Ada Announces New App Directory and a Suite of Product Updates

The leader in Automated Brand Interaction is launching dozens of new tools, including a global application directory, proactive SMS, and social channels.

Ada, on a mission to help the world’s most innovative brands automate more valuable interactions, announced several new product launches and updates today. The Automated Brand Interaction (ABI) company has introduced new no-code builder tools, social channels, proactive SMS, and a global application directory — with additional exciting innovations in the works.

In a down economy, merely reacting to the changing landscape of consumer needs is not enough. Brands need to be on the cutting-edge of what customers expect: more relevant, timely, and proactive interactions that are always on and always helpful.

Ada is giving brands the tools they need to make every customer feel like a VIP. Brands will have access to more customization in the platform, and as a result, more valuable interactions at scale.

“Constant consumer change is the new normal,” says Ada CEO and Co-founder Mike Murchison. “Brands need to have the tools to offer greater personalization and customization to their interactions at every customer touchpoint with the brand. Today, that means anticipating your customer’s needs and proactively engaging them. Personalized, proactive interactions are more valuable to customers, and this is what will allow brands to stand out from the rest.”

Ada’s ABI platform powers billions of interactions for big name brands like Zoom, Square, and Shopify. Today’s announcement is the first of many, as Ada continues to expand the offerings of its award-winning platform, allowing brands to scale as they grow — while diminishing costs and holding headcount steady.

With Ada, every brand interaction is improved through automation. And brands can use automation to cut costs without compromising customer interests.

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Let’s be real, most customers no longer want to pick up the phone to interact with a brand. In a digital world, where people expect their needs to be met with the click of a button, even fast and friendly service has become a commodity.

With Ada’s new Proactive SMS solution, brands can initiate anticipatory, two-way automated SMS interactions that go beyond dead-end notifications. Brands can engage customers with information they care about, when they care about it — like payment reminders, order tracking updates, and exclusive offers.

With Ada’s industry-leading Natural Language Understanding (NLU), global brands can seamlessly interact with customers in the language of their preference. And through Ada’s Proactive SMS feature, brands can finally power IVR to SMS experiences, reducing the dependency on call centers and enabling the seamless transfer of conversations from customer support calls to SMS text.

SMS open rates are as high as 98%, according to Gartner. This makes proactive SMS a powerful tool that will not only increase customer satisfaction — brands can use proactive SMS to save time and money, reserving agent time for more complex interactions that drive revenue.

Social commerce continues to be a powerful force, and investment in these strategies are growing. With this in mind, Ada has extended its automation to Twitter and Instagram — helping brands create more consistent and purposeful brand experiences across the board.

Ecommerce brands need to start preparing for what Ada calls their “superbowl moments” earlier than ever. Events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now lasting for weeks, even months in some cases. During these times, interacting with customers on Instagram is essential — companies have seen a 60% increase in support requests coming in via social media in 2021.

With Ada deployed in Instagram and Twitter during the busiest shopping season of the year, customers can maintain interactions with the brands they love, in the channels they love. And when a live agent is needed, the automated interaction is handed off in the same UX.

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In their pursuit to deliver VIP experiences, brands utilize a wide variety of applications and integrations. Information is often stored in multiple places — separate tools for chat handoff, data enrichment, and order tracking — which is inefficient for agents and slows down resolution. Manual coordination has the potential to create broken experiences as users switch between them.

No more. Now, brands can access Ada’s Global App Directory and connect Ada to all of their business systems, allowing them to personalize and automate more complex issues and free up time for agents. The launch includes 30 out-of-the-box apps and integrations — from simple CRM and Marketing Automation integrations that allow brands to instantly update account details and serve customers relevant content, to order management systems that allow customers to track their order. Brands can connect with apps like Calendly, Marketo, Clearbit, and more.

Delivering a seamless customer experience at scale has never been easier.

Providing asynchronous, “omnichannel” messaging has proven hard for brands to deliver in practice. Brands struggle to effectively launch automation across asynchronous channels, and hand off the interaction to an agent who can also respond asynchronously.

Ada Glass for Zendesk Messaging powers asynchronous messages and a seamless handoff between Ada and agents in Zendesk Agent Workspace. Customers are seamlessly introduced to a live agent within the same channel, without having to channel-switch to be connected with a human agent. This way, they benefit from the differentiating technology of each solution. Instead of waiting on a live conversation with an agent — that eventually times out —  customers and agents can respond in the conversation at their convenience, truly asynchronously, and this boosts productivity on both sides of the interaction.

This exclusive partnership gives Ada and Zendesk customers an array of powerful features that other platforms can’t match — seamless handoff to live agents in Zendesk Messaging from web and social channels.

“We wanted to give our customers the ability to receive instant help without sacrificing the quality service we’re famous for – this is why we chose Ada,” says Alix McShane, Head of Customer Service at Oh Polly, an international women’s fashion brand with philanthropy built into their company mission. “We intentionally built a really fun digital experience and it now solves 70% of our queries, speeding up our overall response times and giving us insight into our customer needs at every stage of the journey.”

Ada’s new products are being released alongside key enhancements to its NLU models, data export API, and builder tools. Enhancements to the Conversation View in Ada’s platform help brands build and optimize more efficiently, with conversation data more accessible than ever. And improvements to Cancel Capture allow brands to provide more comprehensible experiences to their customers, improving the likelihood of engagement.

Refining the builder experience with richer customer insights and a more holistic view of each customer will allow brands to power more, and more valuable, brand interactions. And this is just the beginning, with more innovations and improvements underway.

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