Sarah is here to serve.
New Zealand digital human interface developer Soul Machines has inked a new partnership with Daimler Financial Services at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The two companies will demo Sarah, a digital human designed to help Daimler Financial Services customers with personalised assistance, including car financing, leasing and insurance.
Sarah, who looks a lot like NatWest Bank's Cora, combines artificial and emotional intelligence using Soul Machines' technology to deliver personal concierge services through an emotionally intelligent, digital touchpoint.
Soul Machines in November announced a partnership with software developer Autodesk for AVA, a digital human that provides customers access to a service agent 24/7.
This month, Royal Bank of Scotland’s NatWest Bank in the United Kingdom, also announced it had been working with Soul Machines on a pilot for Cora, its customer service digital human which is already in advanced testing and having more than 100,000 conversations a month.
Each of these is built on IBM Watson and Soul Machines' "digital nervous system" which uses a combination of neural networks and brain models.
The finance and mobility portfolios of car manufacturers is becoming increasingly complex and so is customer service.
Soul Machines says Sarah will be able in the future to recognise non-verbal behaviour of Daimler Financial Services customers in real time using face recognition.
“We have a fundamental belief that in the age of artificial intelligence we are entering, machines can be more useful if they are more like us,” said Greg Cross, chief business officer, Soul Machines.
“Businesses today risk losing customers through impersonal online experiences."
Udo Neumann, chief information officer at Daimler Financial Services said Sarah serves as the interface in the company's financial services and mobility ecosystem, enabling it to deliver an unprecedented customer experience "in the near future".
