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Innovations in Conversational AI and Virtual Assistance
Since the release of Alan Turing’s paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence in 1950, mathematicians and engineers have been fascinated with the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Over the last 70 years, great strides have been made in the field of AI and the future is exhilarating.
One of the current leaders of the industry is Clinc Inc. Chances are you have conversed with some of their technology without even realizing you were engaging a machine. They strive to attain the status of a ‘human-in-the-room’ level of communication through their conversational AI virtual assistant technology. Clinc’s conversational AI technology is already that good and it’s improving with every connection.
Clinc is a Pioneer in the Conversational AI Field
Clinc’s trailblazing technology team began as a group of PhD-credentialed researchers at the University of Michigan in 2015. Their research seeks to improve upon strides made in the science of conversational AI. Clinc is indeed pushing the limits of what is possible with this technology. Currently, the company is entrenched inside the financial sector, but the future is prime for expansion.
The headquarters is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Two founders of the company are Dr. Lingjia Tang and Dr. Johann Hauswald. Dr. Tang is on the Board of Directors and is an associate professor of electrical engineering/computer science at the University of Michigan. She has previous ties to Google and Microsoft.
Clinc Welcomes a Host of New Talent
Clinc has also seen a huge reformatting in 2020 welcoming a new CEO, CMO, and CCO to the platform to reenergize the technology from a client solutions standpoint. CEO Jon Newhard was the first of the c-suite additions to the Clinc team. He joins the AI platform with 25 years of experience in Information Technology running enterprise software businesses largely in private equity and VC environments. CMO John Lichtenberg joined the team in the fall of 2020. John is an award-winning Senior Marketing Executive with 25+ years of proven success leading cross-functional organizations to build brand equity and drive a sustainable increase in revenue. Mahesh Baxi joined Clinc as CCO at the end of 2020. Maxi is an entrepreneur, proven CX leader, and author with over 25 years of global IT Products and Services experience. With experience and proven success in the back pockets of these three men, 2021 will certainly prove to be a positively game-changing year for Clinc.
The Autonomous AI Solution
What makes this AI platform stand apart from other chatbots or virtual assistant programs is that it can understand user queries and respond to them without human assistance. In the past, this has been one of the major drawbacks to AI platforms. They were unable to fully assimilate human language to the degree of performing as a stand-alone solution. Most of them were scripted which meant that users had limited options when interacting with these systems.
Clinc’s communication options just continue to expand. The evolutionary technology understands and processes messy language, can induce conversational healing, and comes built to retain context.
Messy Language –
AI learns patterns in speech to recognize slang and understand contextual clues. This means your customers can speak to it as they would speak to a human, messy, natural, and conversational.
Conversational Healing –
Clinc’s tech enables your customer to change the information they’ve provided or are seeking at any point in the conversation. Other solutions force them to start over, frustrating your customers, and creating a negative experience.
Context Retention –
Whether your customers are starting a new conversation or picking up where they left off before, this cutting-edge conversational AI technology retains history, ensuring customers feel remembered and understood.
All of these abilities add to the Clinc idea that when conversing with their AI technology, it feels like you are having a ‘human-in-the-room’ experience and not corresponding with technology in the slightest.
How AI and Virtual Assistance Benefit Enterprises
The main asset that this revolutionary system offers enterprises is the capability to engage and assist their market continuously. Theoretically speaking with Clinc’s AI virtual assistant deployed, your customers will have access to customer service 24/7 and without any need to invest in hiring any extra staff to accomplish it. This interface can receive, process, and resolve requests with comprehension of the user’s natural language. If anything, your valued customer service staff will have the ability to move on and deal with the more complex and overarching service issues that might be needing their attention and leaving the everyday customer service interactions completely to Clinc’s virtual assistant technology to successfully perform.
With this platform, banking customers can speak in their natural vernacular. The system learns patterns of speech and can recognize slang. If the customer changes their request within the context of the conversation, the system will accommodate without needing to start over. It also retains history allowing the customer to pick up where they left off in a conversation. All of these points add up to minimized wait times, smooth query resolutions, and less stress on live customer service representatives. Currently, the platform boasts a resolution rate of 95%.
How Does Conversational AI Work?
Conversational AI is the science of teaching machines to converse with humans with minimal to no assistance from another human. Through the use of machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), computers can process and respond to verbal dialogue.
Clinc’s state-of-the-art machine learning platform uses deep neural networks (DNN) to wrangle big data in the targeted sector into an innovative deep learning technology supported by sophisticated algorithms.
These algorithms form the framework of how the system deciphers what is being shared with it and how to respond. In a nutshell, it’s learning through data gathering and experience.
The Future of AI and Clinc
With the influx of investors and high-profile clients, the company is positioned to expand exponentially. From its start with a grant of $225,000 presented by the National Science Foundation to the $6.3 million raised in 2017 after the launch of the product to a $52 Million Series B raise which put them on the Forbes list of Top 25 AI Startups Who Raised The Most Money In 2019. Clinc’s potential is soaring.
Plans to expand their talent pool and resources hint at the heights that can be attained for this organization. Their client roster is impressive. They serve enterprises like US Bank, Visa and Ford just to name a few. It will be interesting to see what they can do within other sectors. Ideal industries for Conversational AI include Healthcare, Banking, Gaming, and Education.
There’s no limit to the applications this technology can be applied to and how far this company can go. It will open up a whole new world regarding the way we interact with machines. Keep an eye on Clinc to see just how far this technology can go in the coming years. Or, should I say ‘keep an ear on Clinc?’
