Ada's Generative Actions offers an end to scripted chatbot limitations, enabling AI chatbots to take informed, personalized actions that support customer needs

Today Ada, the world's leading AI-native customer service automation company, introduces Ada Generative Actions, a product that leverages ground-breaking generative AI technology to resolve increasingly complex customer inquiries (those that would have required an agent to use multiple business systems). 

With Generative Actions, companies can quickly build third-party integrations using plain language, without code, enabling safe and reliable automated responses to customer inquiries based on multiple sources of information. With this advancement, Ada is creating a white-glove customer experience for the end user, while making it possible for companies to resolve the greatest number of support inquiries with the least amount of effort. 

"We found that more than half of Ada's automated customer service conversations, especially in fintech, media and travel, required at least one personalized action to resolve an issue for the customer," said Mike Murchison, CEO and Co-founder, Ada. "The generative AI technology underpinning Ada's new Generative Actions will allow companies to finally escape the limitations of scripted chatbots and actually resolve unique customer issues with real action."

In the month of June 2023 alone, Ada serviced more than 16.5 million automated customer service conversations across channels and found that 59% (or 9.8 million) contained at least one question that required more personalized action. Examples of such action-based requests can include booking an alternative flight or looking up an order status— rather than a question-based inquiry like asking for store hours, company policies, or other FAQs.  

A sample conversation might look like this:

Customer: "I'm running late for flight ADA7190, am I going to make it?"

Chatbot: "Your flight's departure is delayed 45 minutes. If you don't make it, the next flight with seats is leaving at 12:15pm EST. Let me know if you would like me to book you on the later flight." 

Comparatively, a typical chatbot might send the customer an article on how to rebook their flight, rather than search for logical solutions to the problem and take actionable steps to resolve the issue. 

Ada's Generative Actions technology can pull data from trusted business systems such as a CRM or order management system, for example, to personalize its response and take action to assist the customer.  In fact, with Generative Actions, Ada anticipates chatbots will outperform a human agent in terms of speed and accuracy. 

Built to be as effortless as possible, Ada's Generative Actions allows bot managers to set up a new codeless integration in less than five minutes, adding in plain English what information can be retrieved and when the bot should use it. Generative Actions effectively brings Ada one step closer to realizing a world where every customer inquiry is resolved with AI. 

Winning by Design (WbD) today released an updated version of its Bowtie Model, a Customer Journey Model and Data Model that extends the traditional marketing and sales funnel to better represent the recurring revenue and recurring impact journey of SaaS customers.

Winning by Design and its partner BenchSights have also updated their Bowtie Benchmarking Tool, available to anyone in the industry. Lastly, Winning by Design has released a new Bowtie Executive Experience Workshop to align executives and GTM Teams around optimizing the recurring impact journey of their clients.

Bowtie Model

Winning by Design’s revised Bowtie Model highlights a deeper understanding of selling and the associated costs. It includes representations of essential components in achieving a profitable business model, and it is augmented to map to various Go To Market motions from No Touch to Dedicated Touch.

WbD developed the Bowtie Model to serve as a common language and data model for recurring revenue businesses. In this latest edition of the Bowtie Model, metrics can be mapped against different Go To Market (GTM) motions including:

• No Touch: GTM where customers are accustomed to accessing products on their own via self service.
• Low Touch: GTM that primarily employs technology for marketing, sales and support, with personal engagement reserved for complex scenarios.
• Medium Touch: GTM that involves a sales development representative (SDR) qualifying a prospect before passing them to an account executive (AE).
• High Touch: GTM where account managers (AMs) manage large accounts, often with support from sales engineers or solution architects.
• Dedicated Touch: GTM with one team focused solely on a single large Fortune 500 account, often managed by an executive who reports directly to the CEO.

Whether you have a single product with multiple GTM motions, or multiple products, each with its own GTM motion, it is essential to recognize that each GTM motion presents a unique offering with its own Bowtie and cost model, almost like a distinct product.

