Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Thanks to Botego, Avea's customer reps now say "Oh be!" (*)

We value all of our clients. It is also true that the larger the operation a particular client is running, the better a chance it is for us to prove the stability of our technology. So, we're proud to announce that Avea, one of the largest telecom companies of Turkey, has chosen us.

Botego will serve as a platform for a faster and more relevant way for Avea's customer rep team to access information. Botego has a lot to offer a company serving millions of customers. Since competition is tougher than ever for a company in the service sector, every single second counts, in terms of both cost and customer satisfaction.

Stay tuned for more exciting news. We still have a lot of moves to make

(*) A quote from Avea ads, expressing the relief one gains for using Avea

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Yet another press appereance for Merve

... on the respected journal of Dogan Media Group, by the respected journalist Serdar Kuzuloglu

http://www.radikal.com.tr/ek_haber.php?ek=sa&haberno=3831

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Facebook application

Now i realize it's been a long series of Merve posts, but it really has become a star application for us. As of today, Facebook community, -virtually the whole Internet community- has access to Merve via the fancy Merve Facebook app. Facebook doesn't allow us to build it in a way people can embed it to their profile pages, so it comes in an application frame.

http://apps.facebook.com/merveyitavla

I wish we had been one of the first Facebook application developers from Turkey, but it's still not too late to catch the train.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Web seminars by Botègo



Introducing the "Web Seminars" we'll be hosting on various popular topics on the first Saturday of every month, starting from 8th of December.

http://www.webseminerleri.com

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Good PR, bad PR

This weekend our product had four national press appearances. One of them was Forbes Turkey, by the technology editor Ersun Erdinc, outlining the idea behind the "Merve'yi tavla" application and how it became popular. It was a follow-up for the detailed article in the September issue and was quite supportive.

The second one is a "men's" magazine named Boxer, which competes with licensed magazines such as the Turkish versions of Esquire, Men's Health and FHM. That one was funny and included actual dialogs with Merve. Boxer claimed that their readers would doubtlessly be capable of talking Merve into going on a date with them and encouraged them to give it a try.

Third one is called Marketing Turkiye. It was a modest article quoted from a press release agency. Still a good channel to promote our brand, though.

The last one was less positive. A marketing agency had created a bot project for Tefal and based it solely on Botego. The idea was to promote Tefal products to women during a conversation. The agency came up with the idea, created the interface, and sold it to Tefal, but Botego was the heart (from an engineering point of view, the "engine") of the project.

To our surprise, the related article published in Fortune Turkey was written as though the marketing agency had manufactured the whole thing and was able to create any kind of bot (which is not correct). The article did not mention Botego at all. When we discussed our concerns with a board member from the agency, we were told they had not intended to present the project as entirely their own creation. We still have not figured out how the miscommunication happened.

Incidents of misinformation cannot always be prevented, so it is important we swiftly address them in order to preserve our brand value.