Add / Remove In the US, over 50 percent of companies currently provide customer service via social media, and we have already seen Places enabling customers to talk to any local business via text message. Moving customer relations online makes support teams more available and approachable, significantly cutting down on the stress and costs associated with call centres. Now, two new solutions from Germany and India are hoping to help the rest of the world’s businesses catch up — providing new platforms for digital customer service. Haptik is a mobile messaging assistant from India which enables customers to receive real-time support and information for over 200 international companies, including American Express, BMW, British Airways and many more. Users begin by downloading the app to their smartphone or tablet. They then send a query to Haptik via the WhatsApp-style platform and an assistant will respond within six minutes. The platform’s experts — who specialize in specific areas such as wireless and telecom or food and delivery — offer a huge range of services from finding a mobile plan, to locating a nearby ATM, to troubleshooting a customer’s IT problem. Users simply browse the categories in the app to see if Haptik can help with their particular problem. As more companies come on board, potential services offered will continue to expand. In Germany meanwhile, Hello.de offer a similar service using the pre-existing social messaging platform — WhatsApp — as well as social media sites including Facebook and Twitter. Businesses can outsource their customer services to Hello.de who will provide a gateway platform on WhatsApp where consumer problems and enquiries can be seen to by Hello.de’s e-commerce sales assistants. Additionally, their staff can respond to queries on Twitter and Facebook, managing the companies’ reputation and offering customers a more enjoyable alternative to lengthy, costly phone calls. Are there other businesses that could make use of these services? Website: www.hello-online.de & www.haptik.co Contact: www.hello-online.de/contact & www.haptik.co/contact

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Call centres replaced by WhatsApp customer support

Add / Remove Exercise bikes may be great for those looking to train in bad weather, but the experience has a number of significant drawbacks for the avid cyclist. Gone are the rolling hills of a scenic touring route, and also absent are any cycling companions to lend a sense of camaraderie and competition. Looking to address this, VeloReality’s training software simulates rides through famous scenic cycle tracks and roads via responsive HD videos. Indoor training cyclists can connect their training bikes to the software during the off-season and experience real resistance, admiring the views, which change in correspondence to the bike’s actual speed. Now, the latest incarnation of their VRide product — VRide Multi — connects riders to an online network, which enables them to find other cyclists also undertaking a VR ride, and join them on the course. To start, cyclists simply plug in the VeloReality USB hard drive to their bike, and load up the VRide Multi map of Europe showing all current users. They can then choose from any of the training courses they have purchased — each course covers approximately 40km and costs EUR 9.95 — and fast forward the cinema quality video to the current position of their new teammate or competitor. The riders then cycle alongside each other, adding friendly competition to the otherwise lonely pursuit of indoor cycling. We have already seen companies offering a range of visual stimulation and responsive equipment to motivate users — such as BitGym’s vibration based exercise platform — but VRide Multi is the first to enable remote interaction between users, injecting a welcome element of comradery to off-season training. It is currently in Beta and welcoming cycling enthusiasts to test the system. It is compatible with a growing number of indoor bikes including VeloReality’s own LYNX trainer. Are there other ways to connect athletes to each other remotely, for stimulation during training? Website: www.veloreality.com Contact: gary@veloreality.com

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Virtual reality cycle videos let indoor cyclists race each other

Add / Remove Among the many alternatives, energy produced from waste products remains one of the most ecologically sound methods for creating power. We have already seen used ground coffee converted into fertilizer by Espressogrow , and now Bio-Bean are a UK based start-up turning the used beans from London’s many coffee shops into green energy. In London alone, coffee shops and instant coffee factories produce over 200,000 tonnes of coffee waste per year. Bio-Bean collects these waste coffee grounds from coffee shops, roasteries and freeze-dried coffee facilities and transport them to their local processing plant, where they can be recycled and turned into biofuel. The process is far more ecologically sound than other traditional disposal procedures, such as dumping the ground in landfill, which releases harmful green house gases into the atmosphere. Bio-Bean process the waste into two advanced carbon-neutral Biofuel products — biomass pellets and biodiesel — which they sell to London businesses to power buildings and transport, reducing landfill waste, fossil fuels and methane production. The products are carbon-neutral because they make use of an existing source material, as opposed to biofuel produced from crops such as corn ethanol, which take away land from food production. Converting ground coffee beans into energy isn’t an entirely new idea, but the scale of the operation means it could have a far greater impact than earlier schemes. Are there other waste products created in the food industry which could be recycled by other businesses? Website: www.bio-bean.com Contact: info@bio-bean.com

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London’s used coffee beans power buildings and transport

