Mr. Apakorn Kengkanna, 4th year student from the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, Mahidol University, and a member of the first-place winning team, said, “We were inspired to develop a customer feedback management tool for SMEs after getting an opportunity to discuss the real-life challenges faced by the executive of the milk tea brand ‘KAMU’, who shared with us how opinions and feedback from customers are crucial for business growth as they take customers’ comments into account to improve their products and services. However, they were struggling with the feedback coming through different channels, making it difficult for them to consolidate and track each customer comment. The trainings held by Microsoft on several topics, ranging from design thinking and communications to data analytics, have helped us develop our skills to communicate and collect data to understand clients’ challenges. We also got to practice decision-making and problem-solving skills and learn how to connect the dots and see the big picture, allowing us to create a solution that helps KAMU to access to helpful information and resources in a systematic manner, with guidance and advice from experts from Microsoft and AIS throughout the competition.”
Mr. Tanisorn Jansamret, 3rd year student from School of ICT, Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, Thammasat University and a member of the first runner-up team said, ”Our team came up with an idea to develop a solution for veterinary clinics as one of our team members is a regular customer. The solution was designed to tackle booking issues by integrating Microsoft’s booking management system, enabling customers to select services, check prices and make an appointment with a veterinarian at their convenience. The booking service not only brings more comfort for customers but also reduces customer density in clinics in line with today’s social distancing measures. After customers make an appointment with a certain veterinarian through the system, their schedule will be automatically booked accordingly and a chatbot on Microsoft Teams will send a notification reminder 15-30 minutes prior to the scheduled time. In addition, we utilized Power Automate to streamline the working process and reduce paper usage, ultimately enhance the work performance and reduce the impact on the environment. This competition allowed us to truly use our creativity to solve problems together and helped us get ready before entering the job market in the future.”
Ms. Thanit Nookao, 2nd year student from Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Prince of Chumphon Campus and a member of the second runner-up team, said, “Hotpot restaurants have seen exceptionally fast growth in recent times thanks to their popularity across people of all ages. In response, our team developed a platform to help small- and medium-sized hotpot businesses work more effectively, from managing storefronts, kitchens and ingredients to calculating business expenses. The platform is intuitive as we integrated some tools from Microsoft and AIS, which we learned how to use from the competition’s training sessions, to make it easy to use. The training sessions held through Microsoft Teams helped us gain a better understanding of the technology, learn faster and solve real technical issues. We also received helpful guidance from Microsoft and AIS experts who gave us an opportunity to learn from this experience. We hope to leverage these skills in school and working life in the future.”