Intelligent automation company Directly Software Inc. today said it has acquired a startup called Kylie.ai to improve its conversational artificial intelligence capabilities.

Directly sells intelligent automation tools for customer service teams. Its main focus is helping companies build personalized virtual agents that can interact directly with their customers and handle a range of customer support tasks. For example, tech companies can use Directly to train a virtual agent to help troubleshoot any hardware or software issues, or just communicate more general information about their brand.

Kylie.ai focuses more specifically on conversational AI, helping companies automate customer conversations. The company has developed a proprietary approach to dialogue systems that allows its AI to tackle complex, transactional conversations with limited integration requirements. That allows its AI to perform a variety of actions based on the conversations it has with customers.

Directly believes Kylie.ai’s conversational AI tech is a perfect fit for its intelligent automation services. Once the acquisition is completed, it said, its customers will be able to create virtual agents that can perform a much broader set of tasks. For example, they could intelligently trigger an action from an internal system, or provide an automatic answer during an interaction that would normally require the intervention of a human agent.

“Directly’s acquisition of Kylie.ai signals a shift from one-dimensional chatbots to conversationally intelligent solutions that connect front office to back office and all customer transactions in between,” said Ovum analyst Mila D’Antonio. “Enterprises understand the need for a comprehensive solution that integrates into internal systems, as well as third-party databases, to automate intelligent dialog along the customer journey.”

Kylie.ai said its entire team and technology will be brought in-house under the Directly brand. Co-founders Jamasen Rodriguez and Sinan Ozdemir will take on new roles at the combined company in business development and data science, respectively.

Photo: mohamed_hassan/pixabay