Inside Clinc: The Conversational AI Startup Facing a Serious Growth Spurt in 2021
(Photo : Inside Clinc: The Conversational AI Startup Facing a Serious Growth Spurt in 2021)

Artificial intelligence technology is advancing in its capabilities everyday and with increasing speed. New, evolved technology is interrupting the business practices of every primary and mainstream industry on the planet. The natural evolutionary giddy-up behind it seems to consistently quicken its pace with new AI technology built and deployed each minute. AI developers worldwide remain to see regular discoveries with expanded, yet more distinct research and enhanced comprehension. Artificial intelligence and its various forms of human-replicating technology find their way into new aspects of our daily lives each time the sun rises and sets.

Clinc, the Ann Arbor-based A.I. startup, is growing conversational artificial intelligence applications across the financial sector in the United States and several different countries across the globe. Clinc's 'human-in-the-room' virtual assistant adventure will transform the facility with which banks interact with their customers. Clinc's conversational intelligence guarantees every consumer banking experience remains seamless and it seems 2021 will see tremendous growth on the backs of some major changes over the last several years

What is a Finie and What Makes It So Special?

Clinc's first significant piece of AI technology built is a conversational smarty named Finie. It is the central financial genie and the customer-facing (and hearing) voice you would encounter. Finie provides Clinc's clients with 24/7 non-stop customer service that never quits. To date, Finie is the most technologically advanced virtual assistant the world's financial industry has ever seen. 

Imagine you call into your bank or try to get in touch with customer service on a significant financial platform like Paypal. You encounter an automated voice or chatbot. This automated chatbot can answer about two out of every ten questions you ask. Most times, you end up figuring out how to bypass it to speak to a real human who can help. Right?

Finie plays the same role as a customer service assistant, but there's a host of differences. Finie, created by the brilliant team of programmers and AI research pioneers at Clinc, is powered by the most modern and comprehensive conversational AI technology on the planet. Finie has the AI conversational capability of another human in the room. Finie is not just another chatbot. Finie, alone, is the entire customer service team and has the proven ability to answer and resolve over 95% of customer inquiries without a dash of human assistance. Finie will talk to you like a human, answer questions like a human, remember details you add during an interaction, and remember those details in future conversations. He's not only another human in the room but a human in the room with a fierce and very long memory. So, how does Finie come by such capabilities? To know Finie, first, you must know Clinc.

Clinc Success Sidebar

To date, Clinc has consistently delivered to clients, exceeded expectations, and it shows in the KPI's. Clients and their customers are genuinely happy with the virtual assistance they receive from the technology and working with the Clinc team to deploy it. The numbers don't lie:

82% Customer Satisfaction

With an average 82% CSAT across all of our live deployments, your customers are going to love a virtual assistant built with Clinc.

95% Containment Rate

Clinc technology has a 95% containment rate, demonstrated in interactions with over 10 million users in a production environment. Containment rate is the percentage of exchanges with customers that Clinc's virtual assistant technology was able to complete a proposed task and successfully fulfill a customer's needs without the assistance of a live human. Basically, 95% of the time, Finie takes care of a customer's needs from beginning to end. 95% of the time. 

Clinc Technology Comes Developer-Ready 

Clinc is a conversational AI research company established in 2015 by a group of computer scientists in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The original concept for the AI Company was born out of a University of Michigan computer science classroom project. Clinc's building blocks rest on the idea and hypothesis that we could create a brand new AI technology type. This type of technology would reduce the company's overhead and time spent in the design and deployment phases. While at the same time, offer the most naturally conversational virtual assistant experience humanly (literally) possible. 

Clinc hopes to provide developers with the building blocks to create exceptional conversational AI experiences without the need for rules or scripts. With a robust set of developer tools, documentation, training resources, and a dedicated customer support team, developers can feel empowered and ready to create solutions your customers will love.

In 2021, Clinc's technology provides developers with the following tools:

  • Comprehensive AI Testing Capabilities

  • Built-in Version Control

  • Customizable Response Editors

  • AI Model Insight Tools

  • Build in Python, Jinja or Block

  • Rich Conversational Design Options & Tools

Clinc's Conversational AI is In Demand

After only five short years, Clinc's become the most advanced conversational AI technology on the market. The company has seen several deployments with important international financial institutions and accumulated an insane amount of private funding to advance research efforts while scaling for multiple verticals. The conversational AI technology pioneer has recently been named one of the top twenty-five AI companies to watch in Forbes magazine. 

Clinc's principal objective from day one was to explore and generate innovative and practical ways to use artificial intelligence to solve the most pressing common problems in everyday life. 

The Benefits of Clinc Technology

  • No Reliance on Human Service Agents 

With Clinc technology, automation is the name of the game. You can take your customer's most frequently asked questions and automate your AI virtual assistant to answer those with ease and speed. This mechanized response will begin to deliver ROI to your financial institution almost overnight. 

  • Improve Customer Wait Times (CSAT)

Your customers will spend less time waiting and receive quicker responses to even the most personal banking inquiry-the shorter the service call, the happier the customer.

  • Increase Customer Retention

Clinc technology provides quick, highly personalized service, directly affecting their desire to stay with your institution.

  • Cut Down on Operational Overhead

Eliminate all expenses that surround creating and maintaining live customer service teams. 

The Courageous Guidance of Clinc AI Leaders

Clinc's CTO and co-founder, Dr. Lingjia Tang, is a computer science professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Virginia. Tang leads the charge to elevate conversational AI penning numerous publications and receiving several awards for her work. Tang previously held employment with Microsoft and Google.