“Winning by Design has always stood for 'architected revenue' and 'growth by design,' and we feel 2024 is the moment for that approach. We call it Revenue Architecture, and over the past year we have quietly certified over 2,000 GTM executives to help recurring revenue businesses achieve sustainable growth. CEOs, CROs, CMOs, VPs of Revenue Operations, VPs of GTM Strategy, VPs Sales, VPs Marketing, and VPs Customer Success have taken our 8-hour course with the accompanying certification exam,” said Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design.

“In the wake of the 2022 SaaS crash, CEOs, Go To Market Executives, and investors alike have squarely focused their attention on efficiency and sustainable growth. Retention and expansion of existing customers takes center stage, as this revenue is less 'expensive' than revenue secured by landing new customers. 'Growth at all costs' is out and 'sustainable growth' is in. The Bowtie helps GTM teams better describe the customer journey, especially after the initial sale, and provides a common language and data model to optimize this journey for impact and costs,” said Dominique Levin, CEO of Winning by Design.

Bowtie Benchmarking Tool

Winning by Design and BenchSights have also made enhancements to the Bowtie Benchmarking Tool for SaaS companies, originally released in March 2023. With the tool’s dataset now surpassing 300 companies, new features are now available at https://benchsights.com/wbd/:

• New and Improved UI/UX: Bowtie Benchmark users will now see a completely revamped, intuitive user interface to speed access to the app and get their data synchronized with the benchmarks.
• New Filters: Users can now access more filters on the app, enabling finer-grained access to the benchmarks, including expanded ARR and ARR growth filters to find the right comparables.
• Discounting Benchmarks: Coming very soon are benchmarks for the level of discounting that companies are using to spur sales.
• Investor Dashboards: Venture Capital, Growth Equity and Private Equity investors will have access to a customer dashboard, allowing investors to collaborate on Bowtie Benchmarking with portfolio companies.

Bowtie Executive Experience

In addition to its flagship training and consulting offerings, Winning by Design is now providing Executive Leadership Workshops on the Bowtie Model and Revenue Architecture. The Executive Leadership Workshop teaches exec teams how to achieve sustainable growth by architecting revenue across the GTM team. The Workshop experience teaches the foundational framework of the Bowtie Model, including how the components work together in synchrony to create a seamless GTM motion. Through facilitated discussion and interactive exercises, attendees learn how the impact mindset and a continuous improvement framework with sprints can apply to their business.

The workshop structure includes a pre-attendee insights survey, interactive workshops (either an in-person half-day or remotely delivered two 2-hour sessions), and a post-workshop summary of discussion with tailored recommendations for next steps. 

The intuitive and methodology-backed solution empowers anyone to leverage MaxDiff surveys to better understand respondent preferences around products, marketing, employee benefits, and more

SurveyMonkey, a global leader in online surveys and forms, today announced the availability of MaxDiff Analysis for SurveyMonkey users. The new offering leverages the industry standard for creating a Best-Worst scaling process, providing a quick and accurate way to collect respondent preferences on different items, from product features to marketing messages to employee benefits and more. The solution is available at no additional cost for SurveyMonkey customers on Advantage or higher plans, and can be used in conjunction with SurveyMonkey Audience for market research.

The SurveyMonkey MaxDiff Analysis solution works by presenting survey respondents with a random subset of attributes to evaluate. Respondents pick the most and least important item from the list based on personal preference. The survey creator is then given a list of rank-ordered preferences to quickly see what features the respondents as a whole value the most and the least. This enables users to easily identify which attributes should be prioritized to maximize audience satisfaction. The solution gives users the ability to prioritize the right product features, discover which marketing messages resonate, learn what benefits employees truly want, and more.

Features of the SurveyMonkey MaxDiff solution include:

• In-product guidance for setup and analysis to enable anyone to perform MaxDiff studies without requiring external support
• A seamless integration with SurveyMonkey Audience to help users find respondents who fit their targeting criteria for market research
• Methodologically-backed experimental designs automatically built into the solution and help reduce bias in survey creation to generate more accurate, insightful feedback
• Shorter MaxDiff questions to reduce respondent fatigue, making selections easier for respondents and resulting in a better survey-taking experience and higher completion rate
• Expert MaxDiff analysis features and exports, including Counts analysis to surface patterns in what respondents choose, and Empirical Bayes analysis to calculate preferences at both the feature and respondent levels. These capabilities allow users to generate accurate, actionable insights without requiring time-intensive, manual analysis

“Businesses increasingly feel pressure to focus investments in areas that will have the highest impact on the bottom line,” said Samuel Bakouch, senior vice president of product management at SurveyMonkey. “We’re excited to introduce the SurveyMonkey MaxDiff solution, which empowers our users to focus on what matters most to their target audiences—and run this type of analysis faster, more frequently, and at a lower cost.”

