I felt redeemed last week, however. I made a fantastic breakthrough with my grandmother (of all family members) when I introduced her to a new healthcare solution that would automatically remind her of the daily prescriptions that she needed to take.

My grandmother is 86 years old and unfortunately she must rely on a number of different medications to get her through the day. As is often the case with people that have to take medications, whether it be loss of memory (in my grandmother’s case) or being just too busy to keep up with yet another task during the day, folks often forget what they need to take, how much they need to take, when they need to take it and what they’ve already taken. For many seniors with memory loss, this is a significant and possibly a life-threatening issue.

The product I showed my grandmother is called MyRemindeRx developed by PassportMD. Let’s face it, my grandmother doesn’t understand computers or the Internet, but my grandmother does understand phones…when she isn’t at church, she’s usually on the phone with friends and family.

This is where my work at Jaduka comes into play. PassportMD has integrated our Notification Service into the MyRemindeRx product, a simple to use and effective product for reminding people (like my grandmother) when to take their medicines.
MyRemindeRx is not just for patients. It can also be used by medical practices to remind their patients about upcoming appointments. Not only does this help the office maximize revenue by reducing missed appointments, but it can save patients money since many offices charge for late or missed appointments.

After I explained the gist of the product to her, my grandmother was excited to give MyRemindeRx a try. To my delight, within a matter of minutes my grandmother (with a little help from me) had entered three daily prescription reminders. She has a lot of prescriptions, taking three medications each day at 8:00am, one at 2:00pm, and finally at 7:00pm she takes two more.

Watching my grandmother receive her first prescription reminder at the scheduled time from the MyRemindeRx product brought a smile to her face and mine too. Since we recorded the voice reminders in my voice, she’ll get to hear my voice at least three times a day; so no matter how often we talk or see each other – we are still connected.

Most importantly, as a family, we feel much better knowing that our grandma has a reliable solution in place to remind her which prescriptions to take and when to take them.

For more information on the MyRemindeRx product, visit the PassportMD site here.

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I have the pleasure of speaking on two panels at this event, one focusing on Cloud Communications and the other on CEBP implementations and fundamentals – two topics that are very near and dear to us at Jaduka. The Cloud Communications Summit will also draw a wide audience. Many enterprises can see the light at the end of the economic tunnel and it only makes sense that these companies have learned (at least we hope they have) to be efficient not only in times of a downturn, but in times of plenty too.

In my opinion, there is not a better forum than ITExpo and the Cloud Communications Summit to get up to speed with the latest emerging technologies, meet the people and the companies at the forefront of those technologies and to discuss how Communications Enabled Business Processes will play a key role in improving business efficiency and profitability in the years ahead.

If you are attending, I encourage you to take a few minutes out of your schedule to join in the discussion.

ITExpo East

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What if at least some of these unhappy customers had an outlet? What if you made it easy for them to vent and call out what went wrong with their experience, giving you an opportunity to save that individual customer?

Given the right methods, you can get a much greater percentage of these slighted customers to speak up. With the cost of customer acquisition at an all-time high, you must use every tactic available to you to keep customers from defecting.
If you have not considered implementing a customer experience program, there is no better time to get started than now.

A properly implemented and managed customer experience program accomplishes multiple goals:

• Allows you to include your customers in the conversation, fostering brand loyalty, reducing customer churn and increasing overall satisfaction.

• Feedback received provides actionable insights to confirm company projections and uncover trends that help you make better business decisions.

• Gives unhappy customers a non-confrontational outlet to express concern or vent frustration, giving you an opportunity to win them back.

• Empowers your customers to be your eyes and ears, alerting you to areas of your business that need improvement as they arise, allowing you to react rapidly to remedy them.

Why not empower your customer to give you feedback – disgruntled or even ecstatic – with an in-store customer experience program? Engaging your customers is an extremely powerful tool that not only allows you the opportunity to right wrongs, but also creates the Holy Grail of customers, the brand advocate.

A brand advocate is one who preaches your name to all who will listen. These customers are more powerful than any ad campaign or promotional initiative. And they are out there—if you give them a voice.

Implementing a customer experience program that engages your customers, is natural for them to use and easy for your team to manage will pay for itself month after month with the data and insights it generates from your customer base. It’s not a huge stretch to think that a customer could provide your next great business idea, given the outlet.

Why are you not listening?

For information on implementing your own in-store customer experience management program, visit CommentFunnel today.

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Appian FORUM09 is the premier event for Appian’s BPM customer and partner community and a unique opportunity for networking and knowledge-sharing with elite practitioners, thought-leaders, and technology experts in business process management. It’s our pleasure to attend as a Gold Sponsor for this much anticipated gathering. Interested in attending? Visit the Appian FORUM09 site here.

