I-Corps Teams: AskMe Now Enabling live affordable video customer support over off the shelf technology

University Of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Mayaguez PR

Investigators

Abstract

The significance of this I-Corps technology lies in its potential to dramatically facilitate and thus multiply the deployment of direct 2-way video/audio communication between a single control center and several geographically dispersed remote locations to fulfill a wide variety of business needs. This technology facilitates real time live video customer support as well as customer engagement; something that customers seek as shown by the increased use of chat or live video tools at company websites. This project enables more organizations to leverage the benefits of live video conversations to effectively support their clients and expand their markets by better serving their customers and becoming more competitive in the global markets. To facilitate this proactive detection of potential customers the technology will provide continuous video feeds from all the remote locations to the control center. In situations where expert advice is scarce and/or an expensive resource, this technology could dramatically increase the utilization, availability and accessibility of this resource at a cost significantly lower than that of deploying personnel to every location. This I-Corps team believes that the proposed product will be a novel subscription-based web technology enabling organizations to establish and manage interactive real-time two-way video/audio conversations using off-the-shelf portable devices over Internet access. This team further believes that the product could provide a simple web-based solution enabling a myriad of applications such as; Interactive Marketing, Security Concierges, Mall Directories and Live Customer Support among many others. The team intends to use the I-Corps funds to participate in related industry conferences and to conduct customer interviews in different sectors of the USA market. The ultimate goal of the team is to validate, at a national level: the need and acceptance of the proposed technology, that customers are willing to use video solutions as a means for a customer solution, and that retail stores in the USA have a need for a customer service solution.