Celene Osiecka Shares Her Perspective on Automation in the Voice and AI Industry (episode 179)
Welcome Celene Osiecka
Celene is the Senior Director of Conversation Design at [24]7.ai.
How Celene Got Started in the Voice and AI Industry?
Artificial intelligence was one of her first careers out of school and Celene always had a passion for artificial intelligence and chatbots. Celene was working at a chatbot startup company early on and then that company got acquired by a larger company that focused on all things AI. This was the same time as when conversation design started becoming prominent. This led Celene to work on conversation design in both digital and voice.
What Are Some Projects That Celene Has Worked on with This Company?
Celene shared that an important task was to bring AI to different elements in people’s businesses. The goal was to automate what would have previously gone to humans.
One of the projects that Celene has been working on is a large telco company out of the US. Celene and her team were able to bring a lot of success to this company. This project proved a lot of success around containment and lowered the repeat rates of the organization. Celene shared that the goal was to meet the KPI’s of their clients and to create the best experience while incorporating automation.
Is Celene’s Company Working on Automations Other Than Voice?
Celene said that the more omnichannel the experience is, the better it will be for the customers. The goal is to make the flows as omnichannel as possible and to create more of a holistic experience.
How Have Client’s Attitudes Towards Voice Changed in the Past Few Years
Celene shared that the technology that we deal with in voice can be old and antiquated, but what clients really want is a new age voice experience and natural language. Celene mentioned that the goal of voice is how we can make it more user-friendly.
What Do People Have in Mind Nowadays When It Comes to Voice
People are looking for very natural type processes and to have the technology as human-like as possible.
What Technology is Being Used Behind the Scenes with Clients
Celene shared that most of their technology is proprietary, but they are using things like TensorFlow that tie into their technology, but for the most part what they build on is a product called Engagement Cloud.
Engagement Cloud is a FAQ and journey design tool. It enables the teams to integrate APIs, entities, and allow them to design and integrate all of the chat and agents into it. It is basically a one-stop-shop for most of their tech.
Celene also shared that they use Microsoft Azure for the TTS voices. Celene believes that they are 90% there, but she believes that we should let people know that they are talking to a bot.
What is Celene’s Vision for the Future of AI
Celene believes that this is an ethical debate as well because people talked a lot about the Google duplex demo when it was first debuted.
Even when AI becomes smarter, it is still going to be important to disclose that it is AI from an ethical perspective.
What Does Celene Look for When it Comes to Expanding Her Teams
Celene said that they are always looking to expand their team with great hires. They have two roles that they hire for. One is a Conversation Design role that centers around deploying new technology, solutions and working with developers and clients directly.
The second role focuses on optimization, and it examines how to improve performance and existing models. People can connect with Celene on LinkedIn to learn more or check out the careers on the [24]7.ai website.
What Does Celene Think of the Amazon Robot Astro?
Celene shared that even though we have had things like Siri in our homes, this robot is a functional being because it almost looks like a pet. Because this robot will bring a certain presence to our homes and can move on its own, it may bring more engagement.
Connect with Celene and Learn More
Visit [24]7.ai website
Connect with Celene on LinkedIn
Follow Celene on Twitter
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