We are excited to get to Reston to launch the Jaduka Notifications Service for Accounts Receivable during Appian FORUM09. This solution allows Appian BPMS customers to send time-sensitive voice notifications to customers with greater success and significantly lower costs than other collection methods such as email, call centers or regular mail.

Current Appian customers are eligible for a 30-day trial of the Jaduka Notifications Service for Accounts Receivable. To request your free trial, visit www.jaduka.com/appian and register today.

To find out more about how Jaduka and Appian can help your organization improve its Accounts Receivable process, contact us at www.jaduka.com. Better yet, if you are at Appian FORUM09, stop by the Jaduka booth to meet us directly.

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho!

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This revolutionary way of extending business processes has almost endless applications. You will now have the ability to automate and accomplish such tasks as validating leads, scheduling/rescheduling appointments, validating a client’s availability, and accepting payments with greater efficiency than ever before. With these newly expanded processes, your employees will now have more time to focus on what matters most – your clients.

How is this possible? Jaduka’s and Appian’s partnership allows for business process designers to reach out to their customers automatically, inexpensively, and effectively. Appian’s BPM solutions integrate people within an organization, IT systems, and business rules into defined and repeatable business processes. By combining Jaduka’s Voice Services with Appian’s Business Process Management Suite, we have given enterprises the tools to experiment and create optimal ways of connecting people, data, business rules and systems into one cohesive process to drive process improvement, organizational efficiency and profitability.

Are you interested in learning more? Call me – we’ll meet for a slice of cake and talk about it.

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Jaduka’s CommentFunnel service is a consumer-facing voice application for businesses with physical brick-and-mortar store locations, such as grocery stores, department stores and big box specialty retailers.  Built around our core Jaduka Diary service, CommentFunnel lets organizations effortlessly enable real-time capture of consumer feedback—in the voice of the customer—at the point of sale.

The service works by allowing shoppers in retail store locations to dial a posted toll free number using their mobile phones and leave feedback as they are shopping in a store.  Recorded comments are then posted to an online admin interface for store management review. Comments can also be sent to a predefined email distribution list enabling additional levels of review.

Jaduka’s CommentFunnel service meets the needs of today’s forward thinking retailers who understand the power of customer engagement and the value of capturing the voice of the consumer.  By providing a natural, intuitive means for customers to provide feedback at the “first moment of truth” while shopping assures retailers that they are including their customers in the conversation, increasing customer loyalty, creating brand advocates and reducing customer churn.  Unlike surveys and comment cards which by nature ask leading or closed end questions, CommentFunnel gives customers a more free form medium to record comments, ask questions, share ideas and become ‘local and vocal’ brand advocates.

Ease of implementation is a key feature of the service—unlike other offerings, CommentFunnel requires no IT integration effort and can be implemented across a nationwide chain of retail stores in a matter of days. Implementation is as simple as assigning each store location a unique toll free number and printing and placing signage in store and at the point of sale to make shoppers aware of the service.

CommentFunnel enhances existing CEM programs, closing a key open loop by giving retailers much desired visibility into their physical store location touch points.  The service functions as an always-on in store listening post giving store management real-time feedback down to the local store level—versus a single toll free customer service number that cannot deliver critical insights into possible areas of concern in a particular store or region.

Smart retailers know that today’s consumer is more critical and less loyal, has a need to feel empowered and has little problem defecting to a competing retailer if they feel their expectations are not being met.  For these progressive retailers, CommentFunnel can be a key element in a holistic customer experience management program that can help them better engage their customers by empowering them with a voice and outlet to share ideas, ask questions, raise concerns and provide valuable insights that retailers would have a hard time capturing otherwise. CommentFunnel compliments comprehensive enterprise feedback management programs by delivering what retailers are seeking—a 360 degree view of all customer experiences with a company, from online to in store and back.

Jaduka is set to launch a pilot program of the CommentFunnel service with a leading national retailer of natural and organic food products that is consistently ranked among the most socially responsible businesses.  We feel this partner is the ideal pilot organization for this service and look forward to the insights received from their customers as well as rolling out the production version of CommentFunnel within all their locations in the near future.

By leveraging the one communications device consumers keep with them at all times—their mobile phones, Jaduka’s CommentFunnel service has many advantages over traditional feedback methods such as exit surveys, comments cards or in-store kiosks. Pricing for this service is competitive with mystery shopping and survey programs and provides a presence whenever stores are open, enabling shoppers to be the eyes and ears of company management at all times.  Stay tuned for updates as we continue to roll out and expand the functionality and features of this service, including the future ability to integrate this service into leading 3rd party CEM/EFM offerings.

