Google has taken over the American startup Onward for an unknown amount. The startup created an automation platform for customer services. That’s what Venturebeat reports.
“We started Onward with the mission to get computers involved in natural, human conversations,” says a now deleted message on the startup’s website. “With Google, we are able to extend the reach of Onward’s technologies. We got excited about these technologies, and we’re happy to be able to bring them to Google.”
Chatbot
Onward had an enterprise chatbot platform, which natural language processing used to recognize the meaning of a customer message. Using signals such as locations, login status and historical activities, the platform was able to personalize and contextualize answers to questions.
It also had a visual bot builder, which allowed users to create answers using decision trees. This allowed for even more personalisation. There were also integrations with Zendesk, Help Scout, Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, Spree and Solidus, allowing bots to track calls, add leads, and track shipments and orders themselves.
Now the company has been taken over by Google. Co-founders Rémi Cossart and Pramod Thammaiah would work for Google together with a number of employees. Cossart previously worked as an analyst. CEO Thammaiah previously worked as a product manager at Google.
The current status of the chatbot is unknown. However, the website no longer exists, which indicates that the chatbot no longer works either.
Contact Center AI
Only a few months ago, Google unveiled its Contact Center AI. This is a virtual representative for customers based on machine learning. The representative talks to customers over the phone, using natural language processing. For example, it suggests solutions to common problems.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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