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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – At this month's run of the 21st International Lawn, Garden & Power Equipment Exposition in Louisville, Ky., ExpoDial, a cell phone-enabled attendee information system will make its official debut.
The 2005 International Lawn, Garden & Power Equipment Exposition (EXPO), ranked as the 16th largest trade show in America according to TradeShow Week magazine and will have more than 25,000 registered professional gardening, commercial landscaping and retail dealer attendees. The show will be held Oct. 14 to 16 in Louisville. With around 500 exhibitors in an indoor/outdoor environment, covering almost a half million square feet at the Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center, getting information to attendees easily and quickly is important to show management. EXPO brought in ExpoDial to make information access quick, and to improve the experience that attendees and trade show buyers will have at the event.
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"With an event of this size, navigation and managing information is a daunting task," said Felix Frayman, CEO of ExpoDial. "Many exhibitors have both indoor displays and outdoor demonstration areas, and the thousands of B2B professionals need to make their way to and from many different locations to find the products or visit educational sessions."
Frayman says ExpoDial “is about putting 'information control' literally in the hands of the attendee through their cellular phones.
"People use it as a supplement to the traditional printed show guide,” he continues. ExpoDial enables every registered attendee equipped with their own cell phone to request and listen to all of the show guide's information through simple voice commands.
Based on a foundation of patent-pending technologies, ExpoDial users can ask for this information using simple voice-commands while wandering the exhibition floor. A single, free call while at the show will let a user listen to breaking show news, hear the complete educational seminar schedule, including the individual session descriptions, times, dates and even room numbers.
"ExpoDial is much more of an interactive tool,” Frayman says. “It uses artificial intelligence to build a relationship with attendees. After their initial call and login, the system will refer to the registered attendee by name and will welcome them back at the beginning of each subsequent call. Armed with a short navigation list of common phrases listed in every badge-holder, callers can have ExpoDial do exhibitor and product research for them."
ExpoDial users can initiate a search of exhibitors by company name to find a booth number, or in reverse, a booth number will reveal the company located there. For seekers not sure of the company, the service allows callers to initiate a search of any of the more than 80 product categories determined by the organizer to find companies associated with that grouping.
The voice-initiated request is met with an audio response that can tell the caller the results of the search and reads the individual company names in order. When a caller finds a company of interest, they can request to hear a lot of additional information about that participating exhibitor.
ExpoDial is actually a hybrid tool that combines the advanced audio features with a web-based portal that acts as the input and results source for both the attendee and exhibitor. In partnership with the organizer, attendees can access the portal through a link on the main trade show website. Each exhibitor and attendee is given his or her own personal, secure, web portal. Once logged in, they can adjust their initial profile, add data, for exhibitors, even upload electronic copies of product literature, and spec sheets.
"The ability for attendees to enhance their individual profiles with the specific products and services they are looking for is gold for an exhibitor,” said Ray Verhelst, vice president of ExpoDial. “Adding their objectives while at the show and how they would best like to be contacted, offers prospective vendors volumes of qualifying data to build an appropriate response in their sales process."
According to Verhelst, "For exhibitors, the ability to dramatically supplement the traditional printed show guide with expanded information such as booth objectives, special announcements, featured product descriptions and even presentation schedules, let's them tell their story better with the goal of attracting the customer to the booth."
Industry statistics show that in an event of this size the average attendee only gets to spend quality time with approximately 24 exhibitors over a 2- to 3-day period. This means that even with the best intentions, they will not get to visit with all the companies offering products of interest. ExpoDial provides an attendee-driven solution for this.
When an attendee calls ExpoDial and listens to a company's profile, if they like what they hear, they can request to have this information, including all product literature, transported directly into their personal portal. At the same time, this transaction initiates a reciprocating exchange of the attendee's enhanced profile into the specific exhibitor's portal.
This virtual lead-generation tool lets attendees receive greater volumes of information and provides a low-cost fulfillment solution for the exhibitor. For exhibitors with limited show budgets, the ability to gather high quality leads from those who did not stop by is a tremendous benefit. While the voice system will be active during the show, the personal portals will remain active for an additional 30 days, allowing both groups time to manage the information collected.
ExpoDial is the brainchild of a team of people led by Dr. Felix Frayman of Henderson, Nev.-based Wizdom Technologies. During the last 2 years, Frayman, who holds his doctorate degree in artificial intelligence, has built ExpoDial with the advice of a growing list of industry luminaries, many of whom now sit on his advisory board.
"There is an underlying need for show organizers to provide stronger investment value to their customers. Both exhibitors and attendees want a greater return for their money and time. ExpoDial supplements the two main staples of the show industry, the printed directory and the badge-based lead retrieval system," Frayman said, adding, "by allowing the attendee greater control in gathering information and navigating the show, their experience can be positively elevated. For the exhibitor, reaching a broader scope of potential customers has tremendous value, not to mention the ability to cut fulfillment costs."
Future releases of ExpoDial will offer a multi-lingual capability that can fulfill the needs of international show attendees.