Botégo Blog

Türkçe bilen, şirketinizle ilgili soruların yanıtını bilen, zamanın değerini bilen bilgitabanı uygulaması: BirBilen

2011-01-06T03:15:00.001-08:00

İK'dan, ürün yönetiminden ya da pazarlamadan aylar önce e-posta ile gelen bir dosyayı arıyor, ya da intranet'te bulunduğundan emin olduğunuz bir PDF'e ulaşmaya çalışıyorsunuz. Doğru anahtar sözcüğü 'bulamadıkça' dosyayı bulmanız imkansız! Bulduğunuz bir dosya var, ama eski tarihli. Peki neden hala orada duruyor?

Doküman arama-indeksleme çözümlerinin yaygın bir handikapı var: Türkçe bilmemeleri. Peki bir yazılımın Türkçe bilmesi neyi sağlar? Örneğin 'kart' sözcüğü ile 'kartlar' sözcüğünün aynı köke sahip olduğunu bilmesini... Dolayısıyla, sözcüğün en temel hali olan 'kart' sözcüğüyle arama yaparsınız, oysa dosyada bu sözcük 'kartlar' şeklinde geçiyor. Bu yüzden bulamıyorsunuz.

Bırakın nasıl arama yapmanız gerektiğini bilmenizi gerektirmeyi, imla hatalarınızı bile tolere eden, girdiğiniz sözcüklerin eşanlamlılarını da içeren sonuçlar getiren bir bilgitabanı uygulaması geliştirdik: BirBilen.

Aşağıdaki iki ekran görüntüsü fikir verecektir, daha fazla bilgi için lütfen BirBilen sitesini ziyaret edin ya da http://bit.ly/Bir-Bilen adresinden tanıtım dosyasını indirin.

BirBilen imla hatalarınızı görmezden gelip doğru sonucu öneriyor:

Türkçe bilen BirBilen, araç-taşıt-vasıta ile tür-çeşit sözcüklerinin aynı anlamla kullanıldığını biliyor ve yazdığınız terimlere bağlı kalmıyor:

Eylül ayının gelişmeleri

2010-09-04T02:03:00.000-07:00

Blogumuza Türkçe devam etmeye karar verdik. Şimdilik yarı Türkçe, yarı İngilizce metinler garabet oluştursa da, bir süre sonra Türkçe olanlar ağırlık kazanmış olacak.

Yeni müşterilerden başlayalım... Duyurmakta geç kaldığımız, sezonu kapatmakta olan "Aş kendini gel aşka", Mobilera'nın geliştirdiği, video prodüksiyonuyla uzun süredir yapmak istediğimiz bir uygulama oldu. Dört karakterden birini seçip, Facebook connect ile bağlanarak sohbete başlıyorsunuz. Karakter, Facebook profilinizdeki bilgileri kullanarak sizi şaşırtabiliyor. Ceren'le konuşurken "kız arkadaşın varmış, benle konuşmana bozulmasın?" repliğini gördüğünüzde endişe etmeyin, bu bilgiler yalnızca sohbet boyunca, yazılımın eriştiği servisin kullanımında.

Digiturk için hazırladığımız sanal müşteri temsilcisi, yakında Digiturk WEB TV kullanıcılarının hizmetine girecek. Abonelerin yayınla ilgili sorularını yanıtlayacak olan botumuz, gerektiğinde diyalog geçmişiyle birlikte kontrolü canlı müşteri temsilcisine devredecek.

Bir diğer gelişme, TTGV'ye yaptığımız teşvik başvurusunun onaylanması oldu. TTGV'nin fonu, Tübitak'tan aldığımız destekle birlikte, hedeflerimize daha kısa sürede ulaşmamızı sağlayacak.

Finansbank için ürettiğimiz şirket içi temsilci Bay Nakit'in başarısı sonrası, banka için iki yeni bot siparişi aldık. Bu botlar, farklı birimlerin ürettiği banka kartlarıyla ilgili, banka personelinin yükünü azaltmaya devam edecek. Bizi, mutlu bir müşteriye tekrar hizmet vermek kadar tatmin eden bir şey yok! Ürünlerimiz, çok sayıda personeli olan finans kurumlarına çok somut faydalar sunuyor.

