- Synthetic Intelligence to assist name facilities handle 1000’s of calls, emails
- Powered by internally developed Emotion AI that reads human emotions & intent
Digital Information Asia (DNA) continues its sequence that profiles 50 influencers who’re serving to form Malaysia’s Digital Economic system, from Digerati50 2020-2021 (Vol four), a particular biennial print publication launched in July 2020. The digital copy might be downloaded from the sidebar hyperlink.
The next article is an expanded model of the print version and has some updates.
Jeffrey C.P. Tan, founder and CEO of Superceed recollects the day when a nationwide financial institution approached them with an issue. The shopper help division was overwhelmed, having to area tens of 1000’s of cellphone calls, and 1000’s of emails.
“Can your expertise assist us?” they requested. There was no hesitation to reply, “Sure”. In a single day, the group put Superceed’s applied sciences to work, dealing with calls and emails with the assistance of Emotion AI and Advertising and marketing AI.
In the event you ask Jeffrey to clarify this, he’ll use phrases like “omnichannel”, “Emotion AI”, and “emotional journey”. However in less complicated phrases, what Superceed’s options can do is to observe on-line messages, and inform you what the sender is feeling.
Within the case of the financial institution, Jeffrey’s expertise went to work, listening to cellphone calls, studying emails and flagging those the place it thought the shopper was offended. Secure to say, the financial institution was surprised that this expertise exists. However then, Superceed is an organization stuffed with surprises.
A small AI firm with a grand imaginative and prescient
Kuala-Lumpur born and bred, Jeffrey parlayed his diploma in Arithmetic right into a startup specialising in a system to carry collectively a number of messaging instruments right into a single place. “I made a decision to start out Superceed to increase our works in unified communications into the enterprise house,” he explains. His answer on the time mixed calls, emails, dwell chat, cell messaging and social media.
Clients from early days got here from telcos and providers industries. However Jeffrey was unhappy with simply giving individuals a technique to talk. He needed individuals to additionally perceive.
“We noticed there have been loads of interplay knowledge (between corporations and prospects),” he recollects. “But not one of the buyer expertise facilities was ready to make use of this to know what the shopper was feeling.”
Jeffrey felt there needed to be a technique to monitor the emotional journey of shoppers, to create a ‘wow’ expertise for the shopper.
A machine to learn your emotions
“I believe most likely again in 2015 or 2016 we began to construct Emotion AI,” he says, referring to expertise that may recognise or detect human emotion. Analysis into the expertise (generally referred to as Affective Computing) has been on-going since the 1990s, nevertheless it has actually taken off in the previous couple of years as Synthetic Intelligence has come into the mainstream.
It could sound like speculative fiction, however Jeffrey and his group of two dozen software program engineers and analysts have managed to make it work. “The largest win we’ve had to this point was an abroad telco,” he shares. “We have been capable of implement our end-to-end options to exemplify the facility of omnichannel and energy of AI in augmenting human work.”
In 2019, income exceeded US$2.9 million (RM12 million), and when you might need anticipated the Covid-19 pandemic to have a destructive impression, Superceed is in reality on monitor to make US$three.9 million (RM16 million) in 2020.
[Update on 4th April 2021: Jeffrey tells DNA Superceed exceeded RM20 million revenue for 2020.]
[RM1 = US$0.241]
“Covid-19 helped us to give attention to (the) booming industries through the pandemic,” explains Jeffrey, including that additionally they repositioned some choices to create a set of distant working answer referred to as ‘Homework’.
“We need to assist democratise the expertise”
Nonetheless, Jeffrey will not be content material to take a seat on his laurels. Other than inferring emotional context by studying messages and listening to speech, the group has been doing a substantial quantity of R&D. They now have chatbots that may converse in a number of languages, and even perceive what “Okay, lah” means. They’re even methods to detect if individuals are telling the reality by observing micro expressions ( facial expressions that happen inside a fraction of a second).
Nonetheless, Jeffrey is cognisant of the truth that he’s bold in his scope of analysis. “A Gartner analyst instructed me in 2019 that we have been the one firm on the earth that cuts throughout all the Emotion AI expertise,” he shares. Placing this into context, most corporations both focus within the medium they’re analysing, or in the kind of messaging. Superceed tries to look throughout the board.
Whereas the corporate might probably file for 12 patents, Jeffrey can be hoping that their options might be accessible by everyone. “We need to assist democratize the expertise.” To attain this, they may undertake a cloud-based technique, packaging it as a Software program-as-a-Service ranging from RM30 monthly.
[Replace: The SaaS providing launched final 12 months. Jeffrey has additionally filed for some patents.]
Regardless of the future brings, you don’t want a machine to inform you that Jeffrey is wanting ahead to it.
Digerati50 2020/2021 is proudly sponsored by Maxis – Powering Malaysia’s 5G period.