Co-founder and Chief Customer Officer (CCO) Dr. Johann Hauswald attended the University of Michigan. He obtained his Ph.D. in computer science and engineering. Hauswald became a prominent figure in the AI field when he created Sirius, now known as Lucida, an open-source AI personal assistant he built from the ground up.

Ray Hale serves as Clinc's CFO with twenty years of experience scaling developing technology companies and placing them on the road to success. Chief Information Officer Dr. Yunqi Zhang devised, developed, and deployed large-scale software systems in production with Microsoft and Facebook. He gained his Masters in Computer Science in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan.

New Leadership Infuses Life into the AI Startup

Clinc appointed Jon Newhard as the company's new Chief Executive Officer in very recent and exciting news. Newhard joins the Clinc family, bringing 25 years of leadership experience in the Information Technology sector, running enterprise software businesses principally in private equity and VC environments. 

Clinc's executive overhaul continued during the fall of 2020 with the hire of Chief Marketing Officer John Lichtenberg. Proven CX leader Mahesh Baxi will take on the Chief Customer Officer position. With these aggressive new strides to round out high-level administration for the Ann Arbor-based business, Clinc now stands fully-equipped and poised to generate unique global opportunities.

Clinc and Ann Arbor, Michigan

Clinc headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the company's officials intend to remain in the area they've called home since its inception. The University of Michigan is one of the top schools in the US for computer engineering. Ann Arbor has always served as an excellent location for emerging and successful technology startups. Beyond Ann Arbor, Clinc has a satellite office in the Guanghua Ocean International Center Tower in Beijing, China.

Clinc Begets Finie 

As we already discussed, Clinc created Finie, the voice-operated AI virtual assistant explicitly designed for the banking and financial services industry. But, there's so much more to this little financial whiz. Finie comes equipped with an elaborate and complex financial services vocabulary and knowledge-base. Banking customers can converse with the AI virtual assistant in everyday, natural language, and Finie understands and processes all inquiries. Finie utilizes common elements of our world that we usually take for granted. Finie uses simple aspects of our world like time of the day or the season and the time of the year and other everyday human norms. Armed with these speech humanisms, Finie can talk to customers as if there was utterly nothing virtual about him at all. Clinc's cutting-edge conversational technology puts Finie on the level with any human customer service expert ready to take charge of every last one of your banking needs.

Finie checks bank statements, activates your new credit or debit banking cards, makes payments and transfers at your request, and locates ATMs. Finie even contacts the bank's real-life tech support in the slim chance that the customer needs assistance exceeding what Finie's ability demands. Clinc's AI virtual assistant also promotes personalized ways to save money based on your personal transaction history. Today, this industry-leading conversational AI technology receives programming in over 80 diverse tongues.

Finie even catches messy language, complex conversations, and understands and practices conversational healing. Clinc's technology utilizes machine learning. Each unique query allows the AI technology to gain even further understanding, become smarter, and increase its capability to successfully service a banking institution's client base at every possible turn. Clinc founders built five different AI engines from scratch to ultimately construct Finie into the voice that customers listen to today.

Many leading banking establishments currently employ Clinc's technology, including İşbank of Turkey and US Bank. The product's user-friendly interface allows businesses to build and launch an AI model quickly and with ease through one centralized portal. The interface boasts computerized testing suites that send notifications to the banking institution if any errors need logging in the system.

Finie is currently the only AI virtual assistant technology solution deployed to over 35 million users worldwide.

Companies Already Actively Using Clinc Technology (Selected)

  • US Bank

  • Isbank of Turkey

  • Visa

  • Wells Fargo

  • UMCU

  • OCBC Bank

  • Ford 

Clinc Knows the Art of Securing Capital

Since 2015, Clinc has fortunately increased funding for their research and development ventures from a diverse collection of sources. The AI solution earned a $225,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and received $1.2 million in seed funding from a host of private investors from all over the US.

In 2019, the company raised $52 million Series B to fund future AI development projects.

Awarding Clinc Technology

In August 2020, Clinc's virtual assistant platform was named the winner of the "Best Natural Language Generation Platform'' award in the third annual AI Breakthrough Awards program. One year prior, Clinc was awarded the 2019 Technology Leadership Award for Artificial Intelligence from Frost & Sullivan. Companies that show innovation and unique fortitude in their tech solutions tend to find themselves the recipient of such a distinguished honor. The many top-level AI awards are just more reasons why successfully exceeding goals at each funding round has never been a genuine worry for the Clinc team.

The Future of Clinc AI

Clinc has been expanding unwaveringly since its incorporation in 2015. This conversational AI pioneer will only increase and define its technology. Clinc is currently focusing 100% of its financial sector efforts to become the leading AI technology internationally for the financial services sector. Still, Clinc's new leadership has its eyes on a much bigger tomorrow. New CEO Jon Newhard and team plan to increase their technology services to serve multiple verticals eventually. Soon, Clinc will be scaling its technology for the entire conversational world.

Clinc still headquarters in Ann Arbor, MI. The AI leader houses a little less than 100 employees on the payroll. And Clinc's leadership is very much still in a growth mindset. There are currently many opportunities for both seasoned tech professionals and young innovators to join the team.

Conversational AI research has only just begun, and Clinc leads the efforts with its multi-layered and detailed analyses. Language aptitudes exemplify the ways this conversational AI tech can both clarify and evolve all at once. Clinc's innovative and industry-leading natural language-creating technology answers every question posed and seamlessly excuses any unneeded everyday stressors like taking a trip to the bank. As AI technology grows in demand and custom, rest assured that Clinc will be at the helm of that conversation guiding and steering it exactly where it needs to go well in the future.

Learn more about these conversational AI pioneers at www.clinc.com.

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