Destekçileri arasında bulunduğumuz Altın Örümcek Web Yarışması'nın 17 Eylül'de Turkcell Kuruçeşme Arena'da düzenlenecek ödül töreninde yayınlanacak kısa tanıtım videomuz, tek bir cümleyle özetlenebilir: "Bizde tüm işleri robotlar yapıyor!" İzlemek için tıklayın:

Sevgili Ömer Ekinci'nin isim babalığını yaptığı ve Can Paçacı'nın çizgileriyle hayat verdiği "Botrettin Hoca", gelen ilginç sorulara, http://www.orucumbozulurmu.com adresinde, Diyanet İşleri web sitesinden derlenen bilgilerle cevap vermeye çalışıyor. Botrettin'le her gün binlerce kişi konuşuyor! NTV'ye de haber olan Botrettin Hoca'nın mesaisi ramazan ayı boyunca sürecek. Bundan sonra da, bu gibi gündemlerde botların farklı kullanım alanlarını ortaya koyan uygulamalar geliştirmeye devam edeceğiz. Böylece bir Zaytung haberi daha gerçek oldu :)

Teknoloji editörü sevgili Kerem Özdemir'in desteğiyle Fortune'da yayınlanan makale, Botego'nun büyük hedeflerini ortaya koyuyor:

Hoşsohbot (hadikaynatalim.com)

2010-07-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

Our new product is the most capable one ever. Three companies, Botego, Rabarba and Sestek joined forces to put their expertise on the table. Result is Hoşsohbot. The client is a Unilever brand: Lipton.

Hoşsohbot utilizes numerous innovative features that a chatbot has to offer. She recognizes names, thousands of records including movie titles, soccer teams and players, song names and artists, astrological signs and a lot more. She can locate the user and surprise him/her by talking about local weather conditions. She can start certain dialogs based on a pre-determined scenario, and remembers everything the user says, so that she can use that information during the whole session.

I don't want to disclose all features on this blog post, so that you can discover them for yourself. Apart from those features, Hoşsohbot is a good example as to how a chatbot experience can be enriched by making use of 3D animation and text-to-speech technologies.

Click here to chat with Hoşsohbot!

Same company, new product

2010-06-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

Returning customer is satisfied customer. With that in mind, we're glad to announce the second product created for another Johnson&Johnson brand, Clean&Clear. Cansu and Ceyda are helping consumers find the best Clean&Clear product, following an enjoyable chat experience.

No wonder why the company showcased the previous campaign at an international marketing event in Paris, where it was mentioned as "one of the most successful digital marketing campaigns of 2009"

This is one of the two products representing our new version open to public (the other one, "Bay Nakit" (Mr. Cash) is used by Finansbank employees) We'll be announcing "more capable" products in a couple of days.

CRM integration is on the way

2010-05-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

Our clients have been asking for various integration options with their existing CRM software. Since we believe in end-to-end solutions in CRM, we think fulfilling this demand is mandatory. So we're taking the first step in the long path of CRM integration. And believing that the first step is usually the most important one, we decided to go with the market leader, SAP.

Following a couple of constructive meetings held with the business development team of SAP Turkey, we think the best way to enter the SAP ecosystem is to participate in the SAP CRM 2010 Event that will be held on June 11th, at The Grand Hyatt Istanbul.

Hope to see you there!

Tubitak support to our R&D activities

2010-04-30T03:17:00.000-07:00

Tubitak recently issued a grant to Botego, as an acknowledgement of our R&D efforts. The amount we'll be receiving represents the fullest extent permitted by the law. We're flattered, and and feel obligated to set the bar even higher.

Events and demos

2010-03-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to share a couple of events (our open-source vision in "Ozgur Yazilim Gunleri", and Natural Language Processing (in Turkish) technology in Webrazzi 3.0 event) we have attended (and will be attending), and three demo files as an update.

Brain aggregation

2010-02-09T05:44:00.000-08:00

Here's a small playground for our R&D activities: A small Q&A chatbot (chat feature coming soon) with some 83.000 questions and answers.

The answers represent a "common mind" that we love to use while populating content for our products.

So go ahead and ask the robot: http://www.robotasor.com

Women-dominated team with no real women in the office

2010-01-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

Interesting approach from Duygu Sayiner, a Platin correspondent mentioning that various "virtual female agents" (Merve, Aslı, Gizem, Selin, Bilge...) are handling all the business Botego does.

HRBot is already a success!

2009-12-18T00:28:00.000-08:00

HRBot has been attracting a lot of attention both from media and prospects. Congratulations once again go to Tugba Avci, for using our support very effectively and turning it into a success story. We hope to be announcing working examples on reputable corporations very soon.

Interesting referral statistics for Botego.com

2009-11-29T13:41:00.000-08:00

The ratio of US-origined visitors is higher than one would expect, given the fact that most of our daily visitors are visiting Merve.

Karaoke with Selin

2009-10-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

Our new MSN® bot Selin invites you to a karaoke session in a rich interactive application. Have fun!

Another case study: Number of "ob.com.tr" visitors was increased 31 times!!!