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Jaduka Notification Service enables text-to-speech notifications or a company branded voice recording to be delivered to any phone, inside or outside of the enterprise. Those of you familiar with the StrikeIron Web Services Catalog know they have embedded their services within Microsoft Excel via LiveData for Excel and inside NetBeans. Through this partnership, over 5 million developers now have access to this service.

Our research suggests that up to 70% of the Notification market is untapped, mainly due to high integration costs. StrikeIron can now service this market with a significantly lower cost of entry. The use cases for Notifications are many and diverse; from simple appointment reminders to weather alerts.

Let’s consider a common use case for Notifications—appointment reminders. There is a reason you are charged for a missed appointment, be it a doctor, dentist or MRI. It costs the business money when someone misses an appointment. Why do you think your local doctor always double books? They know a good percentage of patients will no-show. Healthcare offices often send you a reminder post card followed up by a staff member giving you a call the day before your appointment—an outdated, time consuming and inefficient process.

Jaduka Notification Service allows a business to automate the appointment reminder process, eliminating the need for a staff member to manually make the call or send a post card—and for a fraction of the cost. Now maybe the office staff can get my insurance company to pay my bill or better yet, they can finally stop double booking appointments.

I have to agree with Bob Brauer at StrikeIron in wishing airlines would proactively communicate flight delays and cancellations, but I believe that would go against their business model. It’s a shame—customer satisfaction should be the airlines main focus.

The requirements for the business process to extend beyond the company firewall are increasing. Companies addressing the Business Process Management (BPM) market are just now experimenting with new ways to extend business processes using voice. Jaduka’s partnership with StrikeIron will go a long ways in helping voice services become more widely adopted and leveraged to improve business processes.

The Jaduka Notifications Service is the first of our services to be integrated into the StrikeIron infrastructure. Stay tuned as we bring more of our services to the tens of millions of developers accessing the StrikeIron catalog via NetBeans and LiveData.

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With the rise of paid search driven by the game changing success of Google AdWords, display ads have been a remnant item on the media buy for some time now. Is there a way to make display units relevant again, beyond simply being a branding tool for brands that can afford to buy massive amounts of inventory?

Adgregate has a novel idea for display ad units—put the online shopping cart in the ad unit. However, that creates other issues, mainly questions centered around security. It’s one way to go at it, but I think I have an even better way, one that is much less frictionless for the consumer, but has the performance based conversion measure that marketers want.

Why not add Jaduka’s Click-And-Connect® web initiated calling to an ad unit? We are always trying to eliminate friction in the customer experience, taking a click away here, a step away there. For a direct to consumer product offering, why not make it possible for the consumer to initiate a call from within the ad unit itself?

Jaduka has the technology—it’s easy. On top of the ease for consumers to convert, measuring the success of the unit by how many calls it generates is a no-brainer. Good ad unit = phone rang off the hook. Poor ad unit = not so much. So there you go, a display ad unit with a performance element that for direct sales makes it super simple for consumers to call you to complete that order. But wait there’s more!

Adding Jaduka’s Click-and-Connect to an ad unit is painless. There are 2 flavors: in the first you simply include your toll free number in the ad unit creative (ideally a unique toll free number for each ad unit so you can track calls coming from each unit) and in the second flavor you add a phone number field and a ‘start call’ button to each ad unit. Consumers wanting to call simply enter their phone number into the phone fields within the ad unit and click the ‘start call’ button to initiate the call.

The phone call is carried over the regular telephone network—this is not VOIP. Click-and-Connect is simply initiating the call from the web to the regular switched telephone network so you are assured of the reliability and quality you are accustomed to when making a phone call. After that, it’s up to your call center to handle the call and hopefully make that sale!

Additionally, call status is displayed in the ad unit so a consumer knows that the call is being connected once initiated. Additionally, the ad unit will retain its regular click tag allowing visitors to click thru to the site if they have questions or need additional information before making their call to purchase.

To learn more about adding Click-And-Connect web initiated calling to your next campaign or if you are an ad network or publisher interested in discussing a partnership leveraging our technology, contact us at 800.880.9150 or email us at sales (at) Jaduka.com. Visit us online at www.Jaduka.com.

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That’s why we are excited about a collaborative relationship now underway with Appian that will add Jaduka’s Voice Services to Appian’s Business Process Management (BPM) Software.

Appian’s Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) provides a complete platform for organizations to easily design, execute, manage, and optimize business processes. BPMS lets organizations gain control over critical processes, increase efficiency and reduce operating costs.

