Case study: Ask Us Anything

In 2008, The Number 118 118 launched a service that can respond to any question sent to it, from "Why is the sky blue?" to "Where can I get a late night curry?". Building on an already successful relationship, 118 118 teamed up with MX Telecom to create this solution.

The end result is the award-winning Ask Us Anything. Key to its success is MX Telecom's emphasis on developing in-house platforms that act as powerful, comprehensive toolkits, rather than reactive and limited one-off solutions.

Concept

Ask Us Anything (AUA) uses multiple integrated MX Telecom products. The backbone of this service is our CMX2 platform, a powerful message handler. Our SMS gateway routes text messages to and from end users, while our Agent Portal provides an easy to use interface between 118 118 operators and the system.

End users can access AUA through the Internet, text messaging, and standard phone calls. Questions are routed to CMX2, which matches them against a database of popular queries, even if mistyped. This enables it to answer frequently asked questions quickly.

If there isn't a match, the query is passed to the Agent Portal, where operators handle it through a browser interface that displays likely answers from 118 118's query database. The agents can select a response or provide their own, which is then delivered to the user.

I was able to get really involved in Ask Us Anything, from brainstorming ideas to diving into the code and optimising different components. It's one of the most interesting code challenges I have undertaken, and seeing it all come off was great.
— Will Lewis, Software Developer