AI Is Entering the Sales Business

Artificial intelligence (AI) is divisive when it comes to interactions. Either it comes off as robotic and unhuman-like or eerily authentic to the point of discomfort.

But by giving AI more of a human touch, Boston-based developer Talla just may have hit the sweet spot with its “next-generation knowledge base,” a descendant of the company’s first product, AI-based chatbots.

AI With a Human Touch

Talla’s expertise lies in a niche of AI called natural language processing (NLP). Users can upload product and administration-related information to a central hub that employees can access. From there, Talla’s expertise in NLP really shines: employees can ask questions that Talla can answer naturally.

A great feature of Talla lies in how it deals with uncertainty; when Talla doesn’t know the answer, a team of humans feeds it the answer it can learn from. Founder Rob May boasts about how this keeps Talla updated and useful, unlike many of its competitors. He adds, “The real innovation here is that we learn and grow off of the standard workflows that people use.”

Talla has a huge fanbase in sales and customers support teams as they navigate their company’s respective documents to quickly answer customers’ pre-sales and product questions. New employees also use Talla to get familiar with company best practices.

Talla even connects its answers with the right software or tool to use. Talla will also suggest tasks automatically, like updating a customer’s shipping address or reminding employees to follow up with unanswered customer requests.

New Innovations, New Horizons

In addition to Talla’s AI development foundations, the company also introduced a blockchain-enabled performance auditor of enterprise-level AI software. Dubbed “Botchain,” the technology is quickly gaining traction and could even become a big part of Talla’s product offering according to May.

Talla recently raised over $12 million in funding to aid in its commercialization of AI and blockchain technology. The company is expanding its human knowledge base too; they recently brought on Paula Long as senior VP of engineering at Talla. Long is a renowned industry expert in data; she co-founded EqualLogic and sold it to Dell for $1.4 billion. She also sold her next startup, DataGravity, for an undisclosed amount after garnering $92 million in funding.

Talla is proof of the enterprise shift to implementing AI in the workplace, and May sees a great place for the company in the offices of the future: “We have a long-term goal of building digital workers.”

What do you think about Talla’s technology? Do you have a job that could use a dose of Talla’s innovation?