How many times has your mom or dad called with an obvious-to-you question about their phone, or printer, or in the case of my mother, the Apple TV?
Of course, you want to be a good son or daughter and help, but sometimes it’s a bad time or it’s hard to understand the problem without being there with them. That’s where Mummo, a product built at our Disrupt London Hackathon, comes in.
Mummo lets anyone, whether they have a smartphone or not, send a text to the service to get tech help. Mummo responds to each text (via the Twilio API) to get a name and a post code for each customer, and then finds a local helper to solve the problem.
Helpers can be anyone who registers for the service, as Mummo isn’t meant for hardcore IT issues but rather simple problems like upgrading to a newer version of the OS.
“We find that older people are worried about clicking and playing around with gadgets,” said founder Heidi Kähkonen. “We allow anyone who has a basic understanding of tech and some free time to register to be a helper on Mummo.”
The helper can start by initiating a phone call with the customer to try and solve the problem via phone. If it seems that an in-person interaction is necessary, the helper can make a house call.
The client then chooses what to pay, with a minimum required payment for all problems that are solved. For phone calls, the client can pay between £1 and £10, while a house call could range from £10 to £30.
Obviously, the team will have to look into safety concerns (with strangers visiting people’s homes) as well as the right percentage to take for Mummo per transaction. But given that the product was built in the last 24 hours, it’s safe to say Mummo is only starting.
The team hasn’t yet secured a domain, but we’ll be sure to update this post with a link as soon as we get the info.