[TechSparks 2020] Yellow Messenger founder on how conversational AI can help customers manage data better

In 2016, there were more than 100 conversational AI companies in India. But today, only a handful of companies are there. Everyone believes that automating a few queries for customers on an app is conversational AI. However, the industry is now redefining a CRM from being just a store of customer data to manage interaction, to making software the central point to handling every detail about the customer.

Speaking about conversational AI at YourStory Mediaflagship event TechSparks 2020, Raghavendra Kumar Ravinutala, Co-founder of Yellow Messenger, said:

“A cognitive enterprise uses machine learning and AI to drive interactions with its stakeholders. Customers will come from various social media channels and applications and all these conversations need to be personalised. The software has to serve the customer in a customised manner.”

According to MarketsandMarkets, the global conversational AI market size is expected to grow from $4.8 billion in 2020 to $13.9 billion by 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.9 percent during the forecast period. The upcoming customer engagement through social media platforms and increasing integration of advanced AI capabilities are the major factors adding value to the conversational AI offerings, which is expected to provide opportunities for enterprises operating in various verticals in the market.

Conversational AI startup Yellow Messenger helps companies increase their revenue by using data. Bajaj Finance used Yellow Messenger to provide personalised support to help millions of its users. According to Raghavendra, the company began cross selling and up selling using the Yellow Messenger platform and the leads for new products began to increase. They not only solved customer support but also began to get revenues from the platform.

“We drove down costs for many corporates. Most companies have huge teams handling customers, which is costly. But with the power of data, they can enable better productivity for their employees by preparing them better to answer the customer. With the pandemic, a lot of new use cases came up. The entire distribution layer disappeared overnight for many retailers during the pandemic. Many people began to interact on WhatsApp and we enabled many enterprises to connect with their ecosystem on such communication platforms,” said Raghavendra.

Raghavendra also spoke about how agritech companies use WhatsApp to make farmers productive, and these conversations are data points can be used to customise for farmers based on their needs. Yellow Messenger takes data from all these communication platforms to make decision making easier.

ALSO READ

[TechSparks 2020] What is the future of entertainment and media in an era of hyper-personalisation?

“A lot of companies have systems of records and the data is ready to be used. This data is given to an agent to interact with customers. We take this data and make this intelligent for everyone," said Raghavendra.

A lot of new-age apps have tools that handle grievances, but it costs them a lot. Yellow Messenger enables companies not to have complaints from customers by being proactive with customers. For example, they helped an electricity company reach out to customers who were consuming a lot of energy to not worry about their bills.

“Customers worry when they see the bill and wonder whether they have really consumed somuch power. Our software enables companies to reach out and tell customers why the bill is going to be high and the software can help customers to move to new plans to save on costs," said Raghavendra.

Yellow Messenger has raised $24 million from LightSpeed and is going global. The company is making large scale deployments with Infosys and several IT Partners. It believes that the cognitive revolution is here to stay.

TechSparks - YourStory's annual flagship event - has been India's largest and most important technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship summit for over a decade, bringing together entrepreneurs, policymakers, technologists, investors, mentors, and business leaders for stories, conversations, collaborations, and connections that matter. As TechSparks 2020 goes all virtual and global in its 11th edition, we want to thank you for the tremendous support we've received from all of you throughout our journey and give a huge shoutout to our sponsors of TechSparks 2020.