another telemarketer call from those days, and, when nobody said anything, I eventually hung up.

The "get out the vote" office called back a bit later. Same process, same background noise, but then someone asked to speak to Gloria. Since she doesn't get many personalized telemarketing calls, I figured the earlier call had been for me.

Obviously, the "get out the vote" people are volunteers, and haven't been trained on the mechanics of the autodialler that the office is using. Equally obviously, the autodialler is set to wait for a response before putting the call through to a volunteer. So the volunteers should have been told that they need to start the conversation, since the recipient of the call has already said "hello," even though they didn't hear it. Probably a number of the calls today have been missed because of it.

With the vote being so close, I wonder if that lack of training could be responsible for the loss of a seat, and possibly the loss of a government?

(Just after I posted this, we got a canvasser from the same office at the door. This election is really close ...)

Re: Elections and autodiallers

dcontesti — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 22:28:14 GMT

Rob,

I hear you loud and clear, three canvassers today alone (AND hey I live in a Condo.....wonder who let them in).

Phone calls, asking if I voted.....and text messages asking if I am supporting their candidate.....

I am not sure it will be close but it will be interesting to say the least.

Re: Elections and autodiallers

rslade — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 16:57:39 GMT

> dcontesti (Community Champion) posted a new reply in Industry News on 10-21-2019

> Rob, I hear you loud and clear, three canvassers today alone (AND hey I live
> in a Condo.....wonder who let them in). Phone calls, asking if I voted.....and
> text messages asking if I am supporting their candidate..... I am not sure it
> will be close but it will be interesting to say the least. d

In the end not that close. And in our riding, our guy won handily ...

(Yes, of course we did vote ...)

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Re: Elections and autodiallers

dcontesti — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 17:26:41 GMT

@rslade wrote:
In the end not that close. And in our riding, our guy won handily ...
(Yes, of course we did vote ...)

In the end, I think the right message was sent. 😉 Our riding sent a clear message to the current provincial leadership