I assisted this morning to a conference Orange gave in the forum e-marketing in Paris. They were presenting their new revolutionary CRM solution: "Contact everywhere". They announce a terrific new media; "high potential"; "strong ROI rates" they said. Listen, they now are able to send short text messages directly on your phone! I know you won't believe me but it's true. They call it SMS and, according to them, it's made to order for alerting or traffic creation in outlets. I was astonished on my chair. I just couldn't believe my ears.
Frankly, this conference was a shame. Who the hell are they kidding? For instance, they made a beautiful speech about privacy. Really they do care. And because they want to be exemplary, they only send these magic SMS to opt in people. That way, they are not intrusive. Bravo.
To prove it, they showed Cetelem's business case, "one of their 2000 clients". Orange sends SMS to CETELEM s' customers. Well, the Orange lady specified, not all of these customers are opt in people, but, because of the commercial relation between CETELEM and their customers, they are allowed to act so (which is true: in France, you can send a direct message to somebody not opt in insofar as he has recently bought one your product).
Besides, to be sure to touch these customers, they go further: they generate outgoing phone calls by robots to carry polls for instance. That makes: "(the robot) Hello, this is CETELEM; maybe I am cutting your dinner short (or a game with your children, who cares?), but you are one of our customers, so I have the right to ask if you are satisfied with us".
They say "we are not intrusive"; I say "you are interruptive". They say "we are legal"; I say "you don't have nor respect neither psychology". "Nobody complained, they said, so it proves people like to be called by their loan company at night, at home". I was dreaming…
I even wonder how you could opt out from such phone calls. I am pretty sure that the vocal script doesn't allow you to opt out. I am ready to make an opposite comment on this post if somebody proves me you can easily opt out.
To be followed (it's not finished!).
