‘Can I speak to a human?’

Ever since mankind began trading money for goods and services, every business person has understood that fast, high quality customer service is vital to survival.

Nowadays we’re improving our customer services by empowering real human beings with processes and technologies to provide better service with less burden on our team – and your time.

So can you speak to a human? Yes. You can always speak to a human in ANNA. Our technology makes it possible for you to get direct, thorough customer support every time you need a hand.

At ANNA we don't have different levels of customer service as most companies do, so your enquiry won’t be passed from department to department in a time-wasting cycle. Our customer service agents help you from the beginning to the end of your particular issue. So when you speak to ANNA, you can be sure there are always committed, equally qualified people happy to help at any time.

At the same time we want to make sure we’re making the most of our customer service agents’ skills, so we've built a hybrid system of AI and real human support  to empower our team to solve complicated customer service questions faster. In most cases our technology can understand the majority of customer requests and answer them without the need for human help – but when the request is complex or the issue is urgent, our AI neatly hands it over to our capable team in Cardiff.

We call it hybrid AI. Here’s how it works, and how to get the most out of it.

How does ANNA use AI?

A quick Google tells us that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is “the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment.” Sounds smart, but how specifically does it help ANNA customers?

ANNA seamlessly combines AI and human customer support so when you type requests into ANNA, our AI bot reacts with appropriate actions. The combined approach of ANNA’s clever AI and real human support from our team in Cardiff means that we're always available, giving you instant support whenever you need it.

When you chat with ANNA, our AI technology is constantly learning how you use the app. It combines this with the rest of our customer data to offer increasingly accurate results. Clever old ANNA bot.

(Don’t worry: the machines aren’t taking over – they’re just trying to reduce the amount of time you spend on your business admin).

When you type in chat

The most obvious way ANNA bot makes life easier is by understanding what you want to do when you type something into chat.

As you type, the ANNA bot tries to identify what you’re doing and offer a solution or shortcut to get you on your way quickly. This means that in most cases response times are instant as well as being accurate when it comes to dealing with the small stuff, like getting an account statement, or making a payment to someone you paid before.

Our smart AI recognises your repeat actions and also lets you type complex commands. If you type ‘Pay John Smith £100 reference cat sitting’ then all you have to do is confirm the payment and it’s done!

Complicated actions like creating an invoice are simplified into a conversation. That’s way more fun than filling out forms.

When you upload a receipt or other document

You can photograph, upload, share and email business documents to ANNA, and our bot can even recognise multiple receipts and invoices at once.

The bot is trained to spot different document types and extract the right information like account details, dates, amounts etc so that it can organise and maintain accurate business records.

It even automatically matches receipts and invoices to transactions, and then extracts VAT data for tax calculation purposes. Pretty clever, eh?

Constant learning

Our AI is constantly learning from you to make data entry even faster in the future.

Any time the ANNA bot can’t understand what you’re looking for, it will pass you on to our Cardiff-based support team to help. Our agents are pretty quick to respond too, with our average response times being less than one minute.

Having the ANNA bot as a first response means our agents get less caught up with small tasks, and have more time to focus on bigger or more complex requests.

Every time ANNA bot can’t understand something (once you’ve got help from the team) our clever technology analyses and categorises the request, so us helpful humans can teach the bot to respond more effectively next time.

So I can definitely speak to a human?

In short, yes. Rest assured, however, that the more our bot can take care of the small stuff, the quicker it will be for one of our skilled team to help you if things go awry. So next time you want to make a payment, need an account statement or have a bill to pay, don’t forget our AI is here to help. Just type what you need to do in chat, or upload a document and let ANNA bot get to work. Remember – the more you use ANNA, the better our AI gets and the quicker you can get your business admin sorted. Thanks, ANNA bot!