2009-10-17T03:34:00.000-07:00

You might want to take a look at this press release mentioning the key results of the Johnson&Johnson campaign.

HRbot is tested in a real-world-environment!

2009-09-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

Official news agency of Turkey, "Anadolu Ajansi" recently distributed a press release of ours, announcing that HRbot was tested successfully on Bogazici University graduate students. Despite the fact that our brand was removed from the release, the impact is quite significant.

Congratulations go to our program director Tugba Avci and Software Engineer Nazmi Zorlu.

You're in the army now :)

2009-07-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

Yedek subay sınavı is the name of the exam held to determine where gentlemen holding an undergraduate degree (or higher) will complete their military service. So, we're here to inform the candidates as soon as the results are in. Interesting service! Pretty useful, though.

Information is power

2009-06-27T02:53:00.000-07:00

Millions of queries allow Google to offer this great feature where it spots certain typos.

I had mentioned that we have been collecting a decent amount of conversation data in two and a half years, and explained how we made use of this database.

I was hoping for a case where this database alone could convert into business. Last month a digital agency purchased a small subset of the database. They will be using it on a project where young internet users -who usually don't care about the grammar a lot- will be expected to submit some names in order to succeed on a digital game. So, the application will be typo-tolerant, thanks to Botégo.

I love the idea of monetary gain through experiential and informational knowledge.

A case study: Avea

2009-06-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

Avea has been a Botégo customer since November 2007, and the product has been used intensively since January, 2008. They recently released a report revealing the benefits they've been gaining in this 1,5-year operation. The figures are as we expected.

765.779 units of content have been used by Avea dealers and call center agents.

Botégo has earned Avea an average of 6 seconds per interaction on their customer inquiry tracking system.

With a usage ratio of 50%, average time saved is 15.000 min/month, and 120.121 min. in annual gross.

Botégo has been used on 67% of all customer inquiries, and has reduced the number of total tickets opened, by 29%!

Preparation of customer inquiry tracking templates take 6 seconds less when Botégo is used.

These are a selection of various tangible advantages from the report. We'll be announcing many more with a press release soon.

Business & pleasure

2009-06-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

I'll be representing Tele.com.tr Magazine at the Webby Awards, followed by a couple of visits to VC offices located in lovely New York City. Although i consider both tasks as pleasures, should i manage to make a good pitch, the second one might as well convert into a business. So, we can start a long journey through the Wall Street.

Introducing the "commercial Merve": Ebru.

2009-05-30T05:19:00.001-07:00

Our second B2C product is a variation of Merve. Ebru also aims to improve communication skills of gentlemen. Users are required to pay a flat fee of TRY 1 for each attempt. Every 200th attempt is entitled to win a brand new Nokia cellphone in return.

This is the first time we'll be making use of sweepstakes, so this is a lot of fun!

Should a user be successful on his online date with Ebru, we issue a certificate in his name, that can be printed right away, to demonstrate one's skills as a romantic gentleman. It looks something like this:

Two new college visits

2009-05-23T04:26:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy addressing college students and sharing my experience with them. Last week i was with Dokuz Eylul and Istanbul Ticaret University students. If you'd like me to speak at one of your events, please feel free to ask!

Some news

2009-05-12T05:35:00.000-07:00

1- I had the opportunity to adress Bogazici University students at the "Bilişen" event.
2- We're delighted to have been short listed by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the "Hizli Balik Awards".
3- Gizem will be hitting the 10.000 session remark today. Second B2C project is on the way. We're excited!

Building trust

2009-04-29T04:35:00.000-07:00

We're about to launch a project for o.b., a Johnson&Johnson product. The brand deserves to communicate with the user in a special way and we'll be doing so, where "trust" will be our priority. We'll collect profile information and run a sampling project also.

First commercial B2C product

2009-04-17T03:00:00.000-07:00

Gizem (Mystery) showed us that there's a huge potential in commercial consumer bots. Thanks to the power of one of the largest Facebook groups with almost 900.000 members along with a mobile payment system by the market leader GSM operator Turkcell, Gizem held more than 8000 chat sessions in less than 24 hours. We have two products: A regular 3-minute chat session and a premium service where Gizem personally deals with the user. The first one costs 2.99 TRY, where the premium sells for 19.90. This is a great success story in terms of the product, the ability to generate targeted traffic and effective integration of the mobile payment system. Our new B2C products are on the way, so stay tuned!

Another press coverage

2009-04-05T23:45:00.000-07:00

HRBot was featured on Iste Insan, courtesy of Onur Uysal

Yet another article

2009-03-23T02:31:00.000-07:00

A modest article on Hurriyet, written from a recent press release of ours.

