Passage AI
Breathing Life into Business Conversations

In simulating human conversations by matching a user’s query to a scripted response, ELIZA, a natural language processing computer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, marked the beginning of a new era—the era of chatbots. Ever since that breakthrough in the ’60s, chatbots have embarked on an unstoppable journey of assisting humans in business activities, all while disrupting the consumer support marketplace, with the ability to deliver accurate responses to inbound queries. With the onset of IBM Watson, Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, brands today have an arsenal of engagement tools to improve customer retention and loyalty. Retracing the evolution of chatbots, Ravi N. Raj, co-founder and CEO of Passage AI, highlights the growing interest and discussions around using AI-based conversations to interact with a business: “Anything that is conversational in nature in the real world lends a use case for chatbot and customer service,” Raj said. “And customer service, being inherently conversational, is an area where this technology fits the bill.” Most businesses are stepping up to draw the massive potential of AI-enabled conversational intelligence to quickly and efficiently address customer queries.

Businesses set out to create chatbots, only to realize that deployment can take months within their legacy systems. What especially hinders the launching of a chatbot is the lack of natural language understanding or processing (NLU/P), limiting the bot’s ability to answer only preset questions. Adding to their woes is the additional overhead from employing experts in machine learning to create, train, and launch a chatbot.

"We see chatbots revolutionizing the world of customer service and we are set on a mission to empower clients to derive value from this revolution"

A seasoned player in conversational intelligence, Passage AI enables businesses to harness the power of AI-based conversational interfaces through its sophisticated NLU/P bot-building solution. Without requiring companies to develop the code, Passage AI helps them reduce expenses and the time required to build a chatbot. “Through our chatbot solutions, we allow clients to reduce manual processes enabling service agents to apply their intellect in other key business areas,” says Raj. “The solutions not only deliver exceptional experiences to the audience but also guarantee a better bottom line for the business.”

Driving Business through Chatbot

Passage AI’s prowess in the conversational intelligence space has grabbed the attention of numerous companies. Udacity, a pioneer in online learning, saw chatbots as a promising new technology that could help students discover and take advantage of some of the best educational opportunities. The online learning company approached Passage AI to implement a bot that would act as an automated guidance counselor. Its aim was to help prospective students find appropriate courses and easily enroll on the Udacity website. Passage AI helped them build and deploy a chatbot, which resulted in a 41 percent increase in new student enrollments. “Working with PassageAI was a dream,” said Sam Mazaheri, the Director of Digital Marketing at Udacity when it initiated its partnership with Passage AI. “The level of support in creating the bot and refining it was outstanding. They are clearly deeply knowledgeable in conversational interfaces and how to create useful bots.” Similarly, the national retail chain Kohl’s has witnessed higher customer engagement after implementing chatbot with the help of Passage AI. In another instance, Calgary Public Library in Canada has been able to launch in less than three weeks a chatbot using the Passage AI platform. Having crafted such impressive customer success stories, Passage AI wants to take their value proposition to a greater level–with career planning and counseling through an ongoing dialog with students and by recommending the right courses for them to accomplish their goals. Passage AI also has a strong partner ecosystem and works closely with companies to provide an integrated and differentiated solution to customers.

Passage AI has envisioned a carefully planned roadmap to make the bot-building console more user-friendly. Raj leverages his industry experience of over a decade to unleash new opportunities in customer service and support through chatbots. Having a team with extensive deep learning and AI experience, Passage AI is driven to create the best NLP platform, and is working toward improving its machine learning algorithm with the goal of providing 100 percent accuracy in conversational interfaces. The company also aims to handle all types of novel platforms, from messaging apps to voice assistants. “We want to support all the new channels that are proliferating in the market, so clients can simply build the conversational intelligence that works on every platform,” says Raj.

With a presence in the U.S. and the European market, Passage AI is preparing to extend its global footprint by expanding its offerings to Asia and South America. “We see chatbots revolutionizing the world of customer service,” said Raj, “and we are on a mission to empower clients to derive value from this revolution.”