AskRobin: Your personal concierge
Al-Haadi Abu Bakar
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
LET'S face it, not everybody knows how to get around the Internet to look for stuffs they want, and in the end, they ask the next best person they could find for help. I still get calls from a couple of friends asking me for suggestions like where's the best place to eat in my area, or the contact number for XYZ.
We ask for these services all the time, from booking a table at a restaurant to flight arrival enquiries to ticket reservations for a movie. But it is a tedious process — all the phone calls we have to make and even relying on the Internet — you still have to do a lot of searching. It's no wonder we usually give up and ask our most resourceful friend for information.
Modasys Technology, the company that brought us CoolTonez, has recently rolled out the solution to this problem in the form of an SMS-based call centre service. It's called AskRobin. Think of this service as a personal concierge that you SMS with to get the things you want. You no longer have to bug your friends for information, suggestions, directions or bookings when you can just ask Robin (get the pun?).
You do this by typing your questions on your phone and sending the text message to 39993, AskRobin's dedicated number, and within a minute or two, will get an appropriate response for your queries. You can ask questions like "What movies are showing at The Mall Cineplex tonight?" or "I want to book a table for two at CheezBox".
AskRobin isn't computer generated, it's human-to-human interaction, so you actually talk to real people. At the end of the line are highly-trained operators, known as the Robins, who have 24-hour access to a library of information and resources at their fingertips, so you can ask virtually anything, and these guys will be hard at work to get you the information you need.
And because it's not computer-generated, you can send your messages in an informal manner so your messages don't have to be grammatically accurate. You can fire away short and quick messages as you like and you'd still be able to get a response from the Robins, just as you would from a concierge at a hotel.
Unlike conventional call centres, AskRobin is primarily SMS based. This is a good thing because personally, I'm never comfortable with conventional call centres. There are some of us who never really enjoyed being put on hold whilst up to our elbows, and the awkward communication with the operator to make sure you're relaying your questions clearly and concisely.
The beauty about SMS call centres is that naturally you won't really worry so much about the time lag between sending your messages and receiving messages. You just pop a question and send and forget it until you get a reply, just like how we normally interact with our friends and contacts via SMS.
I believe AskRobin will fit most of our lifestyles. Everybody has a mobile phone now, and people of all ages know how to send text messages. So this service makes sense for everybody, especially for those who aren't wired to the cyberspace like most of us.
AskRobin is already online and is available for B-Mobile subscribers and Modasys is currently working to get DST on board as well. The company is also getting in more vendors, outlets and restaurants to subscribe to the system which would benefit both the businesses and the customers in terms of query matching. Twenty companies have signed up for the service, including big name outlets such as KFC, Cheezbox, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Mamih, Gripps Cafe, Secret Recipe, Dairy Queen, Cottage Grill, Rasamas, Au Lait Cafe and Pizza Hut.
Once again, I applaud the boys over at the iCentre for coming up with this innovation and I personally believe that AskRobin is one innovation that will be a big hit in Brunei and even globally.The Brunei Times