ISA's are the future of the web. Don't take our word for it! (You might want to take MIT's, though)

2009-03-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

Technology Review, published by MIT, lists "Intelligent Software Assistants" among "10 Emerging Technologies of 2009". We couldn't agree more.

Check it out: http://www.technologyreview.com/specialreports/specialreport.aspx?id=37

(Notice how successful they were predicting the ones back in 2001)

Update: Here's the related press release

Get a promotion!

2009-03-03T15:07:00.000-08:00

Our fourth microsite is addressing those suffering from the consequences of the economic crisis. We advise that Botégo will help them stand out in their team and have the attention of their bosses who expect them to:

Increase sales (with our characters creating the WOMM effect)

Reduce costs (with our intelligent personal agents reducing customer service load)

Increase customer satisfaction (with the same agents helping customers find what they want, when they want, without having to deal with annoying call center queues)

Work more efficiently (with our knowledgebase tools that prevent unefficient forms of interaction)

Work with the right people (with the new released product, the "HRBot"

Here how it looks:

Introducing Yildiz, the star of Yedigun

2009-02-27T16:20:00.000-08:00

We built a new female character named Yildiz (Star) for Yedigun, a sister company of PepsiCo. Yedigun has been organizing the annual song contest Yedigun Yildizlari (Yedigun Stars) for a couple of years now, and Yildiz helps prospective contestants with the rules and provides the tension-release they need before they shoot their video.

Yazboz: A great web of interrelated keywords

2009-02-07T06:09:00.000-08:00

The first time i saw Yazboz, i remember thinking "one day, this database will be worth millions of dollars". The idea is simple: "Building the relational web of every word in the dictionary."

The task of coding the complex algorithms behind the technology, encouraging people to manually map the connections between nodes in common sense, and keeping the data clean and accurate is far from easy, though. So, even in relatively early stage of the project, Can Altineller and Ozgur Oktay, two bright people behind the project deserve a lot of credit. The only way to handle this labor-intense task could be through cleverly designing the flow, so that people would enjoy what they're doing, and they did so by positioning the project as a web-based game.

No matter which language you deal with, this database is a very important asset now, given that we're in the beggining of a whole new era, that will revolutionalize the way the web works, thanks to semantic technologies. By the way, Can has worked on various other interesting projects, so don't forget to check out his website.

So the news is; Can and Ozgur had announced that developers could use their API to use the Yazboz data in their projects. Botégo is the first company to use the API in a commercial manner. But since our product requires 100% accuracy in terms of content, this is kind of an exclusive partnership where we'll be using not only the content, but also the technology to keep it clean while it keeps expanding each day.

The concrete result of this partnership will be available to users on our next project we're building for an international soda company. I'm so excited for having the opportunity, and i would like to thank Yazboz team on behalf of ours.

"Bring me fifty fantastic transcripts!"

2009-02-05T06:09:00.000-08:00

Our senior (referring not to his age but his experience) software engineer Çağatay builds some gadgets we use in order to develop new products (and also have fun) in his spare time. What you see on the screenshot is the result of a query for the word "fantastic" in our database, returning 50 results as requested. (Disclaimer: Some might find the content inappropriate as it includes the entries from Merve's transcripts.) You can do the same for the words as unusual as "scholastic", "pretentious" and "hybrid".

The tool functions as a platform for our R&D activities, and the content represents the asset we've built so far.

Playing with the words is what we basically do, and it is a lot of fun!

We won the "most creative new" reward

2009-01-29T12:27:00.000-08:00

We, along with the content provider Es Egitim were honored by "Dogan Yayin Holding" for a bot we recently built for high school students, guiding them on their way to the college.

How we help, who we help

2009-01-25T03:47:00.001-08:00

Now that we have a modest amount of followers in the international web community, i'd like to give some information as to what we do, what our intentions are, and what we have accomplished so far, in the first 22 months of our operation.

Our proprietary technology has been developed from scratch. We gained significant know-how on applications what Wikipedia calls "Weak Artificial Intelligence".

How we help

Virtual intelligent agents: These agents interact with users in a human-like way, helping them retrieve information in an informal, quick and easy way. They operate on the web, on instant messaging platforms and mobile devices.

Knowledgebase tools: This product allows any employee, particularly call-center agents, get self-help on the web in a matter of seconds. It replaces conventional knowledgebase systems which are usually intranets in the form of plain HTML pages. Agents now retreive the information up to 66% faster!

Contextual e-mail autoresponders: Although in early production stage, this product is very promissing for companies dealing with large amount of inbound e-mail traffic.

