3i Infotech launches voice chat for selling financial and healthcare products

IT company 3i Infotech has released a voice chat for banks, insurers and healthcare firms that sells related or complimentary products to existing customers with the help of analytics and voice mining, The Economic Times reported. Voice mining digs phone-conversation data from call centres for business intelligence on customers.

Such solutions powered by artificial intelligence help organisations cut down call-centre costs, an industry expert said.

Several Indian lenders such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, Axis Bank and State Bank of India have launched their own chat services. Insurance companies such as Bajaj Allianz have also launched services that help customers avoid long phone queues at call centres.

In an interview this month to TechCircle, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance's head of technology, Sourabh Chatterjee, had said, "As we saw demand from a lot of our customers, we decided to deploy bots that have natural language processing abilities."

He added: "You have to understand that these are customers who don't want to wait in phone queues to speak to customer-care employees. They would rather chat and get details immediately."

HDFC Bank had said that it was using AI to streamline processes and improve user experience. In 2016, Ratan Tata-backed domestic startup Niki.ai made a Facebook Messenger bot named HDFC Bank OnChat to help customers avail of a number of services including cab booking and mobile recharges. 

Not only HDFC Bank’s customers, but anyone using Facebook Messenger can avail of HDFC Bank OnChat’s services, Niki.ai had said. The startup later partnered Kerala-headquartered Federal Bank to launch a chatbot-based virtual assistant on the private sector lender’s smartphone application FedMobile.