Reltime, award winning Web3 technology service provider is delighted to announce the launch of its highly anticipated suite of Comprehensive APIs. These APIs are designed to empower our customers and partners with the tools to seamlessly integrate Reltime's cutting-edge Web3 technology in their own applications. These APIs will redefine the way our customers and partners use our Web3 platform, financial and digital services.

Reltime's APIs include wide ranging services, most notably,

• Non-custodian wallet creation
• User ID/PIN Management enhanced with biometric log-in
• Account Management Tools (single & joint account, permissions handling)
• e-KYC for efficient and secure user onboarding, compliant with regulation
• Payment through wallets, mobile phone numbers, QR codes, and emails
• Marketplace Interactions for P2P, B2C transfers, fostering borrowing and lending
• Dashboard to help with compliance, reporting, transaction logs and analytics
• Currency Handling for cryptos, digital fiats, bridging, swapping and conversions
• Seamless Chain Integration with other Layer-1 blockchains
• Key Management protocols for user private key recovery

"It is not about Web3 APIs – it is about our customers and enabling them to create winning ecosystems," said Marlene Julo, CEO at Reltime. "Our commitment remains unwavering: to empower customers with our Web3 platform, services and tools. We already have strong customer demand for our APIs and eager to further these discussions."

This launch represents a significant milestone in Reltime's ongoing mission bring Web3 innovations closer to customers and partners. To learn more about how Reltime's Comprehensive APIs can transform your digital ecosystems, please contact us for an in-depth discussion.

Renowned for its groundbreaking contributions to construction data analytics software, SmartPM Technologies, Inc. announces its attainment of the Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II compliance. This achievement propels SmartPM into an elite group of companies, distinguishing it from many contemporaries in the tech sector who have yet to secure these stringent data protection and privacy benchmarks.

Originated by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the SOC 2 Type II compliance evaluates a company’s non-financial reporting protocols, emphasizing security, availability, and confidentiality. Securing this accolade not only underscores SmartPM's fervent dedication to fortified data safeguards but also challenges industry contemporaries to elevate their standards.

Rohit Sinha, CTO of SmartPM, reflected on the accreditation, noting, “Securing the SOC 2 Type II compliance affirms our unwavering commitment to data security and discretion. Pioneering such standards not only reinforces our market position but also emboldens us to continuously redefine industry benchmarks.”

To earn the SOC 2 Type II accolade, SmartPM collaborated with an independent third-party agency for a meticulous audit. The evaluation validated that SmartPM’s operational safeguards align seamlessly with the compliance standard’s meticulous criteria, underscoring the company’s allegiance to top-tier industry norms.

Elaborating on the accomplishment, CEO Michael Pink stated, “Our customers entrust us with valuable data, and it’s imperative we reciprocate with unmatched security and privacy assurances. As many in our domain remain non-compliant, our SOC 2 Type II attestation exemplifies our commitment to trailblazing best practices.”

• Adobe previews Project Stardust, a revolutionary generative AI-powered object-aware editing engine that lets you magically move or remove objects simply by clicking on them

• Adobe MAX Sneaks showcase 11 early-stage innovations, including new generative AI capabilities across photo, video and audio use cases, plus exciting 3D, design and fashion applications

• Prototype innovations include new Generative Fill applications for video, cutting-edge 3D image generation models, dynamic display textiles that offer infinite style possibilities and an AI-powered tool that makes it easy to remove reflections from photos

Today at Adobe MAX – the world’s largest creativity conference Adobe unveiled Project Stardust, a powerful new object-aware editing engine that uses generative AI to revolutionize image editing, and its latest collection of early-stage innovations, highlighting exciting new uses of generative AI and 3D technologies across multiple creative domains, including photo, video, audio, 3D, design and fashion applications. The 11 inventions are featured in Adobe’s annual “Sneaks” showcase, where Adobe engineers and research scientists offer first looks or “sneak peeks” at prototype ideas and technologies, each showing future potential to become important elements of Adobe products that are trusted by millions of users across the world.

