Richard's GlobalTmail Blog

New Blog Site Coming

Be watching for it!  Sometime in the next week, I'll  publish a new blog site and discontinue most of my posts on this site. This is a public blog site.  But now that we're really beginning to ramp up the Phase I marketing effort, that means we'll begin making much faster progress toward Phase II and completion of the core GlobalTmail project.  As we do so, I'll be announcing milestones and proprietary software and systems that aren't really for public consumption.  For those reasons, I'm establishing a private blog.

This new blog is intended for those who are paying customers of GlobalTmail.  This group includes everyone who paid a fee to us since we started developing a viable marketing system for the company.  This includesthe  Port Incentive Group, the Port Referral Group, the Asset Management Group and especially, it's for all GroupCaller^tm licensee's.   

This will be a secure site that'll require your login and password.  The site is already "up" but it's not yet available.  I'm working on a login system, which should be completed today, that will allow you to access the blog with the same login information as your GlobalTmail account.  Keep in mind though, if you change your GlobalTmail account login information, you'll have to change this login information separately.  You'll get instructions on how to do this to maintain privacy around your access to this blog.

The new articles that I'll pulbish will be much the same as what you're used to reading.  The difference will be that this site is really geared toward those who are actively promoting GlobalTmail as a GroupCaller licensee.  Therefore, I'll have a number of articles devoted to that subject together with special training materials and links.  I'll also be discussing the finer points of using GroupCaller to enhance the profitability for all Licensee's.  

We're entering a new phase of development throughout the summer.  I'm excited that you're part of it. The new blog will also give you better and more direct access to me.  Whenever you have questions or comments I'll be encouraging you to send them to me through the blog site.  It's something I'll stay in touch with nearly all the time, even through my smart phone, which will have a version of this blog installed so I can instantly get messages from anyone with a concern or question.  It's just another way we're trying to provide the best service possible to all those who are making this GlobalTmail project possible.

Check back later today.  I'll be posting another article this evening to update you on the installation of the 2 new servers and whether or not we're able to fire up GroupCaller with the new configuration today.

Installation of 2 New Servers Continues

I'm not surprised that Ahmed has not yet finished configuring the new servers. I just got a message from him that he's continuing to work on it.  Yesterday I installed the new operating system and Jeff assigned the new IP's so that today, Ahmed could do his part. It appears that Ahmed started this morning. It's a pretty massive job to re-configure the entire GroupCaller^tm software system from a single server to operate across 3 servers with each one assigned to a different role, and yet they work seamlessly together. This is actually just the beginning of what I believe will grow to be a fairly large server farm before we even reach Phase II of our marketing strategy.

In the meantime, let me show you at least some of the results from last weeks' efforts.  First, the good news.  Throughout last week, I continued to work on the sales script and modify it to get better results. Better results are measured in terms of two things:  (a) The number of seconds into the script people listen on average before hanging up, which directly affects (b) the number of people who Press 1 to get more information.  Each day I used a new script and each day the # of seconds increased, except for day #5.  That day, almost all calls failed due to a serious problem with the system in which almost 100% of the connected calls played a recording that was so choppy and broken up that it was unintelligible. The result was predictable: Very few responses that day, and the bad technology is reflected in the following graph:

 

We’re following a concept in the sales script that compensates people for attending a webinar. This is a very common and old direct marketing strategy: Give something of value in exchange for the prospect’s time to hear the sale pitch. We’re giving away 2 ports to everyone to attends the entire presentation. Upon registering for GloblaTmail, we award the ports whether they buy the software license or not.  Of course, the graph above represents the only real victory for last week.

On the bad news side of the ledger, I’ll just give a quick summary.  Essentially, 58% of of all connected calls fail due to incorrect handling of the call.  In simplest terms this means that when somebody answers the phone, 58% of the time one of the following events happens:

• They answer “hello” and hear nothing, or
• Before the phone gets to their ear to say “hello”, our recording is already playing..

