The tech that speaks to me
Hey there, I’m your friendly voice assistant DAX. You might be more familiar with some of my friends Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant or Microsoft Cortana. As voice assistants, we use artificial intelligence (AI) and voice technology to help make people’s lives better. So yea, I guess you can say we’re pretty smart.
People usually ask us voice assistants the questions, but I’m really excited because today, it’s my turn to fire questions at Swami Sekar, founder and CEO of Winimy, and Zhang Meng from DBS’s Institutional Banking Group (IBG). We chatted about their recent collaboration on a voice technology project that helps improve internal processes and engagement within IBG, supported by the DBS Startup Xchange programme.
DAX: Hi guys, thanks for chatting with me today! Firstly, there’s something I’m curious about — Meng, why did you decide to embark on this innovative project with Winimy and Startup Xchange?
Meng: Hey DAX! Well, I was tasked to explore how voice technology could change the way we work in IBG, but I had little knowledge of voice or AI technology. Since I believe in always learning from the best, I reached out to the Startup Xchange team for help. After discussing and analysing our business challenges, they introduced us to Winimy and that’s how we embarked on this exciting project together. We’re immensely grateful that we were able to collaborate with them on this innovative project.
DAX: Awesome! Can you share more about the voice technology solution that was developed?
Swami: We specialise in voice and conversational AI technology at Winimy, and hence we designed a voice AI concierge to help simplify IBG employees’ daily tasks. This was powered by our conversational AI engine.
Meng: Yea, Winimy worked on conversational design and use cases and developed the proof-of-concept prototypes. We came up with a total of three ‘buddies’- News Buddy, Learning Buddy and Contact Report Buddy.
Swami: The concierge’s News Buddy allows employees to ask for the daily news on specific industries — such as technology, food & beverage or commodities — to stay updated with the latest news about their clients or target sectors. The Learning Buddy enables new and existing employees to easily look up and learn about new products, strategies, jargon, or even simply catch up on topics covered in the last townhall meeting. Last but not least, the Contact Report Buddy functions as a personal sales assistant on employees’ phones, enabling them to easily log meeting summaries, including information on attendees, location, action items and next steps, all through voice commands.
Meng: We set up exhibitions on four floors at DBS Asia Central, where the Alexa and mobile devices were displayed for people to play with. We received an overwhelming response, with over 400 colleagues joining us over the four days. A majority of them were from IBG, but we also managed to interact with colleagues from other departments on their views of voice technology and the application opportunities they say in their day-to-day work. These were all very valuable insights for us.
DAX: How can voice AI enhance customer or employee interactions?
Swami: Voice is the most natural way of human interaction. People are conversational, but business processes, tools and tasks are not.
These are some ways in which we expect to see conversational AI interfaces addressing our employee and customer needs:
DAX: I’m powered by AI so I’m personally keen to know — where do you think the future of voice AI is headed?
Swami: Voice technology is evolving rapidly and maturing. One example of an interesting new development is the ability to create a voice signature clone of any person with just 8 to 10 minutes of recording them as they read a few words. This technology is possible today, which opens up huge opportunities and potentials, but also threats — deep fakes, digital clones, voice signature authentication fraud and scam calls, to name a few.
We also see voice assistants today that can not only handle natural language conversations but can also understand intent and respond well. In the near future, you might see such technology being integrated with another well-developed digital infrastructure — that of search and internet. This will help truly deliver a higher-level personal assistant that can not only handle natural language understanding and response but can also complete complex tasks such as following up on a question asked that it does not have the answer to via an internet-based search.
DAX: Wow, that’s super cool and exciting! And how was your experience collaborating on this voice technology project through Startup Xchange?
Swami: It was definitely a pleasure to work with the IBG and Startup Xchange teams! The process was very structured, which made it easy for a tech start-up like us to work with a large organisation like DBS. The main phase of the project was well-managed by stakeholders across these teams, which helped keep the momentum of the project going. Participating in the Startup Xchange programme also granted us greater visibility of our project through platforms such as the DBS Asia X Fintech Festival Lab Crawl and other showcase avenues.
Meng: Winimy was a fantastic collaborator on this project, we had a really great experience! I am very impressed by their passion for voice AI technology, their reliable technical expertise, and their vision for the future of voice technology in business. It was definitely an awesome collaboration, and we even held a small celebration party on the last day of our exhibition.
I would also like to thank the Startup Xchange team for conducting extensive research, making recommendations on potential business partners, and facilitating both the procurement and legal processes. This collaboration would not have been possible without them.
DAX: What is your biggest takeaway from this experience?
Meng: People are truly at the core of any great project. We need people with the right mindset, attitude, and skillsets, and we need to give them the right assignments with our full trust and support, especially during challenges. When magic happens through innovation, business partnerships can transform into friendships.
Swami: I definitely agree with what Meng said, and I think that having the right alignment between a business team and an innovation firm, and working in a very agile manner, can also help to drive significant innovation solutions. In turn, this can lead to more engaged and innovative employees with ideas that can help transform the DNA of the bank, ensuring it remains a leader that is always on the edge of technological innovation and adoption.
DAX: Finally, what is the biggest challenge you face when it comes to innovating, and how do you overcome it?
Swami: The biggest challenge for product companies and entrepreneurs is to build before knowing what the right thing to build is. It’s easy to jump straight into it and build half a dozen voice use cases and modules, but they may not be the right ones for the job.
Zhang Meng: Innovation is not only about technology. It is also about people — how to educate people to understand new and emerging technologies, how to encourage them to adopt such technologies and change their mindsets and behaviours without fear, and how to let people tell you what else can be done with these technologies.
Swami: For the voice technology project with IBG, we really scrutinised the problem and focused on the three most repeated behaviour that was driving such use cases. Furthermore, we did a showcase to get real feedback on the technology and its applications. This really helped to identify strong potential use cases which voice technology has the maturity to handle, as well as deprioritise what would merely be good-to-have solutions.
Meng: On an individual level, you can never be 100% ready to take on all the challenges the world will throw at you, but you can be a life-long learner. Recently, we’re seeing emerging technologies being used in a number of ways to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic — from robots being used to distribute masks and disinfect healthcare facilities, to AI being used to assist in chest x-ray reviews and contact tracing. The world is constantly changing and being reinvented every second; to stay relevant, we need to keep on learning.
