Sam Oliver is a tech entrepreneur, property investor, and creator who launched his first startup at just 20 years old. His latest enterprise, OpenFi, equips large firms with conversational AI on WhatsApp to onboard and nurture customer relationships.
Are you able to explain why you suspect the term “chatbot” is insufficient for describing modern conversational AI tools like OpenFi?
A chatbot is a preset rigid conversation, often a big flow chart with multiple selection or equivalent responses. The static nature of the conversation doesn’t create any emotional or personal connection. If a matter or piece of knowledge doesn’t fit within the static box the conversation becomes broken. How over and over have we been the frustrated user pleading to talk to a human representative who we are able to have an actual human conversation with?
That is where modern conversational AI tools like OpenFi are available. Firstly there is no such thing as a need for the rigid structure, gone are the multiple selection questions bringing back bad memories from school. As a substitute there’s a real conversation that appears like there’s a human helping. So not only do customers gain the good thing about a friendly, engaging and private feel via the conversational AI, however the business can also be gaining the power to show human flow conversation into required and optional data.
Calling conversational AI a chatbot is like referring to an iPhone as a landline. They’re just not even in the identical category.
How does OpenFi differentiate itself from traditional chatbots when it comes to functionality and capabilities?
Crucial differentiation is the user experience. Because chatbots are extremely limited of their prescribed conversations, they’re liable to breaking down when asked anything outside of those fields. In addition they are inclined to make mistakes like asking for a similar information multiple times or responding to a matter with multiple-choice answers that aren’t even relevant to the unique query.
Conversational AI is a very different experience. You actually consider you’re talking with a human and a really capable one at that. We discuss with our conversational AI as Superhuman. The natural language format with a mode that’s each personal and on brand is something chatbots aren’t able to. From those natural language conversations, OpenFi can extract data and store it in keeping with client preferences, often inside a more traditional database field structure or CRM.
What common misconceptions do business leaders have about integrating conversational AI into their workflows?
The largest misconception is equating conversational AI with a chatbot that won’t “on brand” or has a poor user experience. They often put chatbots in the identical bucket as a telephone IVR experience. When business leaders use our conversational AI as a user for the primary time they quickly realise that will not be the case.
Are you able to share some specific ways OpenFi has improved lead generation and customer nurturing within the financial services industry?
We recently accomplished a hugely successful trial for a mortgage broker via our SocialBoostAi product. We generated recent leads via social media similar to a standard agency, but as a substitute of the leads going through to a busy sales team, they were handled by our superhuman AI that may immediately reply and thru their conversations pre-qualify, educate and ultimately escalate ripe results in the sales team. The outcomes were staggering with conversion from initial result in finalized mortgage increased by 3.2x!
This highlights the difference in user experience between a standard form fill and triggering a live, two-way WhatsApp conversation. The flexibility of our conversational AI to supply informed and academic content is an enormous differentiator that helps qualify the user, but additionally engages them, pushing them through the sales funnel.
How does OpenFi address the challenges of informational inaccuracy and inflexibility which might be often related to traditional chatbots?
We develop industry and client models from bespoke knowledge bases. This ensures that the conversational AI will only respond from a source of truth. It’s like an actual human – when acting in an informational or educational capability,he/she will be able to only answer from the knowledge inside his/her brain. We have replicated this structure but relatively than needing years of education and product training, we are able to set it up in a matter of days
We have spoken in regards to the inflexibility of chatbots and the way our conversational AI has a natural flow which is not rigid. A typical human conversation doesn’t have a preset flow, so neither does our conversational AI. Yes, there is usually certain information we wish to extract however the order and manner of how we collect it’s not set in stone.
How does OpenFi use AI, NLP, and LLMs to offer a seamless and interesting customer experience across platforms like WhatsApp, live chat, and email?
Currently OpenFi is in beta, and we’re only communicating on one channel, which right away is WhatsApp. Additional channels like live chat, email, LinkedIn and socials will come later this yr.
Large Language Models are a tool that use Natural Language Processing to offer the simulation of human intelligence. OpenFi’s platform is enabled by ChatGPT4o’s LLM and NLP capabilities.
Currently many shoppers’ experiences can vary drastically from business to business. Some customers will send enquiries and never receive a reply while others don’t hear back in days. The primary objective of OpenFi is to offer fast responses to customers 24/7, which is feasible when using conversational AI agents powered by a LLM
The second failure of many customer experiences is the shortcoming of systems to offer specific information. Chatbots and live chat facilities often run on easy scripts and logic trees that can’t handle edge cases or complex enquiries. OpenFi provides consistency of data. We train the AI on an organization’s entire website and all of their product, sales and onboarding documents. This creates a knowledge base contained in the AI that may answer detailed questions on the corporate’s services and products, pricing, onboarding steps, returns process etc. Not only will the AI all the time give consistent and accurate information, it’s capable of do it in any language.
The third superpower of OpenFi is consistency of motion. Nearly all of sales conversations stop since the sales person doesn’t consistently follow up, nurturing and educating the prospect to the purpose of sale. OpenFi’s AI agents won’t ever be the last one to message back, the AI is trained to make sure the conversation is all the time moving forward.
OpenFi also syncs all data to SalesForce, meaning that the one source of truth stays up thus far and has accurate information stored.
What are some common mistakes firms make when designing and implementing conversational AI tools, and the way can they avoid them?
The largest mistake we made when starting was prompt structure. With a view to retain information when using the GPT API, we would have liked to submit the unique prompt and all subsequent answers at every step of the conversation. This led to a big token count that grew exponentially because the conversation increased, making conversational AI cost prohibitive. It took a whole lot of extra research to find a brand new feature in GPT that we could utilise with the intention to solve this problem at the side of some custom development work.
How does OpenFi customize its AI solutions to suit the particular needs of various verticals and client data?
We develop client- and industry-specific models relatively than utilising generic and potentially inaccurate models. We concentrate on developing bespoke knowledge bases which short circuits the training process while also providing the model with a source of truth.
What role do human sales teams play within the lead nurturing process facilitated by OpenFi, and the way does the handoff from AI to human agents work?
That is as much as our clients. We arrange our Superhumans to work on the duty that our clients want. Many want the result in be qualified after which for an appointment to be booked with a human. In point of fact, our Superhumans can work end-to-end or anything in between and hand off to a human each time or wherever our clients want. This handoff may be in the shape of an email, a calendar booking, CRM insertion or perhaps a call being triggered.
What are some future developments or enhancements we are able to expect from OpenFi in the sphere of conversational AI for financial services?
The alpha version of our core product SalesTalkAI is live. It automates the SDR (Sales Development Representative) role, to pre-qualify leads and book them in for appointments. You possibly can test it out by visiting the www.openfi.tech website and clicking on the WhatsApp button in the underside right side of the page. Your feedback can be appreciated! The more brutal the higher.
The post Sam Oliver, Founding father of OpenFi- Interview Series appeared first on Unite.AI.
