ALKHOBAR: We all have friends who act as Human GPS services. It’s really embarrassing to have to telephone someone and get directions or ask what time some shop closes. The person knows it’s not a friendly chat — you want information. And what about when you’re on vacation somewhere and you’re looking for an Italian restaurant that gets good reviews and is within your budget? How can you find it? Just imagine if that information was just an SMS away. Actually it is. Welcome to the possibilities of ISAL.
“I got the idea for ISAL when I was living in the US and Europe. I saw a huge gap in the Directory Services available in the Kingdom,” said Mahmoud E. Baban, a 28-year-old Saudi. “If you just look at the basic directory services here, in the past you would call and be put on hold for a while and then they would give you a number and it would be incorrect and then you’d have to call them back again. To be frank, access to information can be very difficult — especially when you’re away from home or office.”
Two years ago, Baban created, “SUAL W JAWAB” (S&J Ltd.) with another Saudi partner, Mohamed Al-Rayyan. Their company was set up to provide innovative mobile services. SUAL W JAWAB’s first offering is a next generation Directory Service called ISAL. The service has been a success from the start because market research, technology investigation and team recruitment were all part of the process of taking the service live.
“I tried some really interesting Directory and Information Services in the UK and US. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so I used those services for my inspiration, but I believe that our team created something better,” said Baban. “We improved on what’s out there in other geographies. We had to consider the needs of users in the Middle East. That means offering the services in both Arabic and English because we wanted to attract the broadest potential customer pool. At the end of the day, to be honest, I wanted to create something that I would like to use myself.”
ISAL targets people who are on the go, who have no Internet access, but who need information quickly. The service is also ideal for those who want a fast answer and don’t have the time to dig through dozens of websites to find the needed information. ISAL aims to provide a witty, concise, well informed answer within minutes.
“I believe that our preparation and attention to detail has served us well,” remarked Baban. “Almost from the start there were a lot of copycat services. That’s just how it is in the Middle East. People see that you are doing well and they will try to imitate you. But the copycats didn’t pick the right procedures and protocols. We took our time and put everything in place before we launched. Even now there are services trying to compete with us.”
To begin using ISAL, if you are an STC customer, you text the word SUB to 806280. If you are with Mobily, text SUB to 606560. The subscription to the service is SR12 per month, plus three riyals per question answered. Once the subscription is started, to ask questions just send the question in Arabic or English and within minutes an answer will be sent back. ISAL aims for a response time of three to five minutes. It’s very simple. Try it by asking a question for free through the ISAL website at www.isalsms.com.
“The secret to our service is the human touch. It’s not automated. There’s thought put into it. You know how sometimes you telephone a call center and you get, 'press 1 and then press 4 and then press some more?' Well, we wanted to avoid that,” said Baban. “We do use some automation at the back end, so that the service runs in a quick, efficient manner, but there’s always a person who’s making sure that the answer a customer receives to the question asked is the best available.”
To run the ISAL service, SUAL W JAWAB makes use of the talents of about 40 team members. These are mostly part-time information workers; the majority of whom are women working from their homes in the Kingdom. The partners at SUAL W JAWAB believe that ISAL is showing how it is possible for women in Saudi society to take care of their family obligations and also contribute to the family income from home — something that’s very important considering the current economic uncertainties the average Saudi family is facing.
“In the course of doing the market research to set up ISAL, we discovered that there was a huge appetite for part time work from women in Saudi Arabia. Our researchers are like our family and a lot of them are pregnant ladies so our family is always growing!” said Baban with a laugh. “For our team we decided to target individuals who are at home a lot, who are tech savvy and who don’t have much else to do. Working for ISAL is a good way for them to generate an auxiliary income. Even if a person has another job, she could work for ISAL on the weekends, answering questions and making some money. Our researchers are thoroughly vetted. We make sure that they have the language skills required and an interest in customer service. We aim not just to provide a response, but to give an answer that really adds value and leaves the customer satisfied and with a good feeling about ISAL.”
While SUAL W JAWAB has been set up as a completely independent commercial entity from the legal perspective, it does leverage the brick and mortar assets of Baban’s family. This has kept overhead low and given the company time to grow. As of last month, the ISAL website had registered over two million impressions. Responses to questions are brief and to the point, limited to the 160 character maximum that can be sent as a single text message. Peak periods for use of the ISAL service are after working hours and on the weekends when people are out and about. It has also developed that subscribers turn to the service wherever they are in the world. ISAL has become a lifeline for people when they are on vacation or business trips and don’t have access to other information services.
The team has protocols in place to handle the various types of questions they may receive. There’s also a mechanism to deal with improper questions. If someone asks an inappropriate question, the question is flagged and a record is kept of it. The subscriber will receive a computer generated response advising that such questions are never answered and requesting that the service be used for legitimate queries. Such a response would be sent not only for an obscene question but also for a question such as, “How could I kill a neighbor who’s annoying me?”
“We get a lot of questions regarding ‘Who am I?’ It’s generally one of the first questions people ask when they subscribe to the ISAL service. There are a lot of rhetorical questions such as ‘What is the meaning of life’ and ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ These days we are also getting some serious questions about economic issues. Of course, there are the standard questions about directions to a certain place or a specific type of restaurant in an unfamiliar city,” said Baban. “We do our best to produce a satisfactory answer to every question. Once we answer a question it goes into a database and can be referenced for an even faster response the next time.”
The ISAL service is currently live only in Saudi Arabia, but in the next few weeks it is scheduled to launch for mobile users in the UAE and then most of the Levant area, Egypt Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, eventually moving to cover the whole of the Middle East. So think of a question and challenge the ISAL team. After their success in the Kingdom, they believe they are ready to provide answers every time.
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