What software or service can I use to programatically make phone calls with? [closed]

Question

I'm looking to programatically make phone call reminders to customers based upon their opt-in requests. I am NOT a telemarketer.

I need to make a phone call, and play a message. I need to leave a message after the beep if an answering machine or voicemail is detected. I need to know if the message was successfully delivered.

Ideally, I could offer the user feedback by pressing a button and recording their selection.

I prefer Windows and .NET but would consider anything.

What do you suggest?

Answer 1

I hope you will take a look at Twilio. Our REST API and TwiML make it very easy to make outbound calls programmatically with any language that can output XML. We've got some sample code for voice broadcast that you might find useful: http://www.twilio.com/docs/howto/broadcast

Regarding .NET, you might want to check out some of the work John Sheehan has done with Twilio. Robert McLaws has also written a Twilio .NET library you may want to check out. (Both are Google-able, just started this account so not enough rep point to post multiple links yet)

In full disclosure, John is so awesome we recently hired him to become a developer evangelist for Twilio.

Cheers - Danielle @ Twilio

Answer 2

You should look at Glorsoft's Velocity software (www.glorsoft.com). It's for .NET programmers who don't necessarilly know anything about IVR's. All the hard work is done for you. The SDK is free.

It's written using .NET. There's no COM or TAPI involved. They are both old technologies and it doesn't make sense to start writing a new application using old technologies.

There's more information about this on Glorsoft's website.

Declaration: I work for Glorsoft but this answer is accurate and hopefully helpful.

Eoghan.