Woken up 10 minutes prior to a match, with a simple phone call, that is free of cost! This cool service has been floated by Bengaluru-based cloud telephony company, Exotel, for Fifa enthusiasts. Exotel, which provides business phone systems for several organisations, has come up with the idea of call alerts for Fifa. Automated calls go out to people who register on their website, with their name, telephone number and e-mail id and the matches they need to be alerted for.
Chinmay Bhattar, a graduate of BITS Pilani, Hyderabad, and a member of the Exotel team says, “We came up with the idea of a call alert because usually people are more responsive to telephone calls when compared to the alarm on their phones.”
The team took a week to get everything into place, and started with the service on June 20, a couple of days after the World Cup started. Since then they have got around 500 call alert requests. “Once a person has registered with us, we make sure to send them a message four hours before the match, reminding them about the scheduled wake-up call and in case they want to cancel it, they can just give a missed call to a number mentioned in the message,” he adds.
In case a person’s phone is unreachable the team keeps trying to get in touch right until the start of the game, but if someone doesn’t pick up, they don’t get calls for the particular match, again. Chinmay says, “We do understand why snooze buttons for alarms are a popular feature. So we don’t keep trying if a person doesn’t pick up, but if it’s a network issue, we try and make sure we get through before the match is about to begin.”
