Many organizations need help in effectively leveraging artificial intelligence due to technological complexity, poor data quality, and lack of skills or resources.
To help organizations overcome these challenges, technology solutions provider C1 (formerly ConvergeOne) has launched a new generative AI-driven tool called C1 Elly. This tool enables companies to better utilize data, including data that was previously locked in different business systems and inaccessible.
Mark Langanki, C1's Chief Technology Officer, explains that C1 Elly is an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) designed for enterprise applications, not limited to call centers but extending to a wide range of use cases. The standout feature of C1 Elly is its ability to access and use internal organizational data, even from systems that typically do not share information. It also assesses the quality of AI interactions to ensure they are useful and accurate, reducing errors and continuously improving over time.
When using an IVA for tasks such as user authentication, the inclusion rate measures the number of interactions completed entirely through self-service without human agent intervention. The team providing this service found that traditional inclusion rate metrics overlook the issue of customers abandoning processes due to frustration.
Therefore, C1's quality index score is based on human experience to evaluate the performance of the IVA. The score assesses the effectiveness of the assistant in providing correct answers and resolving customer issues completely.
Over the years, virtual assistants like Elly have undergone a development process. Initially, they relied on conversational AI for communication. However, due to the complexity of human language and the need for virtual assistants to understand and respond to various expressions, generative AI has been integrated to enhance their capabilities. This advancement has made IVAs more efficient and reliable tools for handling various requests.
"We didn't blindly follow the trend of using generative AI," says Langanki. "We combine conversational AI with generative AI. So when we roll out a product, it doesn't babble or say things that are incorrect. We use conversational and generative AI technologies to deliver our robots, deploying and building them with customers and adjusting them over time. All of this combined is what sets us apart."
The key advantage of C1 Elly lies in its advanced data management. C1 has developed a data lake that integrates various data types, including relational databases, flat files, and log files. The data lake supports unstructured and time-series information, enabling advanced AI, machine learning, and data science technologies to derive valuable insights and predictions from the data. Additionally, it enriches call recordings from each call center by analyzing additional data such as geographical coordinates and integrates this information into the data lake, providing accurate and contextually relevant responses.
One successful implementation of C1 Elly is its collaboration with insurance company Wellabe. Since deploying Elly, Wellabe has achieved significant improvements in operational tasks such as user authentication. Now, 80% of policyholders can verify their identity automatically through it. Wellabe also expects a 76% retention rate for IVA interactions in payment applications by 2024, meaning that most interactions can be resolved without human intervention.
"This is a significant improvement from no automation to achieving automation. It's about the journey we've been through. We have a center of excellence around AI at C1. So when we work with customers, we go into very detailed exploratory sessions and develop a plan that we think is best for them," says Alain Mowad, Senior Director of Product Marketing. "It's not just about the technology. It's the whole process of how we discover, develop, design, deploy, and evolve. So it's a comprehensive managed solution."
In addition to the Wellabe implementation case, C1 Elly, which supports over 127 languages, has other potential use cases in various industries. For example, in the aviation field, it can remind pilots to switch communication channels by identifying background noise. In theme parks, the solution can serve as a concierge service, managing bookings and providing personalized activity recommendations based on visitor preferences and past visits.
Within enterprises, C1 Elly can be a valuable tool for HR departments, answering common policy questions and providing customized recommendations for benefits. For credit card companies, it can ensure secure payment processing without revealing card information to human agents, thereby enhancing security and customer trust. Lastly, sales departments can use it as a sales assistant, providing real-time answers to product inquiries.
Utilizing AI and automation in different industries may face challenges, especially when integrating them into existing systems. C1 overcomes this barrier by offering 200 pre-built integrations with major customer relationship management platforms such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Oracle, and Microsoft, as well as electronic health record systems. This enables seamless interaction across multiple customer touchpoints without the need for system changes.
"One challenge when implementing any AI solution is that systems need to be smartly responsive to access data and access robots," says Mowad. "The complexity of integration is a challenge, and we're very happy to take on that challenge. We have a ready-made solution that makes implementation easier and allows us to obtain the right amount of information that robots need."
C1's approach involves monitoring and analyzing the performance, usage, and adoption of applications without accessing or storing raw data such as health records or bank account details. Instead, only transactional data, which records the actions taken, is used without including sensitive information. If specific details are required, such as bank account balances, data is securely retrieved from integrated systems using application programming interfaces. This limits the storage of potentially vulnerable information and focuses only on metadata that supports operational needs without compromising security.
Overall, C1 Elly significantly improves the way organizations interact with customers and manage data by eliminating AI islands created by vendor-provided solutions. This should help enhance confidence in automated interactions, which has been a challenge for companies in the past.
