Answering Service Blog | American Inbound

Diet.com has unique service for mobile phone users. Anyone with a cellphone can text a quick message containing a restaurant item to DIET1 (34381), and they will text you back with its nutritional content.

A text with the message of “mcdonalds southwest chicken salad” will give you data on its calories, fat, carbs, and protein content. It’s true that most of restaurants keep nutritional information behind the register, but many times it is inconvenient to check. When ordering take-out on the road, for instance.

Skype has released a ‘mini’ beta version of its service, this time, for cell phones. As of now you can only place outgoing calls if you live in Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, or the U.K.

Skype expects beta testing to last several months, and there is no word when all service locations will be able to receive full functionality.

Interested parties should visit Skype’s site and download the beta version of the program available for their cell phone.

2008 will be a year to focus on customer service. Fear of a recession has led many businesses to start making cuts. As the economy slows down, businesses will be trying harder and harder to keep the customers they have. NewsReleaseWire has commented on this, as has Precision Marketing.

Harvard Business school has an interesting article about “The New Math of Customer Relationships.”

Dubai: Taxi-goers in Dubai now have an alternative to manually hailing cabs. The method they’re pioneering is SMS.

They’re designing this system to help passengers who want to order a taxi when waiting on the street. The neat part is they’re installing small boards around the city with location numbers on them. When you text for a taxi, you give the dispatcher the number on the sign closest to you.  They will respond will your reservation number which you give to them upon their arrival.

Samsung is kicking it in to high gear.  They’ve developed brand new battery technology that will allow gadgets to be powered off of water.  Yes ordinary water.  Cnet has written an explanation of this high-tech wizardry on their site. 

Battery life will comprable to current lithium ion batteries.

“According to Oh Yong-soo, vice president of Samsung Electronics Mechanics’ research centre, the new battery could last for up to 10 hours, adding that based on four hours of use daily on average, the hydrogen cartridge will have to be replaced about every five days. ”
 

Well, assuming you live in South Africa.   Starting April 17, residents of Johannesburg, Cape Town, the Free State, Swellendam, and Paarl can check their traffic fines with their cellphone.

Apparently it’s as easy as texting “Register” then your ID number to 34010.  You will shortly receive a response listing all of your unpaid traffic fines. 

Very nifty.  It would be nice if we could get a similar service set up over on this side of the Atlantic.

 ”This service will no doubt go a long way towards making it more accessible and convenient for motorists to check their outstanding fines,” says Wayne Minnaar, the service’s representative spokesperson. 

I was jolted awake this morning at around 4:30 am by rumblings and shakings and explosion sounds.  Luckily it was nothing tragic - just the New Madrid fault line saying hello! 

The earthquake occurred about 21 miles southwest of Vincennes, Indiana, which puts it about 130 miles from our call center in Bloomington, Indiana.  Don’t worry though, quakes do not phase American Inbound.  Through rain, sleet, snow, and seismic activity, American Inbound will be there to answer your phone.

Desperate to improve customer service many companies are going online and utilizing various social networking services to reach their customers. 

Twitter seems to be the network of choice.  It’s by far the simplest social networking site, and simple can be a great thing sometimes.

Comcast Cable’s twitter account is getting a lot of online buzz.  If you have a twitter account all you have to do is type in @comcast and then your message, and you should shortly get a response from a technician. 

Dell is on twitter as well. So is SouthWest Airlines; they offered customers $50 back if they booked their tickets through twitter.

Many business have “community managers” who monitor twitter. These companies include:
Linkedin, Yahoo, Lego, Mozilla, Microsoft, Flock, Oracle, Coserve Electric, and the Los Angeles Fire Department.

So if your company is looking for another conduit for customer service, go on and sign up for a twitter account.

If you live in Oregon, you may have been sent a phony Amber Alert.

The text reads: “AMBER ALERT! Albany area-2 little girls kidnapped around noon. Suspect is driving brown jeep liberty. Plate number 43 6519 please send to everyone.”

The alert was cancelled when the mother and children were brought into custody in Wisconsin.  Officials are unclear as to why a Wisconsin alert was broadcast in Oregon, but are very concerned.  False information such as this can impact the programs effectiveness and lower the public’s confidence in the system. 

While any new bogus alerts should be reported, officials would like to stress that anyone receiving a text message with this information should not report it. 

VoIP can save you money on all types of telephone calls. Originally this could only be done with a computer and an internet line. However, there are several more options available now. Check Techcrunch’s list of VoIP providers for cell phones. They have also written up an excellent guide to the VoIP world. So if you haven’t heard of ViOP at all, their article is a great place to start.