Why Tata Power’s new voice bot won't ask for your personal details

Tata Power, the country’s largest integrated electricity generation company, on Wednesday announced the launch of a voice bot to address customer queries and help with services such as billing and payments.

The bot, TINA, will be available on Android, iOS, and Google Home devices as well as on the utility firm’s website for residential, commercial and industrial consumers. 

Customers can say “Talk to Tata Power TINA” on Google Assistant and avail billing-related services. 

"The new customer experience is designed to deliver relevant information in an engaging conversational manner with minimum steps," said Praveer Sinha, chief executive officer and managing director of Tata Power. 

Yellow Messenger, an artificial intelligence-powered enterprise audience engagement company, helped build the bot.

Yellow Messenger CEO Raghu Ravinutala said that AI can also help reduce operational costs.

Tata Power further said that the integration of TINA with Google Assistant also gives the bot the ability to process requests without asking for a customer ID, phone number or other personal details. 

TINA can scan the phone number, the query coming from its database, identify the linked account and retrieve the relevant information to deliver it in a personalised and conversational manner, Sinha said.

Indian companies across various sectors including banking, insurance and travel have been integrating voice bots and chatbots with their offerings.

Last month, BSE Ltd, the operator of Asia's oldest stock exchange, formally launched an artificial intelligence-based chatbot called ‘Ask Motabhai’ to help investors find stock-related information on its website.

In June, Axis Bank jumped on the conversational banking bandwagon by announcing the launch of a virtual assistant. The bank said that the assistant could respond to both voice and chat queries.

HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank both have similar bot services across a variety of platforms.

Similarly, Kotak Mahindra Bank, too, has an AI-enabled digital chatbot named Keya to reduce call time at customer care centres.

Insurance services provider PolicyBaazar is also using chatbots to help solve customer queries faster.

According to a report from market research firm Gartner, nearly a quarter of customer service and support operations will integrate a virtual customer assistant (VCA) including and voice bots and chatbots across engagement channels by 2020.

This will represent a significant jump as less than 2% of such operations used this technology in 2017.