CEO Interview: Knovvu is the Beginning of a New Era for Sestek

This interview was published in the June 2022 issue of Marketing Turkey Magazine with Sestek Founder and CEO Prof. Dr. Levent Arslan’s words about Knovvu, The New-Generation Conversational Automation Platform by Sestek.

 

We already know that Sestek develops conversational AI solutions based on over 20 years of experience. After all this, Knovvu was born as a new fruit of this corporate expertise. So what was the insight behind creating such a brand?

In the field of customer experience, we know how important and difficult it is to provide the same quality of service in different channels for both the customer and the brand. In today’s customer service operations, quality means fast and accurate information. We, as Sestek, have been maintaining to produce solutions that can meet this need in our R&D centers for more than 20 years. Our aim with Knovvu is to consolidate all our solutions, which we have realized with this experience, under a single platform. While doing this, we continue to consider changing customer needs and developing new technologies.

 

Which changes take place in the field of Global Customer Service Automation, What trends do you observe that stand out? 

Today, customer interactions do not necessarily involve a live customer representative. Calls, inquiries and requests from customers; can be answered automatically through virtual assistants that can communicate in written and voice; so companies can improve in areas such as time, cost and efficiency. Furthermore, companies that correctly analyze incoming calls to customer service and orient their employees can make great improvements in customer experience. However, due to the high volume of calls, we think that it would be much more efficient if these analyzes were made by AI-based solutions instead of live employees.

AI-based solutions increase efficiency in customer experiences, sales and service operations, reduce costs and improve interaction between brands and customers. At this point, as Sestek, we step in and develop AI-powered products that companies can benefit from. As I mentioned above, we bring together these solutions on the Knovvu platform.

 

How Knovvu is designed to address emerging global trends?

We group our products on the Knovvu platform into 3 main categories: Virtual assistance, voice biometrics and analytics. I would like to explain these concepts in brief details.

Virtual assistants today can answer one of four customer questions without the help of a live customer representative. Although this percentage may seem small at first glance, it means enormous savings and efficiency for a company that receives millions of customer calls.

With the technology of voice biometrics, a customer call can be shortened by approximately 20-30 seconds. Such a reduction per call represents a significant savings for call centers. This solution also provides a good experience for the customer, who goes through the security phase without being asked any additional security questions while talking to the representative and can find a quick solution to their query.

Finally, every customer call contains crucial insights that companies can use to improve their workflows. However, today, call centers cannot adequately analyze these calls due to time and human resource constraints. The technology of conversational analytics enables automation in this area, helping companies and their employees to uncover valuable insights.

We create value in these 3 areas with our AI-based solutions on the Knovvu platform.

 

Which services do you offer under the umbrella of Knovvu? In this sense, what are the points where you differ in the sector?

We bring together our services under 3 main headings on the Knovvu platform: Knovvu Virtual Agent, Knovvu Biometrics and Knovvu Analytics.

I would like to underline a few important points about Knovvu:

1. Artificial Intelligence driven: Knovvu solutions are built on AI-powered technologies that will constantly learn the system they are involved in and improve themselves.
2. Quick Response: Our users will have a faster response system than competing products in areas such as scenario editing, form design or instant reporting.
3. Real-Time Performance: Instant improvements will be made in call center operations with sentiment analysis and instant notifications that allow real-time action to be taken in customer conversations.
4. Simple and Easy Experience: Knovvu solutions are designed in such a way that users can easily understand and get maximum efficiency by revising the system without coding knowledge.
5. Environment Independent Use: The Knovvu platform can be installed in the local environment of the institutions, or in all cloud (private or public) environments if desired.

 

What innovations and conveniences await a brand that cooperates with Knovvu?

As a conversational automation platform, Knovvu is positioned to serve industries with high customer interaction, such as retail, telecom, banking and insurance. Today, it is very important for companies that a solution enables central management, omni-channel access and can work in any local/cloud environment, and Knovvu comes to the fore with these features. The Knovvu platform enables better management of customer interactions with the help of automation.

 

What are the future goals of Knovvu?

Knovvu is the beginning of a new era for SESTEK. Our vision is to be a global technology company that improves the experiences of our business partners, their customers, and our own employees. I think we have come to a good point with what we have done in the last 20 years on this journey. Today, we serve more than 200 corporate clients in 16 countries.

To talk about our strategic goals, our primary objective is to expand our network in the global market. While doing this, we want to continue to deliver our products as software (SaaS) that can be accessed from the cloud environment to our current and potential business partners at home and abroad.

Last year, we started the company-wide DevOps transformation process. Thus, we have made our products in a way that can easily adapt to needs and innovations and respond quickly. At the end of the day, our goal is to make the lives of both our business partners and their customers easier by using artificial intelligence technology more and more efficiently in our solutions.

Author: Prof. Levent Arslan, Sestek Founder & CEO