Making Progress, Not Yet “There”

I know I’ve been silent here for awhile.  It’s because I have been up to the gills in too many things to do.  Here’s a quick run down of what has transpired since my return from Alaska.  First, please know that one of the things I always try to do is have back-ups of everything. Anyone who uses a computer to any degree knows the importance of backing up your files. But it goes beyond that.  What about your software? Here at GlobalTmail^tm, I use literally hundreds of programs for different functions that I perform. Many are just tiny software utility applications, that only support other apps, but they all come together to form a cohesive structure that allows me to do all the different things I’m required to do in the daily course of my activities.

Early-on, I decided to ensure that I always have a redundant computer system at my disposal in the event of a catastrophic failure. During the past several months I’ve had to make use of that redundancy.  Even with the redundant system, it hasn’t been easy. One such case happened in the past week. I returned on Tuesday and spent the day recovering from travel, only to get up Wednesday morning to discover my primary computer system had suffered a catastrophic failure and would not boot.  I spent the entire day trying to diagnose the problem (instead of accomplishing anything for the company).  By Thursday, I knew I had to completely wipe the disk and re-install the operating system.  So I proceeded with that task. It took from Thursday to Saturday to restore the offsite back-ups of all my files, and then began the task of installing software to actually USE those files.  Saturday morning, once again, the system failed.  Once again, I started over and this time did a complete deep system scan for viruses, too.  I didn’t find anything, but evidently I didn’t loose all the restored files (only about 1/2 of them).  So, I began the file restoration again after re-installing the OS a second time.  (Fun weekend, huh?) 

By Sunday night, I was back in the saddle and ready to do business again.  I still have a long way to go with re-installing software, some of which must be re –purchased because the original installation files and/or registration keys were on the failed hard drive and NOT backed up; some of which simply won't operate on the newer Windows 7 system and has to be upgraded.  I’ll deal with those problems over the next month or two.  But then, Monday morning, there was one MORE failure.  My backup, redundant computer system failed; the one that kept me going while I was restoring my new primary system. But its failure was more severe.  It appears the hard drive, and possibly the processor are “toast.'”  I'm thankful it held out until I could get the primary system operational again. 

I cannot restore the old system. This is particularly disconcerting because some necessary software was on that system that I’m not sure I can recover (like the software that allows me to create the videos on our website, and the company accounting software that allows me to issue commission checks, payables and keep track of our finances, and more).  But at least I have all the data intact.  So now, I’m in the market for a new redundant computer system and will need to buy it within the next several weeks.  To tell the truth, I don’t totally trust the system on which I’m writing this blog. I’ve only had it since February, and in that time, it failed at the end of March, and twice again last week. That’s 3 catastrophic failures within 4 months; a dismal failure for any computer.  So, I’m just hoping & praying this system will hold out until I can get a better computer installed and up to speed.

So now it’s Wednesday and I can finally get back to a somewhat normal work schedule.  In the midst of these problems last week, we were still able to make some progress with GroupCaller^tm.  It no longer passes so many irrelevant calls through to the agent.  Also, due to some changes Ahmed made over the weekend, we’re finally getting a reasonable number of “Press 1” responses.  Sadly, all except one of the responses on Monday’s test calling were negative, but it still represents progress.

We have a partially acceptable program that Ahmed created last week that’s a diagnostic tool. It records call progress so we can listen and analyze the calls. Unfortunately, he did not write it to my specifications and therefore its effectiveness is seriously limited. Nonetheless, it recorded 648 calls that were connected on Monday.  We’re beginning to analyze them now.  Although only 6% of the calls have been analyzed so far, I’m already finding some consistencies that can be addressed and corrected.  For instance:

1. It appears that 22.9% of the times the phone was dialed, a “live party” picked up the call and said “hello.”  This is the closest we have come to my expectation of around 28% since we started testing GroupCaller (it was less than 2% before the changes made over the weekend).  So that represents more than a 10-fold increase in the number of people contacted.
   
   
2. Due to the number of people now getting messages, it’s reasonable to begin modifying the sales script.  I started that last night and am recording a new script this morning which we’ll test this afternoon. The bigger through-put of valid calls makes it worthwhile to experiment with the sales pitch until we maximize the response rate.  Thus far, the positive response rate has not been high enough to be meaningful so I have not reported it.  I’ll let you know how the modifications work from today and whether they result in any improvement or not.  The good news is that now, we should be able to make changes to the sales approach every day until we find the right combination that will result in the best response rate we can get.
   
   
3. I discovered the system is NOT recognizing FAX tones and skipping them.
   
   
4. We also discovered a defect in the the routine that captures “Do Not Call” requests when the called party presses “9” to be placed on our internal DNC list. Essentially, the system does…”NOTHING!” That must be corrected today to avoid potential legal consequences.

I hope to complete enough analysis today so I can make a thorough report to Ahmed by 2 pm and make some improvements based on that analysis.  In the meantime, we’re excited about this most recent progress and believe that Monday & Tuesday brought us the best improvement to GroupCaller that we’ve seen thus far.

Today, we’ll finish calling through Utah.  This initial Utah dialing effort has done nothing more than help us correct numerous problems with our software. From all the Utah calls (about 26,000 so far), we only got 2 committed to a webinar. The first one, scheduled by Nate, was inadvertently scheduled when I was in Alaska, so it didn’t happen. The other one, scheduled by Keith Kightlinger, is scheduled for tonight.  Hopefully, the progress we see from today’s changes will result in more attendees in our future dialing efforts.

I remain confident, as I have always been, that once the kinks are worked out of the system and the recorded sales message has been fine-tuned, we’ll see an amazing turn-around for this company and finally begin generating enough revenue to make a difference.  I’ll post at least one and maybe two more articles this week, so please check in again by Saturday.