A mobile phone store in northern Moscow has employed a robot developed at Skolkovo as a promotional tool to assist with customer queries and boost trade.
Promobot at work at the Beeline store in Moscow. Photo: Vimpelcom
The robot was produced by Skolkovo IT cluster resident Promobot and has been specifically calibrated for its life as an in-store consultant with Beeline, one of Russia’s big three operators and part of the Vimpelcom group.
“This is a unique digital consultant, the only one existing in mobile phone stores,” said Irina Lebedeva, a marketing director at Vimpelcom for the Moscow region.
“Obviously, this is an effective instrument for communicating with clients and distributing promotional information,” she added.
In store, the counter-height robot, which has electric blue eyes and a wide screen for a chest, is known as Mobi, which is short for Mobile Intellectual Beeline Employee.
The robot boasts serious artificial intelligence and can chat with customers, even throwing in the odd joke. It can recommend a suitable tariff and help customers choose a phone.
Mobi decked out in Beeline colors. Photo: Vimpelcom
“You can program any information into him including tariffs, videos and information about tariffs that he can display on the screen, or any images or infographics,” Lebedeva said, adding the robot has a maximum reaction time of two seconds.
Mobi can take care of those awkward silences, too: “I’m just as quick, efficient, mobile and sharp as 4G+ high-speed mobile internet from Beeline,” he muses. “I’m ready to answer any question you may have and if needed search for the information you need in my mobile database. High-tech Mobi is always with you!”
A Promobot robot retails for 350,000 rubles to 600,000 rubles depending on the configuration, roughly the same as Beeline and other companies spend on one-off promo-events.
“Promobot is in itself a promo-event,” Lebedeva said. “And similar solutions from other countries cost a lot more – several thousand dollars more,” she added.
It is a pilot project: Should Mobi prove successful, Beeline will consider equipping more robots at its stores around Moscow.
For Promobot, which has sold more than 150 robots in its short existence, it’s another step in the right direction.
Promobot co-founder Oleg Kivokurtsev told sk.ru that the company sold 50 robots to the Moscow Technological Institute for a study into human-robot interactions. A major company purchased 60 units for distribution across 12 Russian regions, while Moscow firms have bought five. Other clients include a business center in Novosibirsk and an engineering firm in Kazan, Kivokurtsev said.
Albert Yefimov, Skolkovo's chief roboticist, noted: "This robot clearly will not replace a human sales consultant. But it will make being in the phone store seem like a little trip into the future, to a time when robots will work alongside people, learn from people and help them make important decisions."