Project Stardust enables users to easily select, edit and even delete complex elements in any image, making image editing more intuitive, accessible and time efficient for any user. For example, Project Stardust lets users select persons in a photograph, move them to a different place in the composition and fill in the background where they were previously standing. Users can also change elements like the color of a person’s clothing or the position in which they’re standing – treating any flat images like a file with layers.

“Adobe Sneaks are a can’t-miss, fan-favorite moment at MAX every year, and for good reason nothing is more inspiring than brilliant employees demonstrating cutting-edge technologies that might power future Adobe products,” said Gavin Miller, vice president and fellow of Adobe Research. “Our passion for creators is at the heart of each Sneak, and this year’s showcase highlights exciting new ways generative AI and 3D technologies can supercharge creative expression, reimagining what Adobe tools make possible.”

With Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of creative generative AI models, now commercially available, the range and scope of new applications continues to scale beyond image generation. This class of Sneaks offer powerful examples of how generative AI can reimagine video, audio, animation and motion graphics workflows, supercharging discovery and ideation processes and cutting post-production time from days to minutes.

Photo

• Project Stardust is a powerful new object-aware editor that revolutionizes image editing and magically moves or removes objects simply by clicking on them. With Project Stardust, users can easily select, edit and delete complex elements in any image – enabling them to select persons in a photograph, move them to a different place in the composition and fill in the background where they were previously standing. Users can also change elements like the color of a person’s clothing and the position in which they’re standing – treating any image like a file with layers.
• Project See Through is an AI-powered tool that makes it simple to remove reflections from photos. Glass reflections are an annoyance that everyone is familiar with in photos, obscuring the subject of the image, and often making it unusable. Though it’s difficult if not impossible to remove reflections using existing software, See Through dramatically simplifies the process.

Video & Audio

• Project Fast Fill brings the power of Firefly generative AI to video for the first time. Leveraging Generative Fill technology – which Adobe Photoshop already uses to ease the addition, removal, or expansion of content in images with simple Firefly-powered text prompts – Project Fast Fill offers an early look at what human-prompted generative AI could enable inside Adobe video editing tools including Premiere Pro and After Effects.

• Project Dub Dub Dub automates the video dubbing process, making a historically labor- and cost-intensive process as easy as clicking a button. Thanks to Project Dub Dub Dub’s AI capabilities, a recording or audio track of a video can be automatically translated to all supported languages while preserving the voice of the original speaker, temporally aligned with the original dialogue and ready to publish.
• Project Scene Change makes it easy for video editors to composite a subject and scene, from two separate videos captured with different camera trajectories, into a scene with synchronized camera motion.
• Project Res Up is a tool that easily converts video from low- to high-resolution using innovative diffusion-based upsampling technology.

3D & Design

• Project Poseable represents a breakthrough in AI-based image generation models, making it easy for the image generator to seamlessly interact with large 3D objects, including poses from photos of real people. The prototype is integrated with Project Poseable which can create a 3D rendering from text input, take depth and perspective into consideration, and re-align the object. While creating 3D scenes with traditional skeletal systems is technically complex and time-consuming, Project Poseable offers an effortless alternative that makes it possible for anyone to expand their creative horizons.

• Project Neo enables creators to incorporate 3D shapes in their 2D designs – all without requiring technical expertise in 3D creation tools. Today, creators of 2D designs such as infographics, posters, or logos are often limited in their ability to incorporate 3D elements given the complexity of those workflows, which can require years of experience. Project Neo enables creators to embrace simplified 3D design within 2D tools and methods.

