HeyCosmo’s Concierge
The people who brought you Prankster are back, this time with a more useful, down-to-earth application that may become something you use regularly, rather than just a couple of times as a joke.
Concierge is a new personal secretary type application that makes phone calls for you and collects information you may need, confirming appointments, cancellations, or availability. It’s all automated and for many could be extremely useful. Did I mention that it’s free?
Whether or not it lasts, it can be useful while it does. Using Concierge, I was able to confirm an appointment for the dentist next week and check on the status of my wife’s car in the garage. All without making a phone call myself. These are simple tasks that I probably could have accomplished on my own more quickly, but were worth using as test subjects for the app anyway.
It works simply: you plug in the information, including questions you want asked (simple yes/no scenarios are best) and where you want the answers delivered (email or text message). Then you give it the phone number(s) to call with the automated questions. When people are called, they get a generic voice telling them that it is an automated call on behalf of you and could they please answer a couple of questions regarding the subject you’ve specified.
The person being called then answers the questions you’ve put in with 1 for yes or 2 for no. The responses are forwarded to you automatically. For busy offices in multiple locations, for instance, this could be a lifesaver when a conference call is rescheduled or canceled, making sure everyone involved is aware of the change and saving man hours and confusion. It could also automate the process of finding dinner reservations on short notice, calling several restaurants for you to check table availability.
There are a lot of possibilities for this app and I was impressed with how easy it was to use. Now if only this were available on the iPhone…