Who we help

In alphabetical order: Avea (Second largest GSM operator of Turkey), Hepsiburada (Largest e-commerce website of Turkey, owned by one of the largest conglomerates of Turkey, The Dogan Group), TEB (a partner of BNP BARIPAS, sixth largest bank in the world, and the largest one in the Euro region), Tefal (Co-operated with Project House), TTNET (Largest operator of DSL and dial-up services in Turkey)

In the press:

Our technology and applications were covered in variety of national newspapers, magazines and TV channels, including the following:

Please refer to our website for more information

An exclusive offer to the readers of this blog.

2009-01-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

I realised we have a couple of very loyal returning visitors out there who almost come back each day to check for new updates! Given that this blog has an average 20 visitors a day, i thought it wouldn't be an awful idea to offer you guys an opportunity to exclusively test our new product before the official launch date. So whether you already have a shopping experience with Hepsiburada or not, please go ahead and ask a question or two. (Please note that the bot is not responsible for recognizing product names or brands.) Your feedback would be greatly appreciated. And stay tuned for more exclusive news!

Yet another TV appearance

2008-12-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Melih Bayram Dede, the following interview was aired on TVNET, a national TV channel.

Technologic by Melih Bayram Dede from ekim kaya on Vimeo.

The Inet-tr Conference

2008-12-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

We'll be presenting a paper at the Inet-tr Conference on "Virtual Assistants" in Ankara. (ODTÜ, 22nd of December, 4:30-6:30 PM)

Here's the schedule

Update: Here's the video shot during the presentation:

Inet-tr Konferansı 2008 from ekim kaya on Vimeo.

Our virtual office in the US

2008-12-15T03:34:00.000-08:00

Now we have a "virtual" presence in the form of a PO Box and a local phone number in the United States. We're hoping to announce the opening of a "real" New York office in the near future. :)

Time to spread the word. (And the product!)

2008-12-07T11:37:00.000-08:00

We want virtual assistants to be used widely out on the web. So it's kind of a mission for us to make them available for any entity, corporate, or personal. As a part of this effort, we pre-launched the "build your own virtual assistant" tool. We set the official launch date as January 1st, and we'll be collecting valuable feedback from the beta tester community until then. Our PR monster Merve will be promoting the tool during her job, introducing it to some 1500 unique daily visitors of our website.

Although this product offers limited features compared to the Botégo-managed version, it still delivers the core elements of a virtual assistant that you can use on a personal website, blog, or even the corporate web site of an SME. In addition to the usual question&answer feature, it also functions as a guide, automatically navigating the user to the relevant page on the website (depending on the topic the question is related to) making it a really powerful tool. And it's totally free!

I had mentioned on a previous post that we collect transcripts to analyze the data they contain, in order to increase our expertise in language processing. Upon the launch of this product, that content will be of a broader and more diverse nature, since new transcripts from different sources will be pouring in, in compliance with the user agreement. So this is basicly a win-win situation. We're eager to see some working samples around the web! If you're interested in becoming a beta tester, jump into our "close beta test room" on Friendfeed.

Hello world!

2008-11-22T15:53:00.000-08:00

We're also targeting international markets now. Not that the Turkish market has saturated or anything, it's a move we've been planning since the very first day. Our priority has always been creating a decent client base though. Now that we've reached that goal, our next step is to further extend the vision. We've already built a limited demo for a client candidate based in the US. It's a concrete example demonstrating language-independency of our product.

"How to start a business while you study"

2008-11-17T04:49:00.000-08:00

Last week was a week of events. Here's the video shot by Televidyon team during the conference moderated by Etohum founder, Burak Büyükdemir.

Another microsite and another seminar

2008-11-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

As an I.T.U. alumni, i was proud to have the opportunity to attend an MIS class, addressing students on entrepreneurship. Courtesy of Professor Halefsan Sümen, i'll do it again, tomorrow.

We've been bringing up the issues with the web, with a series of microsites. Here's the final one: http://www.insansorar.com (in Turkish)

A cool video conferencing experience

2008-11-11T03:32:00.000-08:00

We participated in a conference held in Sakarya Universitesi by a student club, via Mogulus video streaming network. It was a lot of fun! More than 150 participants watched our demo videos and my presentation online, and asked their questions in the chat room. We love not only creating, but also using internet-based technologies.

What's wrong with the site search?

2008-10-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

Our new viral marketing microsite brings up the question "What's wrong with the site search?" and discusses how major corporations fail with offering a decent site search tool to their clients.

http://www.aramadasorunne.com (in Turkish)

Our virtual assistant is a much more powerful tool increasing customer satisfaction while decreasing costs.

Correction of a miscommunication: Better late, than none...

2008-10-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

I had mentioned an unfortunate incident of miscommunication in the following entry, almost a year ago: http://botego.blogspot.com/2007/11/good-pr-bad-pr.html

Apparently, the folks at Project House have acted responsibly to recover the consequences of this incident, and we appreciate that.

