Helping Customers Through Voice AI The platform develops advanced voice AI technology to help businesses solve its B2C communication challenges

A strong passion to enhance customer experience through AI-driven automation led to the formation of AI Rudder, a voice AI technology. "Together with my co-founder, Teng Ren, we saw an opportunity from day one to build a truly international company that develops advanced voice AI technology to help businesses solve its B2C communication challenges," said Kun Wu, co-founder and managing director, AI Rudder.

"With vast experience in developing AI solutions, our goal is to revolutionise customer engagement by bridging the humans and AI paradigm with AI-powered voice technologies," he added.

The company has recently raised $50 million in Series B funding round co-led by Tiger Global and Coatue. New investors Cathay Innovation, First Plus and VenturesLab participated and were joined by previous investors Sequoia Capital India and Huashan Capital.

The company is headquartered in Singapore with offices in Shanghai and Jakarta. "Our distribution is global as the ubiquity of technology and SaaS has allowed us to impact businesses across continents - in countries like Mexico, Kenya, Australia and beyond. Today, more than 200 companies around the world use our platform."

Over the years, voice AI has grown out of its nascent phase to become technology that can speak and hold conversations that make lives easier. "An increasing number of businesses are now turning to voice AI to create better customer experiences and optimise the use of manpower."

Explaining the system, he said, "It's more than just reading off a script. For example, AI Rudder's bots can hold and continue conversations almost like human beings, regardless of interruptions. An essential part of humanising the Voice AI experience is enabling it to understand and support more languages."

The platform's voice assistant understands and speaks more than 15 languages including Bahasa, Mandarin, Thai, Hindi, Tamil, Filipino, Vietnamese and English with regional accents.

In markets like Asia Pacific, voice AI firms face a major challenge due to the multiple types of languages, dialects and differing accents around the region. "This is a unique challenge to voice AI developers and the onus lies on companies like us to truly localise the customer experience by supporting different languages, dialects and accents."

The value of AI is not in the technology itself, but in how it can solve business problems and deliver value. As the world learns to live with Covid-19 in the new normal, voice AI is set to take centre stage to help businesses keep pace with shifting consumer demands, introducing new and effective customer service methods.

The adoption of conversational AI chatbots and voice bots has surged in the last few years, but it's not without its challenges. "The biggest one is consumer scepticism towards automated solutions. There is also a lack of mass awareness around what voice AI exactly is — many people confuse it for chatbots or Interactive Voice Responses (IVRs)."

While there are many different technologies that can support a better customer experience (CX), voice AI is a solution that delivers the same level of customer experience as that of a human agent. "This is because voice AI bots not only understand the words spoken by a consumer, but also their tone and behaviour to evaluate intent and provide the best possible response. Our research has found 67 per cent of businesses using a well-designed voice AI report better customer satisfaction and retention."

To power its next phase of growth, the funding from Series B round will be used to double headcount and hire specialised talent across various functions including sales and marketing, business operations as well as solutions consulting.