Cashing in on people with FAT FINGERS

In the IVR world we all know what a fat finger is. Just in case you haven’t heard the term before, it works like this: A caller dials a telephone number like 1-800-MYBANK1 to check their balance but they optical amplifier fat finger the number and accidentally dial 1-800-MYBANK2. Instead of checking his balance, the caller is now talking to some guy trying to sell him a timeshare on the Jersey shore.

The term fat finger actually has nothing to do with the size of your index finger, but is basically a typo while using the telephone keypad. Oh I know, it’s probably not politically correct these days to use the term fat finger, so for the remainder of this blog I’ll try to clean it up and use terms such as differently weighted digit and massive dactyl.

Thanks to the geniuses running American Idol, massive dactyl will soon be more popular than bling amongst 13-22 year olds. Here’s why: American Idol decided to increase the number of finalists this year from 12 to 13. American IDOL only owns the sequence 1-866-IDOLS-01 through 1-866-IDOLS-12. Here is the problem: when Johnny calls to vote for his favorite singer (the 13th to appear) he doesn’t get to vote, but he does get to chat with a nice young lady that for a minimal fee of $15.00 per minute will gladly talk to him for the next few hours.

Shame on the telco team at American Idol. Most companies purchase banks of toll free numbers from the carriers and someone at AI should have shelled out the extra $50 bucks for fifty numbers instead of 12.

Shame on the carrier, c’mon you’ve got to know that a ton of people are going to accidentally dial the wrong number. Someone in the chain should have been smart enough to know that having a few extra sequential numbers and the commonly mis-dialed numbers would be a good idea. Given the current economic situation, a lot of parents are going to be very upset at the end of the month when they find out that Johnny’s American Idol vote cost them the mortgage payment.

There is a lot of blame to go around for this monumental oversight but rest assured that some goofball is sitting in his basement watching the calls come in and planning his retirement.

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