How does it work?

Virtual producer is an alternative to costly switchboards and existing number of telephone lines that many radio stations require to offer audience participation. Be it competitions, requests, phone-ins to Karaoke sessions, breakfast quizzes etc. With the ever-changing world, things get better and we find better ways of doing things.
People are demanding more and stations are fast running out of ideas to encourage more listeners.

In many cases stations have a limited number of telephone lines to handle their incoming calls on. These lines are often answered by the Presenter themselves or their producer. With many stations cost cutting in many areas, especially staff, taking large amounts of calls simultaneously by answering each one is non-existent.

Virtual Producer can help you with these calls by taking each one helping the producer to manage more calls or assisting the presenter in answering, checking and making calls available on air without the need of a producer.

As part of a managed service, Crosby can provide you with a new studio number, either local or national rate. Calls to this number are answered at the local telephone exchange by an automated system driven by jingles, drops and samples that your station provides. This could be a single message welcoming callers to the station and queuing the call, to offering them multiple menu options to handle :

• Direct Studio Access
• Competitions
• Automate requests for songs.
• Data capture, name address phone numbers.
• Karaoke or other fun options to encourage use.

By answering calls at the local telephone exchange, we can therefore answer every call into the station. When the caller is required to speak to the studio, we pipe the call to the studio as normal, the presenter will notice no difference. The caller will be satisfied that the station have answered their call and queued it for the studio.

What will it do for me?

• Answer every incoming call to the station with any recording you can provide, produced locally in your station to give that local feel.
• Collect statistics from each call to be used in addition to RAJAR figures/ real-time listenership figures.
• No more engaged tones during busy periods, losing good callers that could prove good for the show.
• Give a "one number for all services/promotions" by offering multiple options with menus with varying content.
• Give each caller a fair chance of being answered, no more is it "pot luck" if you phone at the right time someone picks up the line. Calls can be routed in the order by which they are received.
• Use the time on the phone to create a new revenue stream from "on the phone" advertising by creating "Premium Spots", ideal while callers are on hold prior to going on air.
• Plays your on or off air live feed while callers are waiting giving callers confidence and keeping them up to date with the show without having their radio switched on that causes feedback issues once on air.
• Generated revenue from each call however small, giving your listeners value for money.
• No hardware required to install or software to run and maintain.
• No lines need to change at your end, keep your current configuration if you require or reduce it once this system is proven.
• See each and every call in real-time on a web interface, allow the presenter to see the current queue and decide how much time to give each caller on air.
• Change the programme/scheduling of your system in real-time, change recordings advising callers of promotions/services or change in programming instantly.
• Setup new promotions/competitions over the phone and automate these without the need of hands at your end.
• Deal with requests for music automatically by recording callers over the phone when prompted, recordings are automatically sent to your desk or payout system in a suitable sound recording format seconds after each call is complete.

Broadcast benefits

• Cross reference call statistics with programming schedules to facilitate a more focused approach to programming
• Estimate listening figures based on percentage participation in campaigns rather than total dependence on RAJAR
• Pick up and gauge listener trends for example, participation in campaigns, hour of day, times called and station loyalty etc
• Run loyalty reports to detail most active callers and why, full history and time with station along with loyalty to station reporting
• Watch a real-time map of your coverage area populate on the screen as callers phone in from around the area. The map changes colour and shades geographically in these areas etc.
• Integration into SMS to pull in data captured from listeners text involvement.
• Demographic reporting on callers that link with SMS campaigns.
• Run reports to detail actual local areas and telephone networks that listeners are calling from.

Sales Benefits

• Figures can be branded and downloaded for advertising campaigns and presented in sales meetings to increase business advertising
• Detail outbound calls made by telesales staff, calls per hour, inbound calls answered, time taken to answer, amount of calls per sales person per day, average time per call, report by extension and usage, possible sales leads, lead classification, callback lists etc
• Advertising exposure, understand listenership on and around an advertising break and calculate the possible exposure an advert had at the time
• Links for CRM packages, can be linked with our CRM or other CRM packages to report incoming phone numbers with sales database, tracking of sales leads, follow up calls, general interest, sales leads turn around rates and many others

What are the costs?

Getting more information

Useful links

Email this page Print friendly page Glossary of terms Enquiry form