Meet Sophie. She can guide you through an employee onboarding process, conduct workplace training, or help you pick out the best skincare solution.
Sophie isn’t an expert in the traditional sense. She’s a product of UneeQ, a startup revolutionizing automated experiences with digital humans. They are emotionally expressive, hyper-realistic, and offering new ways for companies to positively engage with customers and employees.
UneeQ’s digital humans engage in real-time conversations, using voice, natural language, and visual cues to convey information while building an emotional connection with the user. On the back end, they are powered with data from a wide range of sources, making the conversations relevant and contextual — leading to more helpful, informed responses.
Founder and CEO Danny Tomsett says the key to UneeQ is establishing emotional connections. He argues that traditional automated digital systems provide information but often lack a human touch. With research suggesting that 95% of all purchase decisions are emotionally driven, conversing with digital humans using voice, visual cues, and natural language can bridge the gap — helping customers overcome common hurdles such as doubt and intimidation.
“We empower companies to cultivate emotional connections and respond to customers in a way that builds that confidence and trust — resulting in higher conversions and a better customer experience.“
— Danny Tomsett, Founder & CEO
UneeQ’s client roster is impressive, including approximately 60 enterprise brands. For Kiehl’s, UneeQ powered a digital skincare expert, while UBS used the technology to let clients converse about finance with a digital twin of UBS Switzerland’s Chief Economist Daniel Kalt. Such partnerships have resulted in incredible results for UneeQ clients. The company reports that clients have seen a 300% increase in engagement, 10% decrease in cart abandonment, and doubled conversion rates.
UneeQ’s Journey Continues with the LIFT Labs Accelerator
UneeQ was recently accepted into the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator: Enterprise AI. The six-week program offers startups the opportunity to work closely with mentors and corporate partners with the primary goal of developing potential partnerships.
“How do you scale phenomenal experiences across a large customer base? That’s incredibly complex and we can help do that digitally by providing innovative experiences that differentiate companies from their competition.”
The Digital Human Advantage
Research shows that digital humans provide rich, emotional experiences because they display emotional cues like nodding and smiling. Soldiers returning from active duty revealed more post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms to a digital human than in anonymized surveys.
Meanwhile, the Harvard Business Review writes that digital humans work well because people are programmed to react emotionally to facial signals. Digital humans, they say, are more likely to provide “a meaningful experience than other automated channels, and customers are more likely to extend interactions with them beyond their initial search or transaction.”
“With AI, we can now meet emotional needs to deliver interactions that leave people feeling valued — turning doubt, uncertainty, and intimidation into confidence and trust,” said Tomsett.”
As UneeQ sets its sights on the future, Tomsett envisions easier accessibility for businesses to deploy digital humans.
“We want to make it highly accessible so anyone can train, develop, and deploy their own digital humans,” he said. “We want to make that available in a way that is completely AI driven to avoid companies having to do any heavy lifting.”
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