In the following paragraph, Business Development Manager for Groupe SEB acknowledges our function in the BoTefal project honoring our brand with a positive comment. We're pretty relieved by the fact that this advertorial was paid-for by Project House. The title says it all: "Better late, than none"

Introducing Bilge, the virtual assistant

2008-10-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a tiring week at the CeBIT Bilisim exhibition, but our efforts have paid off. Turkey's leading provider of DSL services (with almost 95% market share) showcased our product in a special section prepared solely for the virtual character named "Bilge" (A female name standing for the term "wise"). Hundreds of visitors tested the product extensively, and the results are very promissing.

Here are some sample videos (all in WMV format) demonstrating what Bilge has to offer to users asking for help with:

Locating wi-fi hotspots

User instructions for operating the family protection system

Locating the nearest sales point

Step-by-step visual instructions for setting up the modem

Step-by-step visual instructions for locating connectivity issues

Something pretty irrelevant to the concept

There are many pre-determined scenarios where Bilge handles an inquiry or guides the user with visual instructions, every step of the way. More to come, so stay tuned!

Botégo call center solution

2008-10-04T05:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a presentation (in Turkish) that demonstrates the advantages our call center solution offers. the video is also available in WMV format at: http://www.botego.com/videos/callcentercozumu.wmv (7.09 MB)

Botégo çağrı merkezi çözümü from ekim kaya on Vimeo.

Visit us at Cebit Bilisim Eurasia

2008-10-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

We'll be demonstrating our products and solutions at the Cebit Bilisim Eurasia between 7th-12nd of October. Come visit us at booth #6-159.

Dealing with call center queues

2008-09-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a microsite where we demonstrate how our call center product serves as a knowledgebase and reduces the time needed for call center agents to access information.

http://www.bundanistiyoruz.com

Our lightbox in Taksim subway station

2008-09-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

Ever noticed our ad in the tunnel while you're waiting? It also represents our co-operation with the career portal, cokisimizvar.com.

Employee stock options

2008-07-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Employee stock options was one of the hot topics discussed in the panel organized by Golden Horn Ventures this week. Did we mention that we also offer this type of compensation to share the value our employees help us create?

Sir, we can't stop them! They keep coming!

2008-05-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Merve (along with Nemo Ramjet's videos), general statistics on how much time visitors spend on an average corporate web site doesn't apply to botego.com. According to data from our tracker, more than 30% of our visitors spend more than five minutes on the website. This also includes the 12.9% who spent more than 20 minutes! Did i mention that number of average daily unique visitors is now 1824? Not bad for a one-year-old SME, ha?

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

2007-11-27T11:48:00.000-08:00

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

Yet another press appereance for Merve

2007-11-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

... 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

The Facebook application

2007-11-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

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.

Web seminars by Botègo

2007-11-11T11:46:00.000-08:00

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

Good PR, bad PR

2007-11-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

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.

Now you can embed "Merve" to your own website!

2007-10-31T11:44:00.000-07:00

All you need to do is add the following line to your HTML code, and Merve is up and running on your website!

Trying to hook up with Merve

2007-10-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post. We've been busy building new Botego applications. Our hard work has paid off, too: despite still being beta, our last offering has become quite popular.

Merve (a common female name in Turkish) is a 25-year-old, well-educated, liberal and urban lady from Izmir. The mission of this imaginary character is to help men learn how to approach women. Guys simply take their best shot in an effort to talk Merve into going on a date with them. The nicer you are, the better your chances are. If you're good enough, you can get a date from her. But don't even think of being rude to her, as she'll immediately start ignoring you.

The figures are impressive. As of today, *59,084* dialogs took place. The application was mentioned on over 468 referring websites more than 123.000 times. 42,368 people visited the website, generating 144,156 pageviews. At peak hours, Merve handled 35 dialogs per minute, simultaneously. The average length of a chat session was 10 minutes. That means viewers spent a total of 9847 hours (410 days) viewing the website. All of that happened in less than one week!

That's a solid example of how Botego can create awareness and generate new and repeat website traffic when it is combined with a promising concept.

I love progress!

2007-09-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

I really do...I can't get enough of it. I remember the day we first signed the lease for our office, which was not long ago. (I will tell you the short history of our startup in a future post.) What I had in my mind on that day was a draft of the concept. We're still at a very early stage, but we already have a decent V2.0 plan. In fact, we have executed part of it for one of our clients and called it V1.5.

In a previous post, I said content is more important than the algorithm in terms of the impact to our success. The first major improvement to the algorithm is on the way, and when we're done Botego will move onto the next level, which I call the first step of advancement.

