telephone survey equipment

[mahoonas]

I would like to create an automated telephone survey where the computer calls people on a list and asks them questions, the person on the receiving end inputs their response by key presses and the response gets recorded on a database. Does anybody know where to start looking for this kind of equipment?

Google searches yield the biggest load of rubbish- no luck there.

[Dave A]

If you ever do manage to get this off the ground from a technology side, I can't help wonder what the response is going to be like from the client's side

[daveob]

It's bad enough when I phone a company and actually want something from them and have to listen to the "Press 1 for ...",etc.

Now we gonna get someone (some PC) calling us and asking us to "Press 1 for ..." for something we not interested in !!!

[mahoonas]

it is true that an automated telesales system would be irritating and almost certainly ineffective; fortunately I am not working on that.

Not that I have tried but can you imagine how demoralising and boring it must be to call people and get their opinion on a product? It must be far easier to simply let the computer take the brunt of the complaints, and then get a person to call the clients who had a problem to assess what can be done.

Thanks for the opinions.

[Dave A]

can you imagine how demoralising and boring it must be to call people and get their opinion on a product?

It's a job and we need to create jobs.

Every now and then I get a call which when I answer goes like this:
"Please hold for this important phonecall. Your caller will be with you shortly." The first time it happened I actually did hold on out of curiosity. But ever since I just put the phone down.

[GlitchFreak]

Your best bet is to look into Asterisk and IVR.