Twilio enables unique cloud-based automated call-answering services with Voice and AI

All businesses of all types, and of all sizes receive calls all day, some more than others. Some answer the same types of questions over and over. This can be very time-consuming and costly. Businesses would rather focus on day to day operations and its customers, especially for small and/or independently-run ones, like restaurants. When the global pandemic hit and almost all businesses had to shut down, it became more essential to have an answering service that didn’t need a human voice on the other side nor require employees to be at the place of business. Co-Graph, an IT venture company that focuses on providing software development and data utilization services, helped resolve this challenge with its Mayai automated call answering solution.

With its expertise in building products and services that make full use of voice and AI, Co-Graph was able to accelerate the development of their Mayai automated call answering service in order to support those businesses that had to immediately shut down during the pandemic. Leveraging multiple Twilio solutions including Twilio Programmable Voice and the Programmable Messaging platforms, along with Twilio Autopilot for Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Co-Graph’s AI-based Mayai answering service, analyses conversations to provide a chat script and automated responses, making a phone conversation more productive for both sales and customer service. Mayai caters to two distinct audiences – a switchboard for corporations – Mayai for Offices, and for restaurants – Mayai for Takeout. For restaurants, it was critical to offer enhanced online ordering solutions to meet the increasing demand during the lockdowns and Twilio’s solutions helped accelerate supporting this need.

The major difference between Co-Graph and other existing automated phone answering services is that with Co-Graph’s solutions, businesses have the ability to check their messages via a mobile phone 24/7. Additionally, unlike a traditional call center that involve humans on the other line, this is a low cost service that simplifies answering routine calls a business typically receives throughout the day, such as “what time do you open/close?” The AI technology in the Mayai answering service responds to incoming calls using Twilio Autopilot IVR technology and records the messages. A URL link to the recorded data and the transcribed text of the recording, along with the date, time, and phone number of the call answered is automatically sent to the mobile phone of the caller via SMS to confirm customer conversation. Additionally, Twilio’s Programmable Voice and Messaging platforms allow Mayai’s SMS notifications and recordings to help a business decide what calls need to be returned. In some cases, reading the transcript without even listening to the recording helps them make a quicker decision.

Choosing Twilio for its reliability and ease of development

“The core features of our Mayai service include, answering phone calls, IVR, voice recording storage and sending SMS notifications, so it was important during a global emergency that we could implement these easily, quickly and securely,” said Yoshitaka Mori, Representative Director for Co-Graph. “Twilio was the perfect partner; not only do they have an extensive and successful worldwide track record, their solutions complemented our primary objective for an easy-to-use and understand automated answering service. Because of Twilio’s technology we were able to have Mayai up and running in a matter of a few days.”

Co-Graph also chose Twilio technologies for its Mayai automated call answering service because they are low cost solutions that are easy to integrate. In addition, Co-Graph has a large number of engineers from various parts of the world and Twilio was able to provide them information and interact with them in English, which made the process from beginning to end that much more efficient.

Reviews are in and the response is overwhelmingly positive

The feedback Co-Graph has been receiving from its customers is that it is simple and quick for any business to implement, requiring very little company information upfront to get started (ie., business or store name). Any business only needs up to three phone numbers to deliver notifications to, in order to start using the service within 24 hours. Upon the launch of the Mayai automated answering service, the response was so great that it led to more than 50 subscriptions in the first two months. Restaurants have seen an increase in their online ordering services as well. Co-Graph has received interest from other organisations, including commercial shopping centers and well-known holdings companies wanting to sign up for the Mayai for Office solution. Co-Graph has also been able to utilize Mayai for Offices for their own business and has been able to reduce the time answering its phones by 90%.

In the future, Co-Graph hopes to extend its voice and AI capabilities to advance humanising computer communications by leveraging Twilio solutions. Twilio had previously provided Co-Graph with solutions that allowed them to integrate AI capabilities into the speakers of mobile phones and looks forward to continuing to support Co-Graph’s voice and AI product offerings.