This graph represents the percent of all connected calls that failed last Monday to Friday:

Add to this the failure to detect 20% of the answering machines, and the times people press 1 but fail to get through (more than 50% of those who press one never get transferred to an agent) and we have a system that isn’t yet ready for “prime time”. 

But, we’re getting closer.  At least we “HAVE” the system now and we’re working on it daily.  I’m anxious to try it out tomorrow and/or Thursday to see what improvements are made by using 3 servers instead of one to do operate the system.  Both Jeff and Ahmed are predicting improvements, Ahmed more than Jeff. I’m just in the middle, HOPING for improvement  but not certain we’ll see as much as we need.  But I’m pretty sure we’ll see at least some improvement in our basic numbers tomorrow.

I’ll have another article posted tomorrow, but maybe not until after we’ve tested the system.  That means I don’t think I’ll write anything until sometime at night.

New GroupCaller Servers Coming Online Tomorrow

I believe we may have chased down the source of most of the issues we've been having with GroupCaller: Lack of Resources.  

We've been using only one server to run the entire thing, but it's such a massive program it really needs 2 or 3 servers to do the job adequately...even now while we're just starting out and before we have done any real volume dialing.  It seems we need a stand-alone web server just to run the application that allows Remote Agents to log in and use the system, plus managers and developers to log in and control the system. This is the part Remote Agents, Managers and Adminstrators will actually see when they use GroupCaller.  This makes sense to me because I expect before too long, we'll have many, many Remote Agents logged in and using the system all at the same time. I wondered how that one server was going to handle all that volume.  Answer:  It can't.  I just learned that the web server ALONE is a major resource "hog", even when only one or two people (or NOBODY) are logged in and using it.  If we add the dialer as well, we'd have to have a much more powerful machine to do the job.  Just learned this TODAY.  (sigh)  

Now I learn that we need a completely separate server for a the dialing functions. In researching the recent problems we've had configuring the system to operate properly, one common theme kept emerging: Separate Servers provide the best configuration. As luck would have it, we just happen to have 3 identical servers, one of which was configured for GroupCaller. Tonight I'm configuring the other two as CentOS boxes so we can use one as the web server, and the other two as dialers.  Ahmed actually seemed "excited" about this! He thought we had access to only one server so he was attempting the impossible.  It didn't work.  He didn't tell us we were trying to do this with too little resources.  Perhaps he hoped that our volume would be small enough it wouldn't matter. As he's learning, we intend to do massive volume.  Eventually, I expect we'll have hundreds and maybe thousands of servers spread across many locations.  For now, 3 will do.

It would be great news if the "fix" to our major GroupCaller problems turns out to be as easy as simply installing two more servers, which are already in our server farm.  I know of some additional issues we'll face due to the research I've done recently. But the discussion today with Ahmed and Jeff has led me to believe the issue of "too few servers to do the job" might just be the root cause of the problem.  

It's ironic. We bought these 3 Dell servers in 2007 for the express purpose of operating the dialers. And now here we are, FINALLY, in 2011 setting them up to be used for their original intended purpose.  I never would have guessed it would take so long to get our own system up and operational.  I hope to have them set up and operational by the end of the night. I'm writing this article as I'm installing the new operating system.  If I do this, then tomorrow, Ahmed should be able to install the system on the other 2 servers, and configure them to operate separately, thereby sharing the resources and (hopefully) ensuring a smooth operation.

I'm disappointed that this will interrupt our attempt at sales this week. But, I'm thrilled to find a solution that just might fix most of the headaches we've faced for the past two-and-a-half months; and to know that the solution has been right in hand all along. and WON'T require another big investment from our meager cash resources.  (whew!)

I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes.  I've also got some stats that I spent all weekend preparing that may all be moot once we get these two new systems operational.  Check in tomorrow afternoon because I hope to have a whiz-bang report for you!