• Project Primrose blurs the line between technology and fashion, demonstrating the potential for flexible textile displays – and turning clothes into creative canvases. This interactive dress can offer infinite style possibilities, displaying content created with Adobe Firefly, After Effects, Stock, and Illustrator.

• Project Glyph Ease makes customized lettering more accessible by streamlining the tedious design process of glyphs – the specific design and shape elements of each letter character. Beginning with a hand-drawn letter shape, Project Glyph Ease uses AI to automatically generate an entire set of glyphs matching the input lettering style. Users can then easily edit the generated glyphs in Illustrator.
• Project Draw & Delight offers a suite of generative AI tools that helps anyone along their creation journey, from transforming initial ideas – often represented as rough doodles or scribbles – into polished and refined sketches, then experimenting with color palettes, style variations and different backgrounds.

Entri, a company focused on custom domains solutions for SaaS companies, today announced that their signature DNS API product, known as Connect, is now live on Sendmarc. Now, the complex DNS setup required to secure custom domains for email addresses in Sendmarc can be automatically configured within the platform with Entri.

For every email platform user, DNS configuration remains an essential part of securing an email sending domain to protect against fraudsters and spammers.

Recipient inboxes look for these records to proactively detect malicious emails. When a user configures DNS records for an email account, it acts as a form of two-factor authentication for the sender, requiring the sender to set up DNS records in order to fully validate the domain, and ultimately, prove their ownership.

This process is essential in securing email sending domains from scammers, but also for ensuring deliverability.

All the same, it’s a process that most non-technical end users are completely unaware of. For Sendmarc, it was an opportunity to improve the usability of custom domains within their application.

“DNS modifications are error-prone and tedious,” says Keith Thompson, Co-founder and CTO at Sendmarc. “We were looking into a solution that could alleviate both of these pain points and give our customers a greater deal of automation.”

Now, with Sendmarc’s Entri integration, their users are able to automatically configure these DNS records in just a few clicks. Entri’s one-of-a-kind API for DNS configuration not only supports web-based DNS record setup, but also the more complex email DNS records, such as DMARC, DKIM, SPF, and MX records. Users of third-party email tools, such as Gmail, Zoho, and Outlook, are even able to automatically configure their DNS records for custom domains across those providers.

Using Entri, Sendmarc users are now able to automatically set up the DNS records essential for securing their email sending domains, and improving their deliverability scores.

“Entri integrates with all of the large DNS providers our customers use,” says Keith. “So it was an easy decision to go with a solution that got value to our customers faster than it would’ve been had we built the integrations ourselves.”

IZEA Worldwide, the premier provider of influencer marketing technology, data, and services for the world’s leading brands and agencies, today announced that it has launched a variety of AI Image Manipulation tools inside FormAI. Image Manipulation joins a growing list of AI modules in FormAI, IZEA’s suite of artificial intelligence tools designed for the Creator Economy.

AI Image Manipulation encompasses core features designed to revolutionize how creators produce visual content.

Remove Image Backgrounds: This feature allows creators to isolate the subjects of their images by removing the background with high precision. The AI technology ensures the edges are smooth and the subject is not distorted during the process, maintaining the original quality of the image.

Replace Backgrounds: Creators can transport the subject of their images into entirely new environments. This opens up a world of creative possibilities, from placing a product in a bustling cityscape to situating a portrait subject in a serene beach setting. The AI system can imagine and create these new environments, ensuring they blend naturally with the subject.

Reimagine: This feature empowers creators to modify and transform their images with just a single click. The AI can adjust colors, add effects, change the mood, or even completely redesign the composition of an image. Creators can quickly experiment with their visuals, offering endless possibilities for reimagining their content.

“Our suite of tools in FormAI equips marketers and creators with the resources they need to produce exceptional content with ease and efficiency,” said Ted Murphy, Founder and CEO of IZEA. “The addition of Image Manipulation to FormAI will help our community push the boundaries of their imagination and produce work that stands out in a crowded digital landscape."

FormAI, which includes generative image creation, access to GPT-4, and now Image Manipulation, is available for free. IZEA.com users receive monthly AI credits to be used with various AI tools. Users can upgrade to receive additional credits — starting at just $6 per month when purchased annually.