If you're into progress, you're probably inclined to dislike your previous practices. I find this a very healthy approach. I remember improving my score by 25% on the nationwide college examination on my second attempt. I had realized my first try was way too courageous considering how little I was prepared. That's exactly what I feel these days: I'm never satisfied with what we already have in our hands.

Our third press appearance

2007-09-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

Forbes' coverage discloses a lot of details. Too bad there's no English version of the article: Page 1, Page 2

Is it really artificial intelligence?

2007-09-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have asked this question. There are many definitions of AI, and the correct answer depends on the application. For example, here is one definition:

"The ability of a computer to perform tasks, such as reasoning and learning, that human intelligence is capable of doing"

Botego does learn, but the learning process for this commercial software has to be human-controlled. Consider the alternative: if Botego independently uses the information based on statistical analysis of user input, it could easily be mistaken. Remember how Google bombers manipulated search results using the partially-disclosed Google pagerank algorithm? For a product like Botego serving in customer relations, such an incident is unacceptable. With such possibilities in mind, we chose to limit the "intelligence" of Botego, to a certain extent.

Here are two more descriptions of AI which also apply to Botego:

"A generic term commonly used to indicate the inclusion in software of some type of automated application of rules, the results of which give the appearance of 'intelligence' on the part of the computer. An example would be a computer which uses language rules to carry on a conversation with the human using the computer."

"Computational techniques to automate tasks that require human intelligence and the ability to reason."

The terms "intelligence", "learn", and "think" in these definitions are usually in quotes. That seems to be an acknowledgment of the limits of artificial intelligence. But we don't care about the limits. As long as you achieve the expected outcome, it doesn't matter whether you succeed on the Turing Test

If you're a scientist who has spent decades on the science of AI, you're free to call our technology "simple pattern matching". Fair enough. Just be advised that our goal is to satisfy the 90% of what we call "reasonable users*", and so far this goal is accomplished.

Our technology depends 40% on the algorithm and 60% on the content. So even if it was only the content we cared for (which is not the case, as we are improving our algorithm), a 200% increase in our content database would result in a 120% increase in the total success of the application. That improvement is impressive and very easy to achieve!

* Anyone who is aware that Botego is a software tool that doesn't claim to know everything.

What is Botégo?

2007-09-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

Technology is the key element for serving profitability and competitiveness, and innovative companies keep creating new tools for this challenging task. Our company, Yapayzeki Ltd.—our name may be translated “artificial intelligent”—created Botego (short for “Bot with an Ego”, referring to her ability to learn and advance quickly). Botego offers a new approach to various disciplines, such as customer relations management, marketing, human resources and entertainment.

A bot is software used to automate certain tasks and procedures. A good example would be Google’s spiders, responsible for automatically browsing websites to create an up-to-date index. Botego is designed to interact with people in a human-like way. The context and attitude of the interaction are solely determined by our clients in order to serve their efforts to create a better customer experience.

This unique platform based on our technology, along with our expertise on content, makes us a great partner for any type and size of business. And this blog is what this is all about. Add it to your favorites and check it out once in a while

How do you measure success?

2007-07-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

Since we claim Botego can replace a human being (to a certain
extent), we need to support our claim. As I said in the previous
post, our aim is to satisfy the 90% of reasonable users who
understand the context in which a particular Botego application is
operating. You can't blame an engineer for not being able to comment
on a disease. The same thing applies to Botego. Botego on an online
shop is responsible for responding to enquiries regarding purchases,
delivery options, the exchange and return policies of the shop, etc.
It will not return the results of the recent election poll. Good
luck getting that information from a human sales representative!

By the way, have you had any bad experiences dealing with call center
agents? I have. During a recent conversation with one of them, she
tried to explain why they sent the invoice to the recipient although
I had clearly stated the purchased item would be shipped as a gift.
Of course, she couldn't give me a satisfactory explanation.

In short, Botego is able to deliver what she intends to, and the success of a business depends on its approach to its customers, not whether it uses Botego or humans.

We have a winner!

2007-05-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

The newest member of our software team, Semih Balkanci made us proud on the Imagine Cup, an organization by Microsoft. Considering the following quote from Bill Gates, one can tell that this is no ordinary "student software competition":

"I wish there had been an Imagine Cup when I was growing up. It gets people involved in seeing that software is changing the world"

Semih's team won the first round of the competition held in Turkey and they'll be representing our country in Paris.

Way to go Semih!

25.000.000

2007-05-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

Number of questions Botégo has answered so far, has reached a whopping amount mentioned on the title. The figure itself represents a significant know-how, and there's more to this asset than the quantity. It offers a precious medium for data-mining, that we constantly use to develop the product.

