Local financial services group Professional Provident Society (PPS) is collaborating with Silicon Valley-based Ushur to enable its digital communication with customers by using conversational artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.
PPS says there is a growing need to have more personalised experiences and it is using technology to achieve this. The company is leveraging Ushur, which engages customers over e-mail, apps and SMS using conversational AI and intuitive business process automation workflows.
The company says conversational AI allows PPS to create a conversation via SMS and the technology also extends its availability to 24 hours a day, even over weekends.
“Legacy communication channels are no longer sufficient, nor desired, by today’s always-connected, mobile-first customers,” says Simha Sadasiva, CEO and co-founder of Ushur.
“We are delighted to see that PPS is choosing a customer-first approach by partnering with Ushur to transform customer journeys across all channels.
“The need to focus on customer experience has reached an inflection point,” notes Sadasiva.
Commenting on the partnership, Jacques Loubser, group CIO of PPS, says: “Our world has changed. The way in which we work and do business has changed, with an increased demand that we look for different and sustainable ways to meet the needs of our customers.
“This partnership with Ushur promises to elevate our engagement with our customers and provide well-needed impetus to our automation ambitions. As we scale these capabilities, our customers will experience more personalised, real-time responses. Our employees will be able to deal with larger volume queries with a more personal touch.”
PPS says between April and May 2021, it communicated with more than 4 000 of its members and clients using the new platform.
“The resultant level of engagement was very encouraging. Our members found this platform easy to use, and they could start using it instantly,” says Paul Gichuru, IT executive for PPS.
“We learned that with this technology, we could lower the effort by our customers while having them communicate at their convenience.”
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