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Removal of Initial Jingles from Outbound Calls
IND -17 -1444Last modified on December 19th, 2025 at 10:17 am
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Abstract
PxD has operated the Krishi Tarang service in Gujarat since 2016 to provide free agriculture information via mobile phones using a two-way Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform with “outbound” push calls and an “inbound” hotline service.
Weekly push calls were being sent from the PxD system to all the active farmers. Every push call started with an 8-second branding jingle before the agricultural content. We observed, however, that many farmers dropped the call during the jingle before the agricultural content.
In this experiment, we tested whether removing the jingle improved farmers’ access to agricultural content in outbound calls. There was a dramatic improvement in farmers’ engagement with the service. The calls without the jingle saw an increase in the listening rate by 17.8 percentage points (pp). -
Status
Completed
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Start date
Q4 Dec 2017
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End date
Q1 Jan 2018
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Experiment Location
Gujarat, India
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Partner Organization
J-PAL
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Agricultural season
Rabi
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Experiment type
A/B test
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Sample frame / target population
Krishi Tarang farmers who were receiving wheat and cumin push calls in Rabi season
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Sample size
4,999
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Outcome type
Service engagement
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Mode of data collection
PxD administrative data
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Research question(s)
Do calls without jingles have a higher listening rate compared to calls that have jingles at the beginning of the call?
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Research theme
Message framing, Message timing and frequency
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Research Design
The sample frame included only farmers who were receiving wheat and cumin advisory during the ongoing Rabi season, and were not part of other experiments at the time.
A total of 4,999 farmers were randomized into two groups:
- Treatment group (N = 2,499): Farmers received push calls without the introductory jingle.
- Control group (N = 2,500): Farmers received push calls with the standard jingle (status quo).
The experiment employed individual-level randomization, stratified by whether a farmer consistently listened to fewer than 8 seconds per push call prior to the experiment (3.67% of the overall sample). This stratification ensured balance across groups based on the farmers’ prior call engagement.
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Results
Removing the introductory jingle significantly improved farmers’ engagement with the service. The unconditional listening rate (the average amount of agricultural content heard by all farmers, regardless of whether they answered or how long they stayed on the call) was 17.8 pp higher in the treatment group (who received calls without the jingle) compared to the control mean of 44.2%.
In a small sub-group of farmers who had previously dropped calls before the jingle ended (i.e., those who consistently listened for fewer than 8 seconds), listening increased by 8.2 pp compared to the control mean of 6.2%. These results suggest that removing the jingle from the start of calls can meaningfully increase exposure to advisory content.