A new client

2007-05-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a series of posts, and yet to come... We're proud to announce that our clientele now also includes TEB, a partner of BNP BARIPAS, (sixth largest bank in the world, and the largest one in the Euro region). We'll be serving TEB with our knowledgebase tool, offering an efficient way to reach information.

Google Online Marketing Challenge

2007-05-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

A team participating on the Google Online Marketing Challenge has chosen Botégo as their partner on the project. We approved numerous ads for the campaign they'll be running during the challenge.

They have interesting strategies such as using names of more than 50 call center executives as keywords. Here's how it looks... Brilliant idea!

A new product from Botégo: Automated e-mail responder

2007-04-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

It took our team a couple of months to build a brand new product based on our existing technology. It's an innovative application of our proprietary algorithm. Our pattern matching technology basically detects the contents of an email message and responds accordingly. This product offers amazing possibilities for an organization handling high volumes of email traffic. Any customer support department can use the software to automatically handle the majority of the email traffic. We're looking forward to seeing how a major client uses this application in the near future.

"Free wednesday"

2007-04-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

The weather is now so warm that, even our air conditioned office sometimes lacks the convenience we require. So we occasionally hit the street to find a better workplace. As i work on this post, the core team is enjoying their Mocha's and the fact that only a young internet company can offer such an opportunity.

Merve on National TV

2007-04-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

Click here to watch the video

2008 summer internship applications are now closed

2007-04-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

We were invited to Yildiz Tech for a two-hour presentation based solely on Merve, but i had the opportunity to discuss chatbots in general, offering the participants a broader perspective. It was nice to see a lot of bright individuals asking for internship opportunities at Botégo.

We're now a proud sponsor of Webrazzi, known as "the Techcrunch of Turkey"

A picture is worth a thousand words.

2007-03-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

We're holding regular meetings each Friday where we have intensive discussions with the motive of improving our technology and planning our next moves. This is how our whiteboard looks like following a typical meeting.

Botègo supports innovation

2007-03-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

We're proud to sponsor an event supporting innovative e-business projects: e-fikrim.

Also in news: We co-sponsored İTÜ Sözlük's birthday event where lots of people got to test the product. And here is an interview on turk.internet.com, courtesy of Mrs. Fusun Nebil

Some more press appearance

2007-03-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

Articles mentioning Merve on Digital Age, Sabah Cumartesi and Günaydın. And a low-quality video of the news story on Channel 24. As a result, a Google query for the term "Merve'yi tavla" now returns even more results.

You can't think outside "our box"

2007-02-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

This is a subset of various expressions standing for "Ne haber?" ("What's up?" in Turkish), including virtually every typo you can imagine.
Now that Botego handles more than 50 cumulative dialogs a minute, we've become quite an expert on how our people's minds operate, including how they fail to operate correctly. The total number of conversations has reached the millions, bringing the volume of logs to a whopping amount of gigabytes. Therefore, we no longer need to foresee such variations, as our valuable users have been voluntarily contributing to our database. All we need to do is analyse it with the proprietary software we recently developed. So, you can try out any typo you can imagine, and we'll immediately add it to our list, if we already haven't.

If one of our biggest assets for building innovative products is creativity, the other one is the expertise we've gained from operating those products.

Helping Turk Telekom help their customers

2007-01-15T11:50:00.000-08:00

Turk Telekom is the incumbent telecom operator in Turkey and has been majority-owned by Saudi Oger Telecom, which acquired a 55% stake from the Turkish government for USD 6.55 billion. As of 30 June 2006, the company had approximately 18.9 million fixed lines. Turk Telekom is also a leading provider of DSL services to both residential and business customers, and of leased lines to business customers. For the year ending on 31 December 2005, Turk Telekom had revenues of TRY 7,478 million. Considering these figures, one realizes Turk Telekom has a very large customer base. And now they're *our* customer.

Earlier today, a Botego application we developed for Turk Telekom was featured on their website with a banner which boldly stated "24/7 online customer support" and reported more than 7000 dialogs were recorded in the first couple of hours. We consider the first 10000 dialogs as the pilot dialogs, because they help us see how accurately we forecasted the content the application would need to cover. At this stage I can tell we're pretty successful at addressing the inquiries regarding matters such as DSL issues, tariffs and applications. In more than 500 dialogs, users were redirected to the TTNet call center, a separate entity who has been responsible for DSL operations for quite some time. (Most customers apparently are not aware of that, and they keep calling the Turk Telekom call center for DSL-related issues.) So we're proud to announce that we've already met the expectation of reducing call center costs on the very first day of our operation. As the name "Bot with an ego" implies, we will get better and better each day, so stay tuned for more success stories!