As the season of renewal and growth arrives, so does the latest update on the world of conversational AI! In this monthly newsletter, we’ll be diving into the most noteworthy developments and trends from March, covering everything from generative AI and voicebots to chatbots and beyond. Stay up-to-date on the latest advancements in the field and gain insight into how conversational AI is transforming the way businesses and individuals engage with technology. Join us each month as we explore the ever-evolving world of conversational AI and uncover the latest insights and developments shaping the future of this exciting field.
Investment/Partnership Deals
UiPath, a leading robotic process automation (RPA) company, has teamed up with Amelia US, a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) startup, to develop a fully integrated digital agent for workflow automation. The aim of the partnership is to simplify the employee experience and make the process of creating automated workflows less technical. UiPath’s RPA platform is powered by AI models that can learn how to automate repetitive work-related tasks, but creating these automations still requires a certain level of technical expertise. The new digital agent will enable employees to make support requests via chat, messaging, or voice, and Amelia’s conversational AI will then process the request and integrate with UiPath’s software robots to automate the resolution. Amelia will then summarize the resolution for the employee through their preferred communication channel. This partnership between UiPath and Amelia is set to revolutionize the way employees interact with workflow automation, making it easier and more accessible for everyone.
Cognigy, the Conversational AI market leader, has partnered with Avaya, a global communications solutions provider, to deliver next-gen AI solutions for Avaya’s contact center customers. Cognigy’s AI platform will be integrated with Avaya’s Experience Platform to create personalized, scalable service experiences over voice and chat. The partnership aligns with Avaya’s strategy to provide customers with AI capabilities orchestrated by Avaya management tools. The combined solution will improve customer experience, enhance efficiency and employee engagement for contact center agents. The combined solution will enhance and automate a superior customer experience while providing contact center agents with what they need to be more successful in an increasingly complex environment. The expanded partnership between Cognigy and Avaya demonstrates the growing importance of Conversational AI in delivering exceptional customer experiences and improving business outcomes.
Conversational AI solution Voiceoc has secured INR 3 Cr in funding from BioAngels, powered by Indian Angel Network (IAN), to expand its team and develop its product. Voiceoc’s SaaS platform leverages AI to provide personalized patient support for healthcare companies. By integrating Text AI on communication apps like WhatsApp and Voice AI on the call center, the platform automates the entire patient journey, from appointment booking to accessing medical documents in real-time. The funding will also help Voiceoc scale its marketing strategies and strengthen its presence in the Middle-Eastern market. The partnership with BioAngels demonstrates the growing importance of Conversational AI in the healthcare industry, enabling healthcare providers to provide quick and personalized patient support, improving efficiency and enhancing patient experience.
Kore.ai, a conversational AI technology company, has partnered with Mediktor to integrate its AI technology into Mediktor’s virtual healthcare platform. The partnership will enhance Mediktor’s healthcare assistant, providing a human-like element to the platform and improving patient experience, access to care, and health outcomes. The partnership enables healthcare providers to offer conversational, multilingual, and omnichannel healthcare assessment to patients using Kore.ai’s HIPAA compliant HealthAssist platform. The platform combines natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, enabling patients to describe their symptoms in their own words without the assessment being affected by inaccurate medical terms or spelling mistakes. The partnership demonstrates the continued growth of conversational AI technology in the healthcare industry, improving patient experience and healthcare outcomes.
LinkLive, a top cloud-based Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) provider, has teamed up with Kasisto, the makers of KAI, the leading digital experience platform for financial services. This collaboration will integrate KAI into the LinkLive platform, enabling financial institutions in the U.S. to offer exceptional customer experiences through all digital channels. The combination of LinkLive’s CCaaS expertise and KAI’s digital experience platform will create opportunities for revenue protection and savings. Unlike ChatGPT, which has been gaining popularity, LinkLive and Kasisto’s AI solutions address the specific needs of financial institutions, with an estimated savings potential of $75 billion by 2025, according to Insider Intelligence. LinkLive’s comprehensive AI capabilities also integrate with other solutions to enhance the digital experience for businesses of all sizes, with numerous use cases for automating sales, service, and support interactions.
Perplexity AI, an AI-chat-based conversational search engine that delivers answers to questions using language models. has secured $25.6 million in a Series A funding round led by New Enterprise Associates. The company has also launched an iOS app for its novel conversational search engine that responds to text and voice queries with real-time information and footnotes linked to data sources. The app, which features a ChatGPT-style interface, is unique in that it provides accurate and relevant information through citations, a first-of-its-kind in the conversational answer engine market. Perplexity AI’s goal is to create the world’s most transparent information service and improve the knowledge and productivity of the average consumer.
Florida Funders has joined the $6 million Series A funding round for Dashbot, a California-based startup that has created a conversational data AI platform. Dashbot has raised a total of $14 million and aims to help businesses take advantage of the “dark data” that is contained in customer messages across different communication channels, including social media, customer service interactions, and phone calls. Florida Funders invested through its Fund 2 LLC alongside Bessemer Venture Partners and other new and returning investors. The investment will be used to further develop Dashbot’s AI-powered platform and expand its customer base.
Parloa, a German enterprise software provider that combines conversational AI technology with low-code tools to automate contact centers, has raised $21.67 million in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Newion and Senovo. Parloa’s solution is designed to help companies alleviate the workload of their contact center employees by automating routine interactions with customers. The funding will be used to expand the company’s operations and enhance its product offerings.
