AiThority Interview Series With Don White, CEO at Satisfi Labs

Tell us about yourself and your journey to creating Satisfi Labs.

We saw an opportunity to create a product that would assist people with their information needs in physical locations. We noticed that websites and search engines are not able to keep up with the changing information typical in places like arenas, stadiums, retail properties and tourism attractions. When we launched our first baseball stadium, we thought people would just look for facilities and maybe some information about entry and schedules. We were amazed at the larger opportunity to help people find their favorite beverage, the shirt they saw online and even find out about things going on nearby that might interest them.

What is your team like?

We have an amazing team of developers and engineers that create some pretty insightful products for our clients. Every month, I sit down with all the employees and go over what we should be proud of and what we need to work on. I think it’s important to spend time on the latter. Everyone should understand our risks as a business around competitive threats and time to market so that they can also own the problem.

We’re also a karaoke company. Our winter holiday karaoke party has become an annual tradition and it now includes our company, clients, and partners. At our last one, we started attracting customers from out of state who came in and rented hotels just to be part of it. It is part of our brand and company culture and I absolutely love it.

How have AI technologies been a game-changer for the way companies connect with their consumers?

AI creates an easier way for brands to communicate the right information, at the right place, in real-time to their customers and employees. As the bot platform behind some of the country’s biggest retail, entertainment, and sports brands, Satisfi Labs knows what consumers are thinking, sifting through millions of SKUs to give customers a curated experience all through conversation, while the brand owns the customer data and can now add color to previously blind spots in business and marketing analytics.

How does Satisfi Labs leverage AI to help brands engage with consumers in real-time during sports events?

The AI platform we create for sports brands provides fans with a direct, conversational interface to their team or the game they are attending. When looking for information about your favorite club, why jump to a search engine? Our technology enables sports teams and events to dialogue with the fans about anything they want to know in real-time. When fans are looking for a specific food or piece of merchandise in the stadium closest to their location, they can also use the AI to quickly find this information using social or digital channels they’re already familiar with.

How can companies affect chatbot programming to ensure it reflects the ethos of the company and the tone of the brand?

When we begin work with a new company, we work closely with their marketing team and employees to ensure the AI we create matches the tone of the brand. We analyze how the customer service team members answer inquiries in real life and apply that same messaging and ethos to the AI.

How is a chatbot conversation personalized for each user? Does it learn on the move and where does it get its data from?

The chatbots personalize each conversation based on what the user is asking. Our platforms do learn on the move and they get smarter as they have more and more conversations with users. Each AI platform shares this new information with the entire network, so a Satisfi Labs chatbot for one brand could be helping to improve the knowledge or a chatbot for a completely different client.

Tell us about your ‘go where the consumer is’ philosophy. Which messaging platforms does Satisfi Labs’ technology integrate with?

We integrate our platforms on the channels our clients’ consumers are already using, so it’s as easy as possible to begin using the platform. Our technology can be integrated into websites, mobile apps, Facebook messenger, Amazon Alexa, and onto assistive robots like Pepper.

What is the challenge when dealing with support service centers that Satisfi Labs helps tackle?

Support service centers are a great tool, but not all of the data that can be utilized from conversations between users and employees is captured. There are blind spots that brands might not even be aware of until they start utilizing our technology. The AI allows them to see trends and data that were previously hidden. Some companies don’t have enough resources to pour into customer service centers too, so our AI platform provides them with another channel consumers can connect to.

Could you help us understand the value of chatbot data?

Thousands of conversations could be happening each day between a brand’s consumers and its employees. It’s impossible to capture all of this insight and data without some kind of technological help. Data acquired through our AI platform can be used to inform marketing and business strategy. For example, if a lot of people are asking where they can find gluten-free food at a sports stadium, that data will show in our platform and show the stadium that they need more gluten-free options for visitors.

Tell us about the kind of security measures your company employs to ensure consumer data is safe and GDPR compliant.

Data privacy has always and continues to be a top priority at Satisfi. We are focused on building great experiences that, where needed, users will feel comfortable opting-in to data sharing capabilities only if they choose to do so. We explicitly ask permission before each of these capabilities are enabled to ensure the user is safe first.

According to you, what is the future of the chatbot for enterprise?

In the future, AI is going to be second nature to us. Chatbots will be the gateway to information both internally and externally. The conversational capabilities now are going to increase productivity dramatically as chatbots can combine multiple steps into one command very easily. It’s going to seamlessly integrate into our day to day lives similar to how mobile phones have become a necessity. We are in the hyper-growth stage of conversational AI today and it will only get better as more and more people use it.

What are the particular challenges with voice when navigating customer interactions?

We take for granted how challenging it can be to communicate things you cannot see. Voice is not reading a text experience. It requires an entirely new and different design that takes into account the proper way to guide a person to their desired result as fast and clear as possible. One specific nuance is the concept of a “menu” where you can see your options for a particular experience. For voice, finding ways to make that “menu” intuitive so the user understands exactly how to drill down to their specific need is something we constantly work on to develop and enhance.

Thank you Don! That was fun and hope to see you back on AIthority soon.