We recently attended a pre-Christmas party with one of our many lovely customers. A co-invitee was AskPorter.
AskPorter is an ingenious AI-based concierge service that deals with all kinds of property-management issues digitally, thereby saving property management professionals a whole lot of time.
Suppose you’re a tenant in a managed block of flats and there’s a problem with the communal entrance door. You would call AskPorter or open the app, and you’d explain what’s going on. AskPorter would, based on your responses to questions it asks, organise a solution.
It would, in all likelihood, call a locksmith and give them a job brief. The locksmith—fingers crossed that they call Metrolocks! ;)—would attend, do the job, report back to AskPorter, and everything’s hunky-dory.
It’s not fair to liken AskPorter with Mr Burns, but it’s a funny moment in The Simpsons all the same.
“But how can AI software understand all the issues a building can have?” I hear you ask.
It’s not that hard, really. We at Metrolocks, for instance, have a bank of about 60 diagnostic conversations we can have with tenants.
Picture this:
- locksmith: Hello, how can I help?
- tenant: Hi, I can’t get into the main entrance door of my block.
- locksmith: What happens when you put the key in?
- tenant: That’s just it: I can’t put the key in.
That alone is enough info for a locksmith to be sent out. There might be something stuck in the lock, e.g. a piece of snapped-off key. What’s more, this is a typical communal entrance door problem which we fix about once a week.
AskPorter will also know the consequences of this problem. Often, when something is stuck in the lock, it’s ‘curtains’, so to speak: the lock would need to be replaced. On a main entrance door, this is difficult, because keys need to be distributed to the tenants.
All depending, AskPorter would give us instructions. We might be asked to change the lock and leave all keys with a particular tenant. It might ask us to disable the lock, and we’d have to hope for the best that no miscreants notice.
It’s a terribly clever product, simply because call-handlers’ jobs (whether property managers or our locksmith office support staff) often involve very routine problems with very routine solutions.
As usual, when you chat with tech-wizards like the folks at AskPorter, you hear “And on top of that…” and “Not only this, but also…” a lot. Indeed, it’s a wide-reaching and pretty amazing service that is useful and helpful for property managers, tradesmen and tenants alike. Very cool indeed!
Use Metrolocks for all you locksmith needs!
We’re a London-wide locksmith firm with over 25 years’ experience, ready to step in at short notice.