PolyAI is a company that builds enterprise conversational assistants that carry on natural conversations with customers to solve their problems. And the company’s conversational assistants understand customers, regardless of what they say or how they say it. Pulse 2.0 interviewed PolyAI chief operating officer Yan Zhang to learn more about the company.
Yan Zhang’s Background
Zhang grew up across the globe: China, California, and a stint in the Middle East. Zhang said:
“I started my career in finance, then corporate development. When I was 26, my company sent me to China because of my background, and I ended up becoming an entrepreneur and founding three companies just because it was the right time and the right place.”
“My wife and I decided to leave China for London, where I got involved with PolyAI as a startup. Though my career had been in entrepreneurship, it revolved around consumer tech (think early e-commerce apps), so I was interested in the value PolyAI brought to the customer.”
Formation Of PolyAI
How did the idea for PolyAI come together? Zhang shared:
“As the COO of PolyAI, my primary goal is to bring together business and AI leaders to implement our best-in-class virtual assistants in large-scale enterprise applications, including the US- and UK-based restaurants, hotels, and casinos.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Zhang explained:
“PolyAI’s cutting-edge conversational AI technology fuels our customer-led voice assistants for contact centers. Available 24/7/365, the voice assistants understand a caller’s intent regardless of what they say or how they say it because of PolyAI’s sophisticated natural language understanding (NLU) model. Callers can use slang, interrupt, or ask questions to the voice assistant, and it will communicate in language so natural that it is often mistaken for a live agent.”
Here is an example of how it works:
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any specific bottlenecks in your sector of work recently? Zhang acknowledged:
“Not a bottleneck, per se, but the pace of evolution in applied AI is staggering. We stand out in the field thanks to a premium product built on proprietary language models our co-founders developed while getting their PhDs in machine learning from Cambridge, but the general availability of widely known open-source LLMs and development tools certainly make for an interesting duality.”
Evolution Of PolyAI’s technology
How has PolyAI’s technology evolved since launching? Zhang noted:
“PolyAI started as chatbots. However, we soon realized our natural language understanding technology could do much more than what a chatbot would allow, so we pivoted to the voice channel. We are always making incremental refinements to our technology, but we remain focused on creating the singular best voice channel customer experience.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Zhang cited:
“In the aftermath of Covid-19, some sectors, including hospitality, realized that many workers in their industry had left permanently. Hotels couldn’t find people to work the front desks, customer calls went unanswered, and bottom lines suffered. This dilemma sparked interest in an AI solution that could reduce the labor needed at the front desk, leading to some major players in the hospitality industry investing in PolyAI. Now we’re in the midst of a well-known hotel chain rolling out our technology globally.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Zhang about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“In the aftermath of the pandemic, Landry’s Golden Nugget Hotels and Casinos experienced unexpectedly high customer demand; however, hiring enough staff to meet that demand was a challenge. These staff shortages led to 50% – 60% of calls being abandoned, so the organization began shopping for voice assistant options that offered a great customer experience and could communicate in a natural, conversational way. PolyAI’s customer-led voice assistants met those criteria.”
“Brian Jeppesen, director of contact center operations for Landry’s Inc., was “blown away” by PolyAI’s customer-led voice assistants. He expected to contain 40% – 50% of calls, but on day one, PolyAI far exceeded those expectations by containing 87% of calls. Additionally, PolyAI designed a voice assistant that sounded so much like Golden Nugget’s best agent, callers didn’t even realize they were speaking to a voice assistant. Looking to the future, Golden Nugget plans to work with PolyAI to automate more complex calls, including outbound calls to improve hotel occupancy, and build customer profiles and understand demand with conversational data.”
Revenue
After asking Zhange about the company’s revenue information, he revealed that PolyAI grew 300% year-over-year in 2022.
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Zhang assessed:
“The potential global market size for voice automation is around $70 billion, of which PolyAI as a market leader would be able to capture 50%.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Zhang affirmed:
“PolyAI’s voice assistants communicate in language that is remarkably natural. Unlike traditional interactive voice response (IVR) systems, PolyAI’s voice assistants don’t get stuck waiting for callers to say a specific keyword to move the conversation forward because the technology can ‘understand’ a caller’s intent, no matter how they say it, and respond with industry-leading accuracy and fluidity. We build voice assistants that are meant to be as helpful, knowledgeable, and impactful as your best agent.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Zhang concluded:
“We’re staying focused on growth, developing bespoke enterprise voice assistants for global organizations, including a logistics and parcel delivery titan who recently deployed PolyAI in 10 languages across 12 countries. We’re also investigating how generative AI will augment future iterations of our product, allowing businesses of all sizes to leverage world-class voice technology to meet their customer’s needs.”
