Most companies aim to make their chatbots efficient, helpful and user-friendly. But rarely is kindness the first priority.
For RozieAI, a customer experience software startup, kindness comes first.
The RTP-based company was founded in 2016. Sudha Meghan, now CEO of RozieAI, was working with children with rare diseases as a medical student in training at UNC Hospitals. She noticed that each time a family spoke with a new provider or insurance agent, they had to recite medical experiences—often traumatic and complex—from scratch.
She realized there had to be a better way to remember client information, said Vijay Dheap, the startup’s CSO.
“There’s got to be some motivation for the brand itself to remember who it’s serving,” Dheap said. “Because most brands have a mission statement that reflects that they’re doing this because they feel there’s a deeper meaning behind what they’re doing, and not just a monetary benefit.”
Dheap began advising Meghan on the ‘art of the possible,’ leveraging AI technology, natural language processing and cyber security to devise an automated system that could look at more information when interacting with a client. They brought on researcher Lalindra De Silva and engineer Iranga Samarasingha, and the team began asking the big questions, Dheap said.
“Is it possible to provide organizations and the clients they serve with a shared memory?” Dheap said, suggesting that this could lead to a more empathetic approach. “So the goal was, we knew that the world is going to get smarter. But is there a business value for being kind?”
Kindness-first customer experience in action
RozieAI got to test that concept when United Airlines called for help later that year. The airline realized that its contact centers wouldn’t be able to handle the high winter call volume, and reached out to RozieAI’s team—giving them six weeks to figure out a solution.
The team delivered. RozieAI partnered with Twitter to launch a bot that could respond to direct messages from premium passengers. It was the first point of contact for 70% of all requests through social media and handled 30% of interactions completely on its own, taking significant weight off communications staff.
It was clear that the technology worked, but the team still wanted to figure out if there was a business case for being kind. After participating in an insurance accelerator in Hartford, delivering the first Alexa with memory at Amazon’s launch in Canada and winning a Travelers Innovation Award, Dheap said that the company had enough data to prove that kindness worked.
“Being kind will help with retention,” Dheap said. “Being kind will increase the average sales price of a transaction.”
By 2019, the team had begun building an experience studio to transform Air Canada’s contact center when they were stopped in their tracks. Other major vendors wanted the opportunity to prove their own concepts, and Air Canada ran a full-blown competitive RFP with companies like IBM, Genesis, Bell Canada, Rogers, Hexaware and more.
A little-known company at the bottom of the list, RozieAI excelled in each round—and beat IBM and Genesis in the finals.
“We won the bid,” Dheap said. “Today, if you call Air Canada, pretty much their entire contact center experience is powered by RozieAI.”
The company, which employs around 100 people, uses a B2B enterprise software, focusing primarily on the healthcare, travel and insurance markets.
QUICK BITS
Startup: RozieAi
Co-Founders: Sudha Meghan (CEO), Iranga Sa
Founded: 2016
Team size: ~100
Location: RTP
Website: www.rozie.ai
Funding: Bootstrapped
Dheap said that there are three major touch points that a brand has with its customers: self-service, proactive outreach and agent augmentation—combining automation with virtual agent attention.
“The type of company we are today is that we help organizations do product innovation rapidly, and we focus primarily on experiences that are customer facing or that empower employees to deliver better customer experience,” Dheap said.
Those who are interested in RozieAI’s software are encouraged to visit them on LinkedIn or check out their website.
