IVR

Every day, more and more telecom companies pitch articles to publications like this one about how they’re reducing the carbon footprint and otherwise saving planet Earth through so-called “green” initiatives.

 

No wonder, in a presidential election year that will see environmental concerns play a major role.

 

Just yesterday, officials from Verizon Wireless announced that they’re encouraging attendees to this week’s national Democratic convention in Denver to recycle their cell phones – an effort that could see 100 million recycled devices power nearly 200,000 U.S. homes for a year, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

 

And today, as TMCnet Contributing Editor Anil Sharma reported, D-Link (News - Alert) Canada touted its home network WiFi routers as “green” technologies that reduce power consumption.

 

For some businesses, though, conserving the environment happens because of the very nature of their products and services, almost accidentally.

 

That’s the case with Bedford, Massachusetts-based SoundBite Communications. The communications solutions company offers SaaS (News - Alert)-based integrated voice, text and e-mail messaging solutions – all paper-less technologies that would please Dr. Seuss’s Lorax (a “mossy, bossy,” man-like beast who claimed to “speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.”)

 

“We are very keen on the environment and environmentally friendly and green issues, but we’re not green-specific,” the company’s vice president of market development, text and mobile messaging, Alan Berrey, told TMCnet in an interview today. “Our main focus is: How do these solutions hit the bottom line? But what we’ve found is that our solutions are greener than what our competitors’ are, and also very positive on the return-on-investment side.”

 

Essentially, Berrey says, SoundBite helps business clients communicate with their customers through the most efficient mechanism, which often is determined by what the customers themselves prefer. For example, if a more mature customer would prefer a traditional paper coupon to one that’s sent to a mobile phone, then SoundBite can help a business work on a solution.

 

Most of SoundBite’s clients work industries that include collections, financial services, retail, telecom and media, and utilities, according to Marie Ruzzo, the company’s director of marketing communications.

 

Interest on the part of the media in green-friendly technologies is something the company keeps on its radar, Ruzzo said, though, in the case of SoundBite, it also just happens to be that technologies such as automated voice messaging (its first major service offering and the basis of its flagship Intelligent Communications Platform offering) compete against direct mail.

 

Not only do SoundBite’s voice, text and e-mail solutions save the Lorax’s trees, Ruzzo said, but they’re practically advantageous in that they save time and money.

 

“The disadvantages of direct mailings are that they can be very costly,” Ruzzo told TMCNet. “Postal prices go up consistently. The time it takes to send out and get back a mailing can be quite lengthy, and then there’s more time to see results. It’s kind of slow, compared to our technologies.”

 

SoundBite officials describe their platform as “a robust enterprise solution” that’s flexible, secure, scalable, and reliable.

 

It’s also, even if by chance, environmentally friendly. SoundBite’s offerings help conserve the natural world within the company’s very business model.

 

For others, as Dr. Seuss’s fictional beast said, it takes a more concerted effort.

 

To quote the Lorax: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”