By combining Jaduka On-Demand Voice Services with Appian’s Business Process Management Solutions we’re aiming to create even more effective and efficient ways for connecting people, data, and systems and optimizing processes.

Stay tuned as we talk more about and roll out these enhanced services over the next weeks and months.

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A Viral Success Story – With Voice
One agency that gets it is our longtime partner Oddcast. Oddcast has been using our API to access our on-demand voice services for several years now and have created some very memorable advertising campaigns for their agency partners. One campaign that stands out is Careerbuilders’ Monk-E-Mail microsite.

Oddcast was brought on board and partnered with Jaduka for the development of the Monk-E-Mail web application. This consumer-engaging web application combines an emailable online character builder featuring Jaduka’s text-to-speech and record-to-phone on-demand voice services.

The Monk-E-Mail application is fun, easy-to-use and shareable. Visitors simply choose a chimp character, dress it up, and then record a funny message by phone that can then be emailed to friends and co-workers.

Jaduka’s Diary technology makes it easy for users to record funny, personal Monk-E-Mail greetings via any phone—home, work or mobile. Alternatively, Jaduka’s text-to-speech engine lets users type a message which is spoken for them.

Monk-E-Mail has been a runaway hit, and a true viral marketing success story. Careerbuilder immediately saw a 25% jump in traffic to their site at launch. Within 4 months, Careerbuilder was the #1 rated career site. Today, over 3 years after launch, Monk-E-Mail still drives significant traffic to the Careerbuilder site, successfully engaging new users daily with the Careerbuilder brand.

Additional Monk-E-Mail Metrics:
• Visitors - 29 million users visited the site in the first 4 months of the campaign; more than 55 million users have visited the site since inception.
• Reach - Over 150 million Monk-E-Mails have been sent and played.
• Brand Exposure - User spend an average of 7 minutes interacting with the site and the Careerbuilder brand.
• High Open Rate - Monk-E-Mail messages are opened an average of 1.6 times.
• Highly Viral – 22% of message recipients went on to send their own Monk-E-Mail messages.

Monk-E-Mail is an amazing success story and a true testament to the power of viral content—and an excellent example of how the thoughtfully applied use of Jaduka’s core voice technologies can drive long-term consumer engagement.

Transformers Sweeps Goes Live
Most recently, to support the new summer blockbuster movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Alcone Marketing, the film’s agency of record, collaborated with Oddcast to create a sweepstakes campaign using Jaduka’s Diary and Notifications voice service. This is another good example of use of our technology to facilitate a consumer friendly offline contest component to engage consumers.

To enter the sweepstakes, known as the “LG Transform to Something Better Sweepstakes,” you simply use your phone to call the toll free number 877-LG-TO-WIN. Once your call is connected, you are greeted by the Optimus Prime character from the movie who asked you if you want to enter the sweepstakes and tells you about the grand prize.

Once entered in the sweeps, you are then asked to choose one of 3 sound clips to send to a friend. You are prompted to record your name, which you can review before accepting. Once this is completed, you are prompted to enter your friends phone number. And finally your message gets sent to your friends phone—their phone rings and the message is played back and they are offered a chance to enter the sweeps as well, increasing the viral nature of this sweeps.

This sweeps, with its built in viral component, will be a nice test since they don’t appear to have a lot of media driving this sweeps, but instead the toll free number is only appearing in an almost hidden spot on a teaser website, www.uncoverlg.com, and on cardboard cutouts of Optimus Prime that will be located at Verizon stores to promote the LG Versa Transformers themed phone. Here is the TV spot in case you haven’t seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLUnwCJV0IA

How Will You Leverage the Power of Voice?
Agencies are always looking for the next big thing to leverage for use in marketing campaigns. I think the power that Jaduka’s voice services enable are flat out being overlooked because voice is not considered the latest and greatest. For the moment that means it’s not Twitter, the current flavor of the month.

Now we all know that reaching consumers is more difficult than ever, but Jaduka’s voice services make it easy for you to reach your consumers. Every consumer in your demo has access to a phone—it’s the one device that truly is ubiquitous—the ordinary telephone. Whether mobile, landline or even VOIP, our services can talk to them all.

Consumers know how to use their phones, so there is no learning curve when building an interactive campaign around our core voice services. Adding voice to an online initiative adds a level of depth and personalization that precious few other mediums can. And voice is easy—asking a consumer to share their story via phone is so much easier than asking them to write it down or make a video. Less friction for the consumer equals better a response for you.

So what’s holding you back? Jaduka’s on-demand voice services are powerful, effective, inexpensive and very easy to integrate. Take the next step and contact us—I have a whiteboard full of campaign ideas ready to share with your team to build a powerful campaign around. Let’s get started today.

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