And helping that effort along will be David Unger, former head of the Innovative Services Research department, and now division manager for the Consumer Services Strategy and Product Development group, where his responsibilities include bringing new consumer services to the marketplace. It Imagine your car phone ringing with directions just when you're hesitating over which road to take. Imagine previewing opera music on your phone before plunking down your credit card number for tickets. Imagine your business gathering voice data from customers without anyone actually speaking to the respondents. Actually, these applications are more than pipe dreams.
Users interact with the Web either by voice or touch tone capabilities on their phone.
Several recent trials have met with success, Karam says. They had gotten used to such services as accessing weather, e-mail, and other useful information from their phones. Customers could configure their own services. Another trial allowed a small market research firm to have survey respondents call and interact with the Web. The company could gather its information without deploying a live person.