Cation Consulting Ltd.
Nominated Award: Best Use of AI in a Consumer/Customer Service Application
Website of Company: www.parly.ai
Cation Consulting is an Irish based, Amazon Web Services Consulting Partner, specialising in Cloud System Engineering, Solutions Engineering & Conversational AI/Chatbots. We are also an Amazon Awarded Alexa Voice Agency and an Amazon Contact Centre Intelligence Partner. Founded in 2018, Cation secured its first major customer Ryanair in 2018 providing AWS cloud consulting and the live deployment of its multi-channel, multi-lingual Conversational AI product, Parly. Today in Ryanair, Parly is handling and automating 10’s of thousands of daily customer conversations in six languages across multiple channels including web, facebook and twitter.
In early 2019, we partnered with Communicorp UK’s voice branding division, Voiceworks, in the delivery of a sports voice services to their customers. This culminated in the launch of Sport Social, an Alexa Skill and Google Action for pre-match and post-match English Premiership League team reports. The service is supported by a Cation developed Audio Content Management System called Orator for managing the creation, modification and upload of the digital audio content. In December 2020 Cation collaborated with Voiceworks in developing the Cooking with Kelly (model Kelly Brook) seasonal Skill.
In late 2020 Cation secured a contract with 123.ie for the supply of a chatbot for the automated onboarding of new customers motor insurance policies. The solution went live in April 2021 and is the subject of this AI Awards nomination. The 123.ie solution is build upon Parly and utilises multiple layers of AI algorithms and process automation to mimic the actions that customers and 123.ie staff take while executing repetitive compliance activities in various applications, eliminating time-consuming, error-prone manual data entry.
This year, Cation was awarded a contract by the Nation Council of the Blind, Ireland, (NCBI) for the implementation of the NCBI Smart Hub. The NCBI Smart Hub will enable NCBI to engage with NCBI Service Users and deliver services and content by way of Alexa Skills and Google Actions via Smart Speaker direct to the user.
Reason for Nomination:
The subject of this nomination is Cation’s implementation of Parly in 123.ie for the automated onboarding of new customers motor insurance policies. The reason for the nomination is the success of the solution in automating a manual process and making it available 24×7. As part of their digital transformation programme 123.ie wanted to improve their customer’s experience and minimise the friction in the customer journey while onboarding new motor insurance policies.
Automating the Customer Journey with Conversational AI Excellent customer care is one of the best methods of marketing a brand. In the insurance world where customer engagement is quite intense and sometimes complicated, Cation’s next generation Conversational AI platform, Parly, enables customers to self-service their journey by providing real-time Straight Through Processing (STP) of documents and instant automated responses to their queries.
Prompt the customer to take the next step Brands that are customer centric in nature, avoiding manual processes, tedious paperwork, and approvals will get the attention of customers and gain their custom. As part of their Digital Transformation journey, 123.ie’s objective was to provide an automated digital straight through process that was quick,
available 24×7, and contribute significantly to an improved customer experience, resulting in successful relationships with customers.
The Solution – automate the customer journey with Parly Assist Cation’s Parly Assist, a Conversational AI Amazon Lex powered chatbot, that leverages natural language technology, is designed to proactively engage with customers and automate the complete customer journey. Parly is designed to augment existing business processes and not force technology change. In integrating Parly with core business systems, a number of cutting-edge innovations can be easily unlocked:
Guided & Open Dialogues
Personalized & contextual aware journey-based dialogues, taking the customer through business processes relevant to a customer’s specific needs. Customers can enter a query at any time throughout the journey and receive automated assistance.
Handover to Live Chat – Parly Engage
At any stage in the conversation flow, if Parly Assist cannot respond to a specific query, or if a customer requests it, Parly Assist can handover the conversation to Live Chat, Parly Engage, where the conversation will be taken over by an insurance employee who is AI assisted throughout the conversation.
Document Capture via Mobile Camera, Web Camera, File or Image Uploads
Parly Assist guides the customer through the document capture process including Personal ID Documents e.g., Driving Licence and Passport, Utility Bills, Policy and any other related documents, and, implements real-time processing of customer data, with AI based image and data extraction and activation within the customer record.
Integration and Validation with Business Systems
Parly Assist integrates securely with the Business Systems or partner Systems so that the documents or data can be validated real-time, automatically combined with the customer’s records or validated with external KYC/AML and security services.
Always Getting Better
Parly Assist is a perpetually learning Conversational AI for a more personalised and innovative customer interaction. By combining AI and fuzzy logic Parly is achieving straight through processing levels of up to 80% without requiring manual intervention.
The result:
Simplification of the Customer Journey
The customer journey is significantly simplified through the use of continuous guided dialogue and access to FAQ. Additionally, the process of capturing the documents via mobile camera, web camera or image upload removes the cumbersome email and potential phone call processes.
Faster & Lower Cost Customer Onboarding
The onboarding process is speeded up through the automated real-time validation process and approval. This removes the requirement for manual documentation validation and notification to the customer of approval which prior to implementation of automation could realistically be next day or longer.
Flexibility & Agility
Built to augment your ecosystem, Parly is customised to integrate with your internal and partner systems, providing greater flexibility when required and avoiding high business impact migrations.
Higher Quality Customer Experience
The implementation of Parly Assist will also improve the customer experience by introducing a more convenient way to upload documents and respond to queries throughout the journey. Parly Assist removes the friction that is typically experienced with current onboarding methods and significantly reduces the high error-rate and difficulties that customers have when uploading documents online.
Additional Information:
Amazon Web Services has been very impressed with the implementation of Parly and the use of the underlying AWS cloud infrastructure in 123.ie. Hence, they are in the process of producing a case study of the solution and the benefits to 123.ie. This case study should be available in the next 4-6 weeks. AWS also produced a Ryanair case study based on our Parly solution for the automation of pre-flight customer services queries. https://player.vimeo.com/video/365773889?
Cation Founding Team
Gerry Mc Kenna Co-founder & CEO Gerry is a Telecommunications executive and investor with over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications arena. He specialises in the management, strategy and investment of start-ups which has included Aldiscon (an innovator in the supply of text messaging to mobile operators acquired by Logica), Apion (a mobile internet browsing pioneer acquired by Phone.com) and Anam Technologies (a specialist in SMS Firewalls) acquired by Infobip.
Alan Kiernan Co-founder & CTO
Alan is formally a director of engineering for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; with a background in Systems and Solutions Architecture, Cloud (AWS), Security, APM and Performance Engineering; and previous experience with Accenture for major corporate and government clients over a career spanning 20 years.
A certified AWS Architect, Developer and Operations Engineer, Alan is currently a lead AWS consultant architect with a number of clients including Ryanair, designing and delivering the airlines core new AWS enterprise architecture and responsible for the cloud architecture behind new products and services including Parly Chatbot, Alexa Services, Ryanair Rooms, Connecting Flight, Internal Bot Blocker Platforms and Boarding Pass Adverts.
Alan is also an certified Amazon Alexa Skill builder and an Amazon Awarded Subject Matter Expert, where he participated in professional activities, such as the writing of the office Amazon Alexa Skill Builder exam.
Alan is a frequent speaker on the subject of conversational AI, having spoken in international conferences, including AWS Re:Invent in 2018, AWS Invite only events in the UK and regularly speaking/presenting/running workshops for the AWS Usergroups Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Galway & Belfast).