Hack79.Avoid Problems with Interactive Telephone Services


Hack 79. Avoid Problems with Interactive Telephone Services

Skype is known to have real problems when interacting with telephone systems that instruct callers to enter key codes by pressing numbers on the phone's keypad. At best, it is unreliable, and at worst, it doesn't work at all. But a neat Skype add-on called KhaosDial might do the trick.

Works with: Windows version of Skype.

Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) is the term used to describe the tones you hear when you press the keys on your phone's keypad. Each key generates a different tone that can be used to represent the numbers 1 through 9, the letters A through Z, and the characters * and # to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) telephone system. IVR telephone systems provide services without another human being at the other end of the line. When they work, they are a very convenient and efficient way of delivering services. When they don't work, they suck!

Skype is known to have real problems working with IVR systemsjust visit the Skype community forums (http://forum.skype.com/) to get a glimpse of the pain and suffering the misbehavior of this feature has caused.

When using Skype from your computer, the normal way of entering DTMF codes is to use the buttons on the Dial tab (see Figure 10-1, right). Alternatively, if you use a phone handset to make and receive calls using Skype, you can try the keypad on the handset to enter your DTMF codes (see Figure 10-1, left).

Figure 10-1. Keypad of a regular phone (left) and Skype's Dial tab (right)


Neither of these two methods of interacting with an IVR system seems to be terribly reliable. Clearly, the DTMF tones that Skype generates and transmits become distorted somewhere along the way to their destination, so they are often unrecognizable by the time they arrive at the IVR system.

However, if you are a Windows user of Skype, there is a neat little add-on called KhaosDial (http://www.KhaosLabs.com/) that you can use to enter DTMF codes with some degree of reliability (see Figure 10-2). It might all seem rather Rube Goldberg-ish to be playing DTMF tones from your speakers into your microphone or from the earpiece to the microphone boom of your headset; but until Skype fixes its own DTMF problems, it's worth a try.

KhaosDial requires that you have Microsoft .NET 1.1 installed on your machine. To find out if you have .NET installed and, if so, what version, navigate to Start Control Panel Add or Remove Programs, and scroll down the list of currently installed programs, looking for an entry for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1. If you dont have it, download and install it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/.





Skype Hacks
Skype Hacks: Tips & Tools for Cheap, Fun, Innovative Phone Service
ISBN: 0596101899
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 168

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