Brand: telefoongids

The Telefoongids.nl (The Dutch white pages) has launched a new mobile website.

The most important thing in this development is that the telephone number we see can also be called directly by clicking on it (like a Skype address in our browser). That means that we don’t need to see the numbers we’re looking up anything, we can just press a button ‘call’ and in a later (though not too much later) stage simply say ‘call’. That means that we switch in a dialogue with the word ‘call’ to a spoken dialogue (or from asynchronic, like visiting a website, to synchronic, like calling). Telephone numbers will disappear to the databases they belong in, next generations won’t even know the principle of a number and the white pages can grow out into a social coaching brand. This is a step.

Telefoongids.nl recently has started its beta version of its own chat bot, named Finnu. Who adds msn@detelefoongids.nl to his contact list in Windows Live Messenger (still consequently called by its old name, MSN Messenger) can search for companies, services and people in a typed dialogue, and call them in one click. Telefoongids is the first guidebook in the Netherlands working with a chat bot (tc, Dutch). Brands have more and more dialogues with their customers. Now through a typed dialogue on the computer, more and more often through Instant Messaging on the mobile phone, and after that we will be able to talk to Finnu. If Telefoongids becomes a social coaching brand we will say: “Finnu...” “Hi Erwin!”; “call John for me please”; and John will be called. No matter if John is on our contact list, or has to be found somewhere else: that doesn’t matter to the consumer. As long as he gets called. This is a small step in that direction.