Yellow Messenger Becomes Yellow.ai and Launches Voice AI Platform in the US
Indian enterprise conversational AI startup Yellow Messenger has rebranded as Yellow.ai and debuted new voice assistants to go with its text-based services as part of an expansion to the United States. Yellow’s automated chat services already run on several major messaging services and company websites but can now include vocal conversations as well.
Yellow Talk
The upgrade comes after Yellow partnered with Microsoft to upgrade its voice AI services with Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive to make the custom voice assistants seem more human in their interactions. Yellow’s voice AI brings an understanding of not just language but emotion and sentiment and can use previous interactions with customers to better craft responses in more than 100 languages. The platform uses a minimal amount of code for the bost as well as a way of enticing larger enterprises to join without needing to hire dedicated programmers. The Microsoft arrangement enhances that voice capability with the detection of different dialects and emotional sentiment. Yellow is now looking at Silicon Valley and the rest of the U.S. for new employees to further its growth, aiming at more than 70 hires to come to its new San Francisco office.
“Conversational interfaces are changing how we relate to brands, and voice is playing a key role in enabling smarter brand-to-consumer interactions. Today, growth and success in every business is highly indexed to creating personalized and differentiated customer experiences,” Yellow.ai CEO Raghu Ravinutala said. ” At yellow.ai, we are dedicated to enabling human-like, engaging conversations with our conversational customer experience platform, which empowers enterprises to deliver CX with the ultimate balance between their human + AI capabilities.”
Chat Volume
Yellow is already popular in India, counting Accenture, Flipkart, and two of India’s largest private banks among its high-profile clients. Yellow cites recent studies about the rise of voice AI in call centers as part of the reason for the expansion, pointing to a Gartner study claiming 40% of call center communications will use voice AI by 2025. The trend has already begun accelerating in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, however. The shift to working from home for so many people triggered increased demand for AI in customer service. Many companies have seen a jump in revenue or raised large sums of money or as a result. For instance, Dialpad raised $100 million, and Observe.AI raised $54 million in quick succession last year, while Five9 bought outright the virtual agent platform Inference Solutions. This year, Uniphore announced a $140 million funding round, followed not long after by ASAPP raising $120 million after a flurry of new clients and investors arrived. Yellow.ai is joining the rising tide as it becomes a flood.
“Yellow.ai allows large enterprises to successfully automate customer experience while elevating the quality of customer interactions,” Ravinutala said. “Now we are actively expanding our strategic partnerships and offices around the world, with U.S. growth as a key priority. We are delighted to extend our repertoire in the region with ‘Conversational Voice AI,’ the future of CX.”
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