Your personal concierge, in your pocket

Graphics by BT/Ayi Hermala

LOCAL IT firm Expansys Technologies is developing a business-to-customer solution that will let anyone with a cellphone make plans and perform tasks via short message service (SMS).

Once it rolls out in January next year, AskRobin will allow users to ask it to perform tasks such as find the nearest Italian restaurant and book a table, look up movie listings, make reservations at a hotel or look up the phone number and address of a local business by sending a request through SMS.

"AskRobin can help you find and plan things to do. You can ask Robin to find a place for dinner for two, tell you what's playing at the movies or make reservations for a hotel for you. You no longer have to make a call to the source or going directly to a website and doing a traditional search. You just simply 'SMS to Robin'. You can just ask about anything in anyway you want," said Keeran Janin, the firm's founder and managing director.

How this works is that the IT company will establish a dedicated five-digit number which users can SMS to. The user types in a request for example 'I would like to eat at Excapade tonight, table for five' which will then be relayed to the system and an operator on duty (called a Robin) will arrange the reservations by communicating with the restaurant. The user will then be notified minutes later with a reply confirming that the booking has been arranged.

"It's much easier and faster to say what you need than having to go through the manual search mechanisms yourself. Just like a real concierge, AskRobin understands what you say, accomplishes tasks for you and adapts to your preferences over time."

"The idea of the service is to consider Robin as 'your friend who has all the resources'. It's got a human element to it. It's conversational and not entirely computerised," said Janin.

AskRobin is currently in its testing phase. His company plans to validate its business model within Brunei throughout next year before introducing the service to countries like Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, among others.

"AskRobin will be a low-cost solution for businesses where we would pool together all the SME-level businesses, giving them a very easy, low-cost way to connect and also to provide a gateway for customers to connect to," he said.

"This business model works best in countries where poor business-to-customer relationships are very common. Unlike the western countries where a lot of the customers have easy access to the Internet and have smartphones, developing countries such as in the Southeast Asian region do not have these luxuries and many still use the regular mobile phones, and a lot of them still send SMS as their economical method of communication."

One of the pioneer incubatees of Brunei's first tech incubator program set up by the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB), Janin came up with the idea about four years ago and is hoping his tenure with the iCentre will help his company penetrate bigger markets abroad, such as Indonesia.

"Brunei has 400,000 mobile phone subscribers, if we can validate a business model within Brunei, imagine what we can do when we deploy our system into a country with over a hundred million subscribers."

The requirements for a company to subscribe to the service is a minimum of a $100 per operator monthly, and a computer with an Internet connection. No additional advanced hardware is needed. Customers will be charged for every text message sent to AskRobin.

Based on years of observation and complaints, Janin pointed out direct customer services are out of reach of many SMEs in the country.

"Call centres are generally expensive and requires a specialist staff to run and operate a customer service call centres. Normally, the large companies can afford these $100,000 system in their organisation. The SME-level businesses, however, cannot afford to invest in these kind of services. They probably got only one person manning the reception to communicate with their customers," he said.

"We've already got a few businesses that have subscribed with us for this service. We're looking at businesses with high traffic to begin with, and we will continue to get more subscribers after the launch."

Expansys is starting with five "highly-trained" operators, or Robins, in the centre, and will hire more as its needs grow. The system is not intended to replace existing call centres in many organisations, but rather to compliment them.

"We're helping businesses reach their customers and help customers reach the businesses more effectively and efficiently. Its a win-win situation for both," he said.

Janin is also looking at other possible areas to explore such as the public sector and community services.

"The service will not only be limited to businesses such as restaurants or banking, but will also be capable of helping customers with directions, flight times or weather conditions," he said.

The Brunei Times