Technology has advanced tremendously as a result of recent advancements by industry players. It has now progressed to the point where a Skit.ai digital voice assistant can engage in meaningful and intelligent discussions and handle client queries. Nidhi Shail kujur of Elets News Network (ENN) had a conversation with Sourabh Gupta, CEO & Co-Founder of Skit.ai about how Skit.ai is enabling organisations across industries to transition into the new world.

• What is India’s current conversational AI market, and what factor is playing a critical role in deepening the market?

India’s conversational AI market is expanding rapidly, and it is expected to grow from the US $4.8 bn in 2020 to $13.9 billion by 2025. Such rapid growth can be attributed to the need to deliver a quality customer experience (CX) at a fraction of the cost.

Customers are unwilling to put up with poor CX and even willing to pay a premium for better experiences. But companies confronted with various challenges need to improve CX while reducing costs.

Automating calls using Voice AI has emerged as the most disruptive solution, already transforming contact centers across India and industries. Owing to the innovations brought forth by industry players in recent years, technology has evolved significantly. Currently, it has reached a stage where a digital voice agent deployed by Skit.ai can engage in meaningful and intelligent conversations and solve customer queries.

• How is Voice AI transforming Contact Center Modernisation among Indian businesses?

Voice AI is a first-of-its-kind technology that has enabled end-to-end automation of customer support calls. The Voice AI agent can answer a customer support call without needing a human agent. This decoupling of support calls and human agents is the biggest leap contact centers have made in a long while.

On average, 70% of all calls are tier-I customer support queries. These simple calls can be answered by the Digital Voice Agent, without intervention from a human agent. Also, the availability of call transcripts and voice analytics can be leveraged for better decision-making to improve CX.

While call centers traditionally claimed to offer 24/7 support, there have always been constraints. With Voice AI, support can now be truly round-the-clock, without dependencies on human agent working hours.

• How can Intelligent Voice Augmentation revolutionize the customer experience across sectors like BFSI and healthcare?

Advanced and robust platforms enable BFSI players to elevate their customer support to another level. By replacing unintelligent and tedious IVRs with Voice AI, BFSIs can transform customer support by cutting down on customer wait time. Most of the questions are answered by Voice AI, and for complicated issues, the Digital Voice Agent can escalate to a human agent. The human agent picks up the call form where the voice bot left off, and can solve the issue in a shorter period.

Performing tasks such as instant replies, status updates, 24/7 support and more with Voice AI are helping contact centers take their CX up a notch. For example, recently ICICI Lombard, one of India’s leading insurance providers partnered with Skit.ai, to automate their Health and Motor claims status query process by deploying the Skit.ai Augmented Voice Intelligence Platform.

Similarly, in healthcare, booking appointments, rescheduling appointments, test results, and booking online consultations are a few use cases where voice solutions such as Skit.ai’s Augmented Voice Intelligence platform will be revolutionary. In case a customer reaches out with an emergency even in the dead of night or early mornings, Voice AI is there to help.

• How is Skit.ai enabling organisations across industries to transition into the new world and compete in the marketplace against disruptors and future shocks?

The new or the post-pandemic world is one in which the customer expectation of service and support levels is sky high. To survive and transition to this new reality, companies need to not only notch up their support quality, but they have to do that while cutting costs. They have tried various tech-led automation solutions, such as IVRs, but none of them enables the quantum leap the companies need to take. Voice AI is a cutting-edge technology solution that, for the first time, provides an option to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

Solutions built with the domain expertise of Voice AI companies, such as Skit.ai, help companies automate customer call handling and train their virtual assistants to understand their business minutely and quickly solve customer queries. Advanced levels of personalization, intent recognition, and instant query resolution have empowered contact center managers and made their lives easier.

The solution is future-proof, but early birds have the advantage as they will find themselves ahead on the learning curve. With time, the technology will experience further advancements, giving early adopters a massive competitive advantage.

• Skit.ai’s growth journey in India and the impactful change the company is making in the Voice AI space

Skit.ai has been a pioneer in the Voice AI space in India. Our journey began in 2016 and has since experienced exponential growth. We received series B funding of USD 23 million, and our revenues have grown. In the last year, our team raised over 100% to an impressive size of 400.

Our most significant impact in the Voice AI space has been that we could make the mark and prove that our purpose-built Augmented Voice Intelligence platform works in enabling contact centers to automate call handling. Ours is one of the few voices in AI solutions in the world that work and has helped companies in driving positive business outcomes:

• 50% reduction in operational cost
• 70% automation of customer support efforts
• 40% reduction in Average Handling Times
• And in achieving a CSAT score of over 4.0

• Why Skit.ai is solely a Voice AI company and their conviction in a Voice First future?

People do not realize or appreciate that delivering quality voice conversations is a mighty task. It takes devotion and commitment to building a solution that can strike intelligent discussions that we all covet. So, on one hand, good voice conversations are deeply satisfying and can ramp up your CSAT scores and CX. On the other hand, a lousy voice conversation can damage CX in a big way. Often customers express strong emotions during a voice call with an agent. The reason is that a customer typically tries the DIY approach and then finally calls customer support to resolve the problem; hence, it is their last resort. A delightful conversation that solves their problem quickly can have a lasting positive impact on brand loyalty.

But to deliver such intelligent conversations, companies need to devote everything towards that end. Skit.ai is a voice-first company; we care deeply about the conversations our product offers and are constantly improving it. All of our clients have experienced impressive and tangible business gains. There are many other voice vendors in the market; some are chat-first and provide a voice solution, others are CRM companies that acquired a company to add Voice to their portfolio, and then there are horizontal Voice AI companies such as Google and Amazon. Still, their solutions can not be directly deployed because they are made for context-less conversations. Last are the handful of companies like ours, which are Vertical Voice AI companies just built for Voice.

The future is voice-first, and we will see key sectors such as travel, hospitality, healthcare, banking and the army of IoT devices deployed by them being governed by Voice. The reason is also apparent – Voice is intuitive, natural, personal, and a faster means of communication.

• Please elaborate on some of the customer implementations and the quantitative benefits they have achieved with Skit.ai’s solution.

Over the years, we have helped many BFSI and NBFC companies, digitally-native brands, and e-Commerce companies automate and modernize their contact centers.

Here are a few examples of the outcomes we have been able to achieve:

• 50% reduction in operational cost
• 40% reduction in average handling time
• Cutting down waiting time to zero
• Helped companies run campaigns 70% faster.
• Improve CSAT scores to over 4.0
• Helped them increase top and bottom lines by expanding customer service coverage
• Lead Qualification Cost reduction by 60%
• Shorten the Lead Qualification Cycle by 70%

Seamless Scalability: We have helped companies enjoy seamless scalability as they do not recruit new agents to answer more calls. Skit.ai’s human agents scale themselves seamlessly. Now customers don’t have to wait for even a second.