The advancement in digital technology has increased the expectations for omni-channel touchpoints at home and in the workplace. Permanently connected devices are shaping customer behaviours in both B2B and B2C environments; consumers demand engagement on their terms and this is causing a change in the way that information is served. Based in Wokingham (UK) and with additional offices in Plymouth (UK), Colombo (Sri Lanka) and San Francisco (US) Volume AI has adapted its services to accommodate this change by creating experiential interactions driven by AI-powered chatbot technology to improve and enhance the overall customer experience.
Volume AI’s Unique Solutions
Volume AI specialises in the end-to-end build and deployment of chatbots, humanoid robotics and virtual/augmented reality experiences. These three pillars constitute what Volume AI has coined ‘Experiential’ artificial intelligence. Volume AI has established relationships with the major natural language processing (NLP) platforms including IBM Watson Assistant, Microsoft LUIS, Google Dialogflow, Wit.ai and Rasa. Through the implementation of this technology, Volume AI aims to prepare companies to accommodate the evolving needs of the consumer- moving from the ‘search’ generation to the ‘ask’ generation and disrupt brand engagement thinking by creating the next level of customer experience. Volume AI is a Gartner-recognised vendor of AI consulting services and offers the following products and services:
Chatbot Workshop – A bespoke programme run by Volume to help business leaders and their stakeholders understand chatbots and which applications are relevant to their business operations, customers and employees. It is the first step to revolutionising any business with chatbot technology.
The Big Brain Chatbot – The Big Brain Chatbot is Volume’s AI-powered chatbot framework which can be tailored to meet specific business requirements. It has superior capabilities when compared with other off-the-shelf chatbot providers; it is technology agnostic, allows free-flow, natural language conversation, can handle multiple questions at once, allows omni-channel communication, human- in- the- loop capability, sentiment analysis and even has long and short-term memory. Volume AI can extend the chatbot technology to physical interactions too by deploying it within a humanoid robot or VR/AR headset.
QBox –
QBox is the firm’s proprietary solution that analyses and identifies performance improvement needed in chatbot training data to increase the chatbot’s understanding to deliver the best customer experience.
By testing and evaluating NLP engine utterances, QBox automatically measures and identifies where training data requires improvement. From there businesses can amend the training data and use QBox to validate that their new training data set performs better at understanding the customer.
The Leader with Dynamic Traits
Chris Sykes, the CEO, established Volume in 1997 with the vision that technology would rapidly permeate the sales and marketing operations of the future. Aligned to this vision was Volume’s lighthouse client, Dell. Dell was an early pioneer in the use of the internet and Volume scaled its capabilities to support Dell’s 23 EMEA Business Units.
Chris was instrumental in helping Dell move from a print-to-inventory model to print-on-demand through an online portal that housed Dell’s digital marketing assets in raw and pre-compiled formats.
In 2000, Chris founded Then (UK) Ltd, a developer of Marketing Resource Management (MRM) software. In 2002, Then (UK) Ltd was recognised by Gartner and appeared in its 2002/03 MRM Magic Quadrant, as a niche vendor. Chris exited Then (UK) Ltd in 2004 after the company was acquired by Aprimo inc. and continued to spearhead Volume.
As a futurist, Chris took the decision in 2015 to pivot the business towards Artificial Intelligence and looked at how it could be applied within a sales, marketing and customer experience context.
Award-Winning Culture of Volume AI
Volume AI has received a range of awards and accolades including a Three Star accreditation from Best Companies To Work For, placed 53rd on the Sunday Times Best Small Companies to Work For, named Thames Valley’s Best Company to Work For and Thames Valley Tech Employee of the Year – all down to the unique people and culture of the company. This unique blend of skillset and culture at Volume AI enables teams to collaborate effectively, putting the customer at the centre of everything they do. The agile nature of the company enables Volume AI to pivot products towards changing consumer needs and adapt to the ever-changing demands of the digital era.
The Marvel of AI- The Benefits for Clients
The global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.25 billion by 2025 and according to Gartner over 500 million consumers will make purchases using chatbot technology on digital commerce platforms; chatbot technology can yield significant benefit for almost every business in every industry. These significant benefits include:
- On demand service 24/7 on a company’s website or other digital channel
- Deliver consistent and relevant messaging to audiences worldwide
- Reduce operational overheads
- Augment capabilities of the human workforce to increase productivity
- Generate new sales leads
- Create an overall superior customer experience
- Enhance brand kudos and create differentiation
- Provide a safe, trusted interface to submit honest information or feedback.
- Collect valuable insights about an audience and communication styles so future communications can be tailored.
An Innovative Future Ahead
Volume AI is dedicated to continuous innovation and working on some exciting AI projects for a diverse range of customers across a range of industries from retail to healthcare and legal to banking.
All the major research analyst firms predict unprecedented growth in the years to come. Major investments will be made from the grand application vendors in voice but also image and gesture recognition which will move customer interaction to another level.