Amelia, a leading enterprise provider of Trusted AI, has announced a strategic partnership with BuildGroup and Monroe Capital, which will provide financial capital and business leadership. The $175 million investment, led by BuildGroup and Monroe Capital, will accelerate the adoption of Amelia’s Trusted AI products in the market and help customers navigate the high-profile chatbot news cycle in this emerging AI age. This funding round will enable Amelia to extend its leadership position in the market and focus on delivering innovative, explainable AI products to its customers.
New product features, highlights & use cases
Galileo Financial Technologies, a fintech company owned by SoFi Technologies, is now offering Cyberbank Konecta, a conversational AI engine, to financial institutions, fintechs, and non-financial brands in various deployment models. Konecta-as-a-Service, built on Galileo’s secure and agile conversational banking solution, allows companies to quickly create intelligent digital experiences for their customers. Cyberbank Konecta is an intelligent digital assistant (IDA) that delivers personalized experiences to customers across all digital channels. Its AI-based conversational banking solution allows financial institutions to easily implement and launch solutions, scale and integrate with other SaaS offerings, and access the latest digital innovations without disrupting day-to-day business.
8×8, a leading provider of cloud communications and contact center solutions, announced the integration of advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning, and natural language understanding into its XCaaS platform. The new capabilities include Intelligent Customer Assistant and Supervisor Workspace for 8×8 Contact Center, as well as a platform-wide integration with OpenAI LLC, the creators of ChatGPT. These tools are designed to enhance the customer experience and team productivity, while also allowing organizations to automate routine customer interactions and provide personalized recommendations. With support for over 100 languages and graphical scripting tools, 8×8’s Intelligent Customer Assistant allows for the creation and deployment of chatbots across various channels. The solution enables businesses to handle customer requests through conversations, freeing up agents to focus on more complex issues.
Voiceflow, a platform for developers creating voice and text-based conversational AI apps, has recently introduced a new feature called Prompt Chaining that leverages generative AI to accelerate app development. The feature allows developers to create dynamic conversations by connecting powerful model responses together, thus forming a series of interactions where language models capture user content, generate responses, and make decisions. This not only reduces the time needed for designing apps before user testing, but also allows for more intricate and personalized conversational AI experiences. Prompt Chaining builds on Voiceflow’s existing generative AI experiments, such as the Generate Step feature that links apps to OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model for content production and dynamic conversations.
CoachHub, a global digital coaching platform, has launched AIMY, world’s first conversational AI coach powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. AIMY engages in dynamic, personalized coaching conversations with users and is designed to push the boundaries of research in the coaching industry. Currently available in beta as a non-commercial pilot project and free to use, the generative AI-powered coach is optimized to guide users on their personal and professional growth journey, leveraging insights from behavioral scientists and the company’s vast coaching capabilities. AIMY is a cutting-edge, exclusive research initiative by CoachHub, with a team of passionate behavioral scientists, coaching professionals, and AI engineers designing, building, and training the AI-powered coach. Voice and text recognition are available in seven languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese. This development hints at the future possibilities of conversational AI.
Big Purple Dot (BPD), a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) and recruiting solutions for the mortgage and real estate industries, has taken a significant step towards enhancing its offerings by integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its CRM ecosystem. This integration makes BPD one of the pioneers in the mortgage and real estate industry to provide advanced conversational AI solutions powered by natural language processing (NLP). By leveraging ChatGPT, BPD’s clients can interact more easily and efficiently with their customers, leading to improved customer satisfaction, increased lead generation, and operational efficiency. This move demonstrates BPD’s commitment to embracing the latest technologies to drive innovation in the mortgage and real estate industries.
India’s native Conversational AI start-up, Rezo.ai, has unveiled its ‘Collection Solution’ aimed at the NBFC sector. The AI-powered Voice and analytics solution is set to revolutionize the way NBFCs handle debt recovery by eliminating the burdensome manual process and replacing it with a more efficient and tactful approach. Rezo’s Auto-Engage Solution leverages AI-driven human-like conversations that can manage over 10 languages and 500 dialects. The Collection Product analyses each borrower’s profile and payment history to categorize them based on the risk of missing payments in the future. It can even predict delinquency patterns by analyzing the reasons for missed payments. Rezo’s Collection Product provides a unique customer experience for each borrower by deploying highly targeted customer conversations. In a prototype phase, the collection solution has already helped a financial services company with a book size of over ten billion USD and a customer base of more than fifteen million achieve a 10% increase in collection efficiency.
Industry Trends
As companies face the challenges of the current economy, customer experience (CX) teams are looking for ways to maintain high levels of customer support while cutting costs. A new report by Talkdesk Research shows that many CX leaders are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as chatbots and virtual agents, to improve customer experience and reduce operational costs. The report highlights that rising costs and staffing shortages are the top challenges hindering CX teams’ goals, with 61% and 57% of respondents citing these issues, respectively. To address these challenges, many CX leaders are investing in natural language-based chatbots and voice-based virtual agents, with 35% and 40% of respondents planning to invest in these tools within the next six months. While self-service automation can offer cost savings and operational efficiencies, it also presents challenges, including the need for effective implementation and integration with existing systems. The report highlights the importance of balancing self-service automation with human interaction to provide a seamless customer experience.