“This Number is Busy” message with additional analytics

Today, I re-dialed a “missed call” from an acquaintance, and got a busy tone with the message “this number is busy” in multiple languages.

I was about to cancel the call when I heard “Press ‘1’ to know more – we are piloting an analytics engine.”

I was intrigued, and pressed “1”. Here is what was conveyed (the gist):

“93% of the time, this subscriber disconnects his outgoing calls (gender confirmed through subscriber Profile data), before these calls are picked up. Most likely (86% probability), he is trying to save his call costs. He developed this habit earlier, but continues even when the free call limit is infinity.”

“His number is also busy most of time. That is because he is either inefficient in transacting his business quickly (34% probability) or is lonely and wants to prolong the conversation (43% probability), other reasons account for the rest of the probability.”

“If you can satisfy your requirements (information needs or your own need for chatting with someone) through other means, you are likely to be better off.”

“Press ‘2’ to know information about yourself – based on the pilot analytics engine”.

I automatically pressed ‘2’ before realizing my blunder. The disembodied voice continued:

“The fact that you are calling a usually busy number and have the patience to listen to this robotic voice, indicates that you too may be looking for some company/ any kind of company.”

“There are many chatbots available on the net and as mobile apps – chatting with them may be useful (some are also free 🙂 ).”

I quickly disconnected – I had enough.

What do you think of the analytics? And the counselor Bot?

Please feel free to share your views, experiences, and queries, using the “comments” feature.

Author: Rajesh Naik

I'm Rajesh Naik, and this is my personal website If you are interested in contacting me, I am also available on LinkedIn and I will be glad to accept your invite.

8 thoughts on ““This Number is Busy” message with additional analytics”

  1. Given that most people are addicted to their mobile devices and cannot help but engage it for various reasons, the probabilities of getting through a dialled number on the 1st attempt is close to nil. The only time when one gets a ringtone is possibly when people are attending to nature’s calls. Of course there are times as well when the caller can get a sense ( audibly) of the dialled person in the midst of such acts.

    With mobile numbers being busy most of the times, we need an alternate method to connect to each other:). And face to face conversation is definitely not the option being suggested.

    I am adding to a few more insights from analytics of call dialling:

    1. When you return a missed call, there is a 50% probability of the caller saying sheepishly that he called by mistake (My Bad)! The other 50% is for getting a busy tone till you get the missed call again. And so on, till you make that wretched connection.

    2. People tend to get impatient if they don’t see their call being picked up on the 1st 3 rings. They then start fiddling with other numbers or poke someone on facebook/whatsapp. The incidents of missed calls is directly proportional to inability to pick up within 3 rings.

    3. There are a set of old worldly “shy callers”, who are conscious of intruding into your private time. Hence they give a call and then cut it off after the 1st ring. Hoping that you call back.

    4. And then there are a set of miserly callers who have set up thresholds on their monthly bills and whenever that threshold exceeds the free calling limit, they get on to a missed call mission.

    5. There are a few who give a missed call to themselves after going through a spiritual self discovery session.

    6. Of course there is a whole set of marketing agencies who give you calls that you wish you had missed.

    7. These are days when voice bots give you a call because they are programmed to do so. My guess is the day is not far away when talking to voice bots may sound more interesting and profound than to fellow humans.

    Cheers

    1. 5. There are a few who give a missed call to themselves after going through a spiritual self discovery session.

      Good one… Self-discovery is on the rise as one gets older. And all of us (and them) get older at the same rate (one day per day).

      Thanks for your comment.

      Cheers
      Rajesh

  2. The analytics engine may be enhanced to evaluate a few other items:
    1. The IVR mania of the caller – excitement to dial even more numbers to discover “new” mundane options that get you nowhere near what you started out to do.
    2. Patience/ desperation of the caller to hear endlessly (in a broken/ malfunctioning tape) “that his call is important” even though nobody has the time to talk to him, also with the end result of getting nowhere.
    3. The person is so adrenaline/ caffeine/ nicotine/ alcohol (?) deprived that the person instinctively calls a(ny) number when the person has more than 30-seconds of no activity.

    1. Sounds good, Mukul. I could be one of them. I don’t drink coffee or smoke any more. Nor do I drink alcohol. I also stopped watching TV news, IPL and reading newspapers (so adrenaline deprived too!)

  3. I sometimes like to listen to the message in Hindi, Kannada, Bengali and Tamil, to check out how current I am in the pure form / diction in these languages.

    1. Thanks for visiting the post and adding your comment, Darshan.

      Whether fictional or reality – the data capture, availability and analysis is mostly real. The analytics being replayed to the user is fictional.

      Please note that the internet and telephone companies have a lot of data about us (for a long time) – data which even we are not conscious about ourselves. Now the companies have a way of analyzing the data and understanding patterns about each of us. With AI, even the actions from that understanding are being automated significantly, and will reach an annoying level soon – it has reached an annoying level for me – the ads that appear on my screen are ‘tailored’ on my behavior :-).

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