Skit - The Voice Automation Specialists
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Founded in 2016 by two co-founders from IIT Roorkee, Sourabh Gupta and Akshay Deshraj, Skit's voice AI solution has been developed to enhance customer experience and engagement through intelligent voice conversations while at the same time resolving customer queries quickly. Customer contact centers or call centers are integral for operational success as they bridge the gap between the consumer and the enterprise. Even though businesses have identified different mechanisms to reach out to users such as mobile applications, notifications etc. users still reach out to the call center.
THE PROBLEM
Traditionally, call centers are where there are high costs, high attrition rates and for the end-users IVRs are frustrating and the wait times are irritating. Large enterprises in India will usually spend $30 million - $50 million per year on call centers. As we all know, we can get a cab in five minutes but it is not that easy to get redirected to a call center agent quickly. Amidst all the fast-paced technological innovations that are taking place, call centers are slow to adopt the latest technology. This gap came to the forefront amidst the pandemic as it thrusted various sectors to adopt voice automation much sooner than what was originally on their road map. During the pandemic, there was a surge in call volumes, which put an additional pressure on the traditional IVR and support agents at the call centers to respond to all customer queries. This in turn resulted in longer wait-times, call drops, frequent agent transfers, etc., which increased customer frustration. For any customer contact center, improving customer experience is of top priority. Voice-tech and AI presented an opportunity in customer contact centers for overcoming challenges that have always plagued the customer contact center business.
THE SOLUTION
Skit's VIVA plays a huge role in resolving customer queries quickly and ensuring the customer experience matches the unique desires of the individual customer. VIVA has the capability of addressing 80% of call center operations as well as scaling as per the incoming traffic and ensuring zero wait time. This allows the contact center agents to solve complex queries, which directly results in faster customer query resolution. VIVA truncated the average call time of 15-20 minutes to 20-30 seconds. Being a unique service, VIVA helps accelerate engagement strategy and utilize innovative speech recognition and NLU technology providing the best engagement possible. Sourabh Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO, Skit says, "Using our core technology, we want to introduce the future of customer experiences to the world. We believe that each interaction between a business and its customers is an opportunity to create something remarkable. VIVA is a disruptive solution because it brings in a novel offering that provides convenience to the customers. We are driven with a vision to become the leading global voice automation/AI platform."
THE FUTURE
Skit will potentially address the $300 billion voice customer service market with its voice AI platform VIVA. The company is enhancing customer experience with its ability to easily adapt to the customer's preference. This boost's customer experience as their idiolect layer allows VIVA to create a unique customer profile in real-time based on an individual's speech attributes (age, vocals, gender, eagerness, dialect, pace, etc.). VIVA replicates human-like conversation and understands the speaker's intent. VIVA can translate other unique speech characteristics that enable more efficient query resolutions. It can personalize communication by adjusting the response, tone, and speech patterns while engaging with a customer. With over 100000+ hours of training data, Skit enables enterprises to automate 80-90% of their call center operations while at the same time-saving costs.
FACTSHEET
FUNDING: Series B- US $23 Million
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 200+
CURRENT PARTNERS: Avaya, Cisco, Gensys, Microsoft
Entrepreneur India Tech Start-up of the Year - Artificial Intelligence Award 2021