Clickatell and Dontgo Launch Real-time SMS Customer Feedback Service  

Redwood City, US and Cape Town, SA: January 22, 2008 – Clickatell, global provider of mobile messaging and Dontgo, online consumer advocate service, today announced the launch of an innovative mobile customer service notification system. Maintaining excellent customer service is the top concern for most organizations. Using Clickatell’s global mobile messaging services, Dontgo provides consumers with the power to easily send text messages directly from their cell phones at the time of service. Customers can report bad service using their cell phone in a matter of seconds. Consumers can also decide to let people know about extraordinary service using the same system.

Research reveals only a fraction of customers complain to businesses directly when they receive bad service, giving companies little chance to deal with problems directly. Most consumers around the globe simply withdraw their support and criticize the establishment to anyone who’ll listen. Now, using the Dontgo mobile customer feedback system, customers can communicate to organizations directly, sending them an SMS on the spot. This enables organizations to listen and respond to complaints about negative customer service experiences immediately – rather than after weeks of dissatisfaction. Available today in South Africa, this new service is being used by a broad range of organizations including restaurants, hotels, airlines, grocery store chains, and many other businesses. To find out more, please visit Dontgo’s website www.dontgo.co.za.

“Businesses everywhere are challenged by not knowing the reasons why customers don’t come back to their establishment, other than telling the manager on the spot, which most people simply don’t do,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell. “Customers everywhere carry cell phones which now can easily be used to provide honest customer feedback via simple text messaging in real time at the point of service. Dontgo’s innovative feedback service is a prime example of how businesses everywhere can leverage text messaging to better interact directly with their customers and improve the overall customer experience.”

Dontgo provides organizations with several service options for customer care to easily monitor, pre-empt and address service shortfalls. Participating organizations advertise the service in their retail outlets so their customers can provide feedback for their complaints using their cell phones. Customers send the keyword, “don’t” to a specific SMS short code “34040”, followed by the name of the company and their comment. Dontgo then sends the information via email to subscribers at a nominal cost per month. Non-subscribers are called and provided with alerts at no cost on the first occasion. Industry specific service reports are also available to participating organizations which outline continued service problems and create the opportunity for them to establish a competitive service advantage.

“Our service is designed to help companies build and protect their brand through effective complaints resolution directly from the people who matter most – the customer. With ubiquitous mobile phone use around the globe, the ability to offer instant feedback using SMS makes customer service better,” says Moshe Sohaba, chief executive of Dontgo, who decided to launch this innovative service after a particularly bad holiday experience involving his family, an hour wait for the wrong breakfast, and a very unsympathetic salesperson.

“Clickatell made it easy for us to integrate mobility into our online business by providing its proven online procurement system for easy set up and integration. They also understood how to help us implement best practices around mobile messaging and its infrastructure links us to all major mobile operators, ensuring we have instant connectivity to all our customers,” says Sohaba.