NETSOL Provides Update on OTOZ Mobility Innovation Lab and Partnership with Leading Car-Sharing Company Drivemate

On-Demand Mobility Platform OTOZ Focusing on Providing New Solutions that Encourage the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Practical Applications

CALABASAS, Calif., Aug. 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NETSOL Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTWK), a global business services and enterprise application solutions provider, has provided an update on the efforts within its on-demand mobility platform OTOZ as well as its ongoing strategic partnership with Drivemate, the leading car-sharing, peer-to-peer car rental service in Thailand.

As previously announced in March of this year, the OTOZ Innovation Lab team has been focused on strengthening the current Drivemate platform with a specific emphasis on efficiency, security and scalability.

As the first in a number of planned rollouts, OTOZ is announcing the creation of an artificial intelligence-powered “chatbot” that is intended to cater to renters and car owners, which will be integrated into the current Drivemate chat application LINE.

Historically, Drivemate has utilized a high number of customer service representatives (CSRs) to respond to different types of incoming queries such as booking, checking vehicle availability, and pricing. Through internal research and data, it was discovered that Drivemate renters would rather speak with a CSR than communicate via the Drivemate application. Additionally, Drivemate owners would frequently reach out to Drivemate directly to change their car availability dates among other requests. Both group preferences collectively contributed to a high volume of requests for CSRs to handle, leading to high response times on LINE as well as other unintended issues, which collectively impacted customer experience.

The OTOZ AI-powered chatbot was created to address all these issues.

The chatbot is multi-lingual and takes a hybrid approach, meaning it responds to natural language as well as card-based inputs where a user is given buttons in the form of cards and quick replies to communicate with the bot rather than typing full messages.

The chatbot currently offers the following features:

• Ability to search for cars based on renter preferences such as location, price and brand;
• Reservations;
• Sign-up for new customers using two-factor authentication;
• Responding to renter and owner frequently asked questions any time of day;
• Image recognition to detect driver’s license and other identification cards for booking;
• Persistent, always-available menu for renters to monitor trips, profile information and speak with a CSR;
• Internal chatbot management portal, which has an analytics dashboard to monitor performance of the chatbot’s conversation rate, daily active users (DAUs), etc.

The chatbot also supports hand off to human support in order to ensure a user's query is successfully addressed if the chatbot fails to do so. Within this function is also a messaging portal for a CSR to be able to communicate directly with the user.

In the future, the chatbot will be updated with additional features, including:

• Ability to update car availability dates for owners;
• Update rental prices and car photos on behalf of owners;
• Broadcast messages;
• Conduct customer surveys and suggest relevant promotions for enhanced customer service
• Integrations with other services such as Facebook, WeChat

The OTOZ AI-powered chatbot for Drivemate is currently available through LINE Messenger and will soon be available on the Drivemate website and across Android and iOS platforms.

“On-demand mobility is the fastest growing segment in the global auto ecosystem,” said President, Head of Sales and OTOZ CEO Naeem Ghauri. “OTOZ is positioning itself right in the center of this paradigm shift with a cutting edge platform that will enable all vested stakeholders within the mobility ecosystem to offer innovative solutions to their clients.”

Going forward, the OTOZ platform will be built on other strong partnership models in addition to its current collaboration with Drivemate. It is NETSOL’s intention to offer OTOZ as a white-labeled product, which will be licensed to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), automotive captives and fleet owners in the creation of smart assets for the on-demand mobility needs of corporations as well as small to medium enterprise (SMEs) and private customers.

To learn more about the OTOZ platform, please click here.

About NETSOL Technologies
NETSOL Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTWK) is a worldwide provider of IT and enterprise software solutions primarily serving the global Leasing and Finance industry. The Company’s suite of applications is backed by 40 years of domain expertise and supported by a committed team of more than 1,300 professionals placed in eight strategically located support and delivery centers throughout the world. NFS, LeasePak, LeaseSoft or NFS Ascent – help companies transform their Finance and Leasing operations, providing a fully automated asset-based finance solution covering the complete leasing and finance lifecycle.

Investor Relations Contact:

Matt Glover and Tom Colton
Gateway Investor Relations
949-574-3860
[email protected]

Released August 21, 2019