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Speaking for myself, interacting with any merchant’s AI-powered chatbot on their website is often an exercise in frustration. Phone trees with robot voices are typically worse. I’d wager I’m hardly alone in my assessment. Who amongst us hasn’t experienced long hold times, slow responses, lack of updated information and awareness of the customer’s own account history, a granting faux politeness and a host of other inefficiencies?
A new startup called Palona debuted last week that aims to fix this sorry state of affairs. It equips direct-to-consumer enterprises — think pizza shops and electronics vendors — with live, 24/7 customer support sales agents that are uniquely reflective of each business’s brand personality, voice, inventory stock, and value proposition. The electronics vendor has a “wizard” agent made by Palona, while the pizza shop gets a surfer dude agent personality — naturally.
In all cases, Palona focuses on creating AI agents that have high “EQ,” or “emotional intelligence / emotional quotient,” building them from a combination of open source and proprietary AI models and training some of their own using human sociology research.
“A kind of fundamental thesis that the company is that we can create something an experience that is delightful and feels genuine, like a real human conversation,” said Palona co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) Tim Howes, in an in-person interview with VentureBeat recently. “ChatGPT is a hugely useful tool, but it does not feel like a human conversation.”
Palona claims its system can be easily implemented by a non-techie brand on their website, mobile app or phone lines — with responses uniquely tailored to each brand and each communications environment. And in fact, its agents are already at work handling orders, answering questions and complaints, and suggesting products and upsells to customers.
Strong founding background
In addition to Howes, Palona is co-founded and led by a team of engineers from some of the top tech companies in the world, among them: Mari …