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Greetings from Jolly Roger!
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As usual, I want to extend a heartfelt "AHOY" to the new subscribers to the Jolly Roger Telephone Service. It is very important to me that you understand I'm a humble telephone system programmer in the Los Angeles area. I wrote these bots to protect your family, my family, and the telecommunications network from the scourge of telemarketing. The network I love cannot survive unless we do something about it. I think the Jolly Roger Telephone solution is the
only
way to disrupt the
unsolicited
telemarketing industry (as a phone guy, I'm a big fan of call centers and
inbound
telemarketing!)
This month marks the two-year anniversary of the
Gizmodo article
that started it all. Some of you started this journey with me in February 2016. What an amazing two years it has been!
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Email Server Update
Currently, the Jolly Roger Telephone Service relies heavily on email. We are working on a web portal for you to listen to your calls and manage your service. For now, every call generates a "post-call-email." As a result, the Jolly Roger service is very chatty. Before I started the Jolly Roger Telephone service, I naively thought of email as "free." Well, sending thousands of emails a day is definitely not free. I have moved beyond the standard tier at GoDaddy and therefore have migrated to Amazon's Simple Email Service (SES). There were a couple hiccups along the way and I apologize for some delayed emails last week. We think it'll be smoother sailing from here on out.
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New and Smarter Bots!
I have hinted in the past that we're working on smarter bots. You will start hearing some new bots and additional repertoire from familiar bots. We are tuning the Artificial Intelligence to respond better to the telemarketers. Never has more technology been deployed to make something sound so stupid.
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Burying the Holiday Bots Until Next Year
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In 2017, we developed several bots for Christmas and the New Year. We used these for
several promotions
and included them in the standard "random bot" rotations. We also had a "
New Year's Bot
" for 2018, but we have shut these down and buried these treasures for the year. We'll dig them up again next Thanksgiving.
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Jolly Roger Contest Coming Soon!
Watch your inbox for details...
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The Jolly Roger Telephone Service is Making Waves!
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The Jolly Roger bots will definitely change your attitude about telemarketing - most of you have said you look forward to telemarketers now. But I am often asked "does it work to reduce telemarketing?" I am happy to report that yes, it does.
To demonstrate how effective our service is, here is a
link to the part of a recent call
where you can hear a supervisor describing the steps it takes to remove a number from their call list when they get a bot. Were it not for the Jolly Roger service, there's no way these scammers would go through the effort to remove your number.
Perhaps even more exciting is I recently received an email from a Customer Service Representative who said they have been trained to handle Jolly Roget bots. She said they were assembled "in a large group setting" and shown a video of Roger Anderson I assume this was my
TEDx Talk
. During training, an agent spoke with a bot and everyone was encouraged to go online to listen to more. They have created a "wrap-up code" of "Suspected Bot". This is the code they enter to tag the call for reporting. Telemarketers are discouraged from hanging up the phone, and this wrap-up code allows them to hang up if they suspect a bot.
(As a funny side-note, this agent was very amused by the service and has told me to keep up the good work)
This is very flattering because the Jolly Roger Telephone Company intercepts a tiny fraction of telemarketing calls. This small and humble service has already caused quite a disruption in the industry and I owe all of this to you, my beloved subscribers. You are entrusting me with part of your telephone service, and I will never take that for granted. Some of you have graciously allowed Jolly Roger Telephone to
handle your mobile phone's voicemail
as well. Telecommunications is precious to me and I appreciate your trust.
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New Crew Mate Pressed Into Service
A new crew member named Toby has been shanghaied. You might see his name if you correspond with us. We are a small and dedicated crew and we love hearing from you. So if you get any good calls, have any suggestions, want to ask a question, or even if you just want to say hello, please
contact us
.
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Or just search your podcast app for "Jolly Roger Telephone."
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There is more to Jolly Roger Telephone than just me! I am the primary programmer for the bots and I've been doing the interviews and speeches, but this is getting to be a crazy amount of work and you will start to hear from some other people if you contact us via email, Facebook, YouTube, the WordPress Blog, or Twitter. Besides me, you might see the names Jennifer, Phil, and Toby when you contact us. We are a small and friendly team dedicated to fighting your telemarketers. Please say hello if you chat with someone new!
Thanks again,
Roger & the Pirate Crew
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Join Jolly Roger in the Battle Against Telemarketers
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To subscribe to the Jolly Roger Service or for more information....
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Jolly Roger Telephone Company
710 S. Myrtle Avenue, Unit 273, Monrovia, CA 91016
206-259-4900
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