Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been taking over the world by storm as it significantly contributes to advancements in technologies that make people's lives a whole lot easier. A Sydney-based startup, Curious Thing, has something else in mind, though. The company is providing a more enhanced voice AI.
Curious Thing, a voice AI platform, offers something unique-it can ask open-context questions. The platform is primarily used by health and finance companies, and recently, it has raised $7 million AUD in pre-Series, funding led by Hawkstone with participation from Blacksheep Capital, January Capital, Reinventure, and Qualgro.
The Idea Behind Curious Thing
CEO Sam Zheng said, "instead of answering questions like 'what's the weather today?' We thought we can build an AI that is designed to ask open-context questions and importantly derive insights from people."
The voice Ai is proactive customer care that is designed to encourage customers to share more. As mentioned, one of the industries that use the platform is the health sector, which is used for daily check-ins on patients. The company worked with several multiple state governments in Australia to call COVID patients about their symptoms and situation.
The voice AI was able to help clinicians to determine the right kind of support a patient needs based on the insights delivered by the AI.
In the financial sector, the voice AI is used in onboarding assistance, payment reminders, information validation, and lapsed customer feedback collection.
"With the Curious Thing engine, we can understand people in their own language," said Rik Johnson, the Head of Solutions of Curious Thing.
Vonage and Curious Thing
Vonage Communications APIs allow developers to build and enhance intelligent, intuitive customer experiences directly into devices and existing applications. The combination of Curious Thing and Vonage APIs include Voice, SMS, Numbers, and Reports. They allow Curious Thing's customers to connect at scale across all channels and locations.
According to Johnson, "Without Vonage, we wouldn't be able to connect our customers with huge volumes of people at scale globally, while maintaining personalized connections. The combination of the Curious Thing engine and the near-limitless capability of Vonage APIs helps us solve a variety of problems for our customers."
The Rise of AI Assistant Tech in Australia
A recent survey done by Curious Thing showed a growing number of Australians think that voice assistants are more efficient at resolving inquiries via SMS or email. This drives the company to provide a new digital channel that is scalable like SMS and email with "high energy conversations."
Its voice AI is also in transition from interesting to a business tool that will boost customer feedback and enhance the overall communication strategy of companies today.
The AI is also designed to do more complex jobs that will make every human agent act as a team leader as they will need to spend more time planning and thinking about what they want the AI to cover. As a result, human agents will think more, plan harder, and be more strategic.
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Written by April Fowell
