O2 Adds Celebrity Voices

LONDON -- 02 has received a return on its investment in the Celebrity Greetings voicemail 901 service within just 4 months of launch, having received approximately 250,000 premium rated calls.

The service (accessible through shortcode 4901 on the O2 network) allows any current voicemail 901 user to have professionally recorded greetings from a range of impressionists and specially created characters for their voicemail. For example, subscribers can have contestants from Channel 4's Big Brother, Darth Vader, Ali G or characters from the Simpsons asking callers to leave a message.

The service is delivered over O2's existing UK network and was the result of joint research by O2 and InterVoice-Brite. Messaging specialist InterVoice-Brite found that as many as 85% of people don't leave messages because mobile customers don't have a personal greeting or are simply non-existent. The aim of the service was to increase the awareness of the generic voicemail 901 service, as well as generating additional revenue from the Celebrity Greetings service. In both aspects it has been a success.

Peter Rampling, Vice President of Value Added Services for O2 stated: "The Celebrity Greeting service is a good example of a value added voice service that our customers understand, want and are willing to pay for. It is simple to market, makes use of existing network infrastructure and its success is easily demonstrable as real revenue. Independent market research carried out jointly with InterVoice-Brite clearly showed that there was a requirement from our customers for this type of product and we decided to act on it.

Liz Lyon, O2's Voice Marketing Manager and Product Owner for both Voicemail 901 and Celebrity Greetings added: "In addition to the new income from the Celebrity Greeting service itself, extra revenue will be generated from returned calls and increased awareness (and therefore use) of Voicemail 901."

"Celebrity Greetings is a great example of how operators can squeeze more revenue from 2G." said Simon Edwards, Marketing Director for Europe at InterVoice-Brite.

O2 Ltd. InterVoice-Brite