“I was talking with a friend when he suggested there should be some sort of solution to solve the [bad] customer service quality in Egypt, and it just popped in my mind.”  This is how Ahmed Nagy got the idea for TellUs, a mobile application and business service that provides customer to business communication. 

I need to mention at this point that TellUs is not live, the beta release won’t even come out until the end of October 2012, so why am I writing about it?  I’ll let Hussein Mohieldin, managing director of robusta studio and one of the first businesses to sign up for the service answer: “[TellUs] is Customer Service 2.0 in the making.”

There are few things in the business world that annoy me more than bad customer service.  So an app that promises to revolutionise the customer service experience, and one that was thought up by an Egyptian, was too tempting for me to ignore, even at this early stage.  By now you must be wondering how it all will work.  Like most revolutionary ideas, the concept is wonderfully simple. 

TellUs will let you, the customer, chat with a business through the app on your smartphone.  It will also let the business’ customer service representatives chat back to you using the app on their smartphones.  The core of the idea is really that straightforward.  You can chat about anything, ask questions, make a complaint, or reserve a table, anything.  

Now we’ve all seen people staring at their smartphone’s screen; tapping away chatting with friends through mobile instant messaging applications like whatsapp, so launching a similar service targeting business is intuitively an obvious next step.  But there’s more, you can also become a customer service representative yourself, by signing up as a freelancer on the app, and getting trained by the businesses you choose. 

You’ll be able to work from virtually anywhere, for virtually anyone, now that’s liberation! 

Ahmed showed me much more, but swore me to secrecy.  At the Digital Marketing Arts event this week in Cairo, Google’s Wael Fakharany and George Mikaelin from Nielsen showed great interest in the app.  Egyptian businesses have been signing up already; one such is triptanza, founder Shady Abd El-Galiel explained why, “we expect TellUs to be the next big thing ... TellUs is going to improve our customer service experience.” Even Saudi Arabian business have signed up.

Ahmed also pointed out that Rahim Fazal, founder of Involver; Hanan Abd El-Meguid, chief executive officer of OTVentures; and Omar Soudodi, Souq Egypt’s general manager, have all asked to be notified of when the app is launched.

So if you want to experience a new easy kind of customer service; if you’re any kind of small to large businesses; or if you want to be work as a customer service representative with totally flexible working conditions, subscribe to the mailing list to be notified of the app’s release.  More people equals a better customer service experience.

TellUs promises to be the first in the region, and possibly even the world.  So sign up and join the revolution.