Angel-like help rates double A

By ADAM GIFFORD

Former All Black Norm Hewitt has an angel over his shoulder, helping him keep track of contacts and schedule his increasingly busy days.

Make that Aangel, a service for Vodafone customers now on general release.

How it works. Step one. Dial 808 on your cellphone to leave a voice message for yourself.

Step two. The message is sent to your email or, in the case of phone numbers, back to the phone's address book.

Aangel can automatically update desktop organiser software such as Outlook, Entourage or Palm Desktop, adding to contact lists, event calendars and to-do lists. It will also send SMS appointment reminders to your phone.

Hewitt has been on the service since he met Aangel founder William Cass on a golf course two years ago.

Hewitt said the system was invaluable for his work, which included sports commentary and writing, Outward Bound courses and consulting with commercial and government organisations.

"One of the most important parts of Aangel I find helpful for day-to-day business is I can make appointments and file notes as I go," Hewitt said.

"When I come out of a meeting, I ring Aangel to leave notes of follow-ups. Then when I go through my email, the information is there or in my Outlook diary.

"It is like having a personal assistant to take care of things for $10 a month and the cost of the cellphone calls."

Hewitt said he called Aangel about 10 times a day, and in busy periods more often.

"If someone new rings me I can put them on hold, ring 808 and tell Aangel their number, then go back to the call and the contact is in the system with no typing required.

"One thing I love is when you lose a phone you lose all your numbers and it is like losing an arm. With this system the numbers sit on the Aangel hard drive, they sit on your own hard drive, so when you get a new phone you don't have to program them all back in."

Cass, a director of the Soundline electronics chain, got the idea for Aangel driving on the Desert Rd.

He teamed up with Shane Cole, who had sold internet service provider Paradise to Telstra Saturn. He was intrigued by the idea.

The key to Aangel is the use of human operators, who transcribe the messages within minutes.

"The initial idea was to have voice recognition, but that doesn't work because of the quality of the signal," Cass said.

"Since we were going to have someone proofread the message anyway, we may as well have someone transcribe it too." .

The operators work from home, cutting down overheads.

"A lot of the snake oil is in the software we have created to manage the call centre," Cass said.

Cole has led the small software development team and used his Paradise experience to ensure the system is robust and scalable. About 1000 users have been involved in the pilot, and the current set-up has been tested for 50,000 users.

Cass said the initial target was to sign up 3 to 5 per cent of Vodafone customers to the service.

The good news for Vodafone is that, as well as being a service which will encourage customer loyalty, all Aangel calls remain on its network, so there is no sharing of interconnect revenue.

The pair have patents pending for Aangel and an international expansion plan, which involves licensing the technology and pocketing a fee per call.

Aangel