Add / Remove After large scale disasters such hurricanes or floods, affected areas are often left without power, making it much harder for emergency services to find and help survivors. Delays of minutes or hours can often mean the difference between life and death. We have already seen the Ambulance Drone — an all purpose medical toolkit that can be flown into emergency situations, and now WindStream Technologies has developed the MobileMill — a portable trailer which harvests both solar and wind power, designed for first responders at disaster sites where other power sources have been knocked out. WindStream developed the MobileMill at the request of the Indiana Department of Homeland Security. The portable energy unit adapts the hybrid technology of WindStream’s SolarMill , which combines solar photovoltaic panels and vertical axis wind turbines into one small scale, high density device. Often, the drawback of renewable energy products is their reliance on uncontrollable environmental factors — solar panels can only function in the daytime, while wind power generation is very unpredictable. By combining the two into an integrated device, WindStream’s SolarMill becomes an efficient and scalable consumer driven product — a single unit, installed on a user’s roof, can harvest almost 1000W. The MobileMill, on the other hand, is a portable command centre which can be operational within a minute of its arrival and provide 4kW of renewable energy. The trailer is constructed of stainless steal and alluminium and can be attached to any vehicle. It can transport, power and charge a full control centre containing computers and radios, powering the emergency services for up to three days on renewable energy with an 18kWh battery array. You can watch the video below for more information: Are there other ways to adapt renewable energy devices to assist the emergency services? Website: www.windstream-inc.com Contact: www.windstream-inc.com/contact

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Portable energy mill provides both wind and solar power at disaster sites

Add / Remove Good service can make or break a dining experience and restauranteurs rely heavily on their waiting staff to represent them with friendly and appropriate service. However, the restaurant floor is often a chaotic and fast moving environment, making it difficult to provide the level of service even the staff themselves aspire to. To help, Omni Brain Lab in Spain have developed the Owl — a discreet, smart device — to help restauranteurs improve communication between themselves and their customers and improve efficiency in hectic hospitality businesses. One Owl is placed on each table, where it can be used to enhance and monitor the customer’s purchasing experience via a central management application. The customer adjusts the Owl’s position to indicate their needs — whether they’re ready to pay the bill, for examples — and the device registers its position and glows different colors. This helps attract the attention of the waiting staff and subtly lets them know how to respond. First time customers download a free app which connects the Owl to their smartphones, and returning customers are reconnected to the device, enabling management to retrieve their previous purchase history and dining habits. Once connected to the Owl, customers can view the menu on their screen, make their order and share their experience via social media. When they are ready, customers alert the waiting staff that their order is on the way by turning the device to select the waiter icon. The device detects its new position and glows blue. They can also turn the Owl to “do not disturb” mode — indicating to the staff that they wish to be left alone with a white light, and when the time comes to pay the bill, the customer can speed up proceedings by selecting the payment icon. All of the information is communicated to staff in real time, as well as being catalogued in the central management app, transforming it into valuable data to improve business efficiency. Management can monitor the performance of individual staff and encourage personalized service with frequent customers — through recommendations and adjusted service style. Of course, enjoyable dining experiences are often down to the personality of the waiting staff and not simply the speed of service, but the Owl certainly has potential to streamline the process and seamlessly provide useful business insights. Plus a glowing blue light is definitely an improvement on the dreaded finger clicking of an impatient customer. Are there other areas of service which could benefit from a high tech makeover? Website: www.omnibrainlab.com Contact: info@omnibrainlab.com

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Smart device tells waiting staff when to serve customers

Add / Remove This is part of a series of articles that looks at entrepreneurs hoping to get their ideas off the ground through crowdfunding. At the time of writing, each of these innovations is currently seeking funding. For those who like to quickly check Facebook or catch a short Netflix episode on their tablet before they go to bed, doctors have some bad news — it’s messing with your sleep. Devices emitting blue light affect levels of melatonin, a key ingredient for a good night’s rest. Add in jetlag from business trips and constant city noise and that’s a lot of consumers yearning to doze off peacefully. Hoping to provide a solution is Sprayable Sleep , a skin spray that claims to send users into a slumber within an hour, without the side effects of typical sleeping pills. If the name sounds familiar, it may be because we’ve already written about Sprayable Energy , a product that performs the reverse task of giving users a caffeine boost with a couple of squirts. It’s the same team — San Francisco-based Sprayable — behind the new product, which aims to make it easier and healthier to fall asleep on demand. The product only has 3 ingredients — water, tyrosine (a natural amino acid), and melatonin. According to the company, melatonin pills can deliver an instant hit of the sleep-inducing chemical to the body, with the sometimes unwanted side effect of essentially being knocked out for several hours. Sprayable Sleep differs in its delivery method — by rubbing the spray into the skin, the body absorbs the chemical more slowly, mimicking the body’s naturally gradual release. Because of this, users need to spray about an hour before they intend to sleep. The company recommends 1 spray for a nap, 2 for a decent night’s sleep and 3 for a long-haul flight. Watch the video below for more details about how it works: Sprayable Sleep is available to pre-order from USD 15 a bottle through a current Indiegogo campaign, which ends on 1 March. As consumers seek ever more control over their productivity, could this easy, quick and organic application of drugs become more popular? Indiegogo: www.igg.me/at/sprayable-sleep Website: www.sprayable.co Contact: www.sprayable.co/pages/contact

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Two squirts of Sprayable Sleep will help insomniacs catch some zzzs