Meesho Launches Gen AI-Powered Voice Bot for Customer Support, Cutting Costs by 75%

Meesho Launches Gen AI-Powered Voice Bot for Customer Support

Plans to expand to six additional regional languages, including Gujarati, Bangla, and Marathi. Indian e-commerce company Meesho has launched a Gen-AI-powered voice bot designed to help resolve customer queries on the platform. With 80 percent of Meesho's users hailing from tier 2 cities and beyond, the voice bot is built for adaptability, performing efficiently on basic smartphones and even in noisy environments. "Leading the AI revolution in e-commerce, Meesho launches India's first Gen AI-powered voice bot at scale, offering personalised, human-like multilingual support to enhance customer experience," the company said in a statement on Tuesday (November 26). Also Read: Amazon Introduces AI Shopping Guides to Enhance Experience for US Customers The launch comes amid a growing trend where e-commerce companies are using artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI to reduce costs and streamline operations. Earlier this year, Amazon introduced Rufus, an AI-powered shopping assistant in India, to enhance customer experience, which has already yielded promising results. The voice bot boasts an interruption-handling feature that differentiates between casual affirmations (like "yes," "ji," or "okay") and meaningful interruptions, ensuring smooth and uninterrupted interactions. As a result, the bot offers seamless support, achieving 10 percent higher Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, the company said in an official statement. According to Meesho, the bot handles around 60,000 calls daily and has achieved a 95 percent resolution rate, significantly reducing human intervention and boosting efficiency. This has led to a 50 percent improvement in Average Handle Time (AHT), providing faster and more effective customer support. "The voice bot ensures consistent and accurate service with strong adherence to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), boosting reliability and user satisfaction. This positions it as a best-in-class solution for seamless, 24/7 customer support," the company said. "Spearheading the AI revolution in e-commerce, Meesho's Gen AI-powered voice bot showcases our dedication to groundbreaking, industry-first innovations," said Sanjeev Barnwal, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. "Engineered with India's rich multilingual landscape in mind, the voice bot leverages advanced Gen-AI, Large Language Models (LLM), and cutting-edge natural language processing to empower users to communicate seamlessly in their preferred language, fostering unparalleled accessibility and inclusivity. Its human-like interaction is a standout feature, enhancing communication ease, building trust, and delivering support that feels natural and relatable." Also Read: Amazon CEO Says GenAI Is Growing Three Times Faster Than AWS Meesho's voice bot leverages technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), and Large Language Models (LLM) to provide fast, accurate, and culturally relevant responses. The bot currently supports Hindi and English with plans to expand to six additional regional languages, including Gujarati, Bangla, Marathi, and other vernacular languages to service all of Meesho's regional customers. Future updates will introduce emotion recognition capabilities, enabling the voice bot to detect user emotions for more empathetic and responsive interactions, the company said. According to multiple media reports, Sanjeev Barnwal said the cost per call will be reduced by 75 percent with the help of the latest voice bot when compared with a human's cost per call earlier. The turnaround time for each query will also halve from around 3-4 minutes to about 1.5-2 minutes, Barnwal added.

Meesho launches GenAI-powered voice bot to provide 24x7 customer support

E-commerce platform Meesho on Tuesday announced the launch of its GenAI-powered voice bot to improve user experience and ensure round-the-clock customer support. The voice bot, which started operating about a month back, is currently available in English and Hindi, and is likely to expand to six additional regional languages -- Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil. Designed to autonomously handle a wide range of customer interactions, the voice bot currently handles about 60,000 calls daily, providing fast and efficient resolutions. With an impressive 95% resolution rate, it significantly reduces the need for human intervention, streamlining support and minimising escalations. "This efficiency has also contributed to a nearly 50% improvement in Average Handle Time (AHT), resulting in quicker and more effective customer service," a company statement said. The solution leverages agentic AI to autonomously analyse data, make informed decisions, and respond to customer queries in real time. Effectively managing common inquiries, it allows human customer support agents to dedicate their time to more intricate problems, thereby improving service quality and maximising overall support efficiency, the statement said. Considering that 80% of Meesho's users originate from tier-2 cities and beyond, the voice bot is designed for flexibility, operating effectively on basic smartphones and in noisy conditions. Its advanced interruption management feature differentiates between casual affirmations (like "yes", "ji", or "okay") and genuine interruptions, ensuring the conversation continues smoothly unless a meaningful interruption occurs, it said. "Its human-like interaction is a standout feature, enhancing communication ease, building trust, and delivering support that feels natural and relatable," said Sanjeev Barnwal, cofounder and chief technology officer, Meesho. Future updates will include detecting user emotions for empathetic interactions, he said. Softbank-backed Meesho in October had reported a narrowing of adjusted losses by 97 per cent from Rs 1,569 crore in FY23 to Rs 53 crore in FY24, on account of reduction in general and administrative expenses. Its revenue from operations grew 33 per cent to Rs 7,615 crore in FY24, from Rs 5,735 crore in FY23.

Leading the AI Revolution in E-Commerce, Meesho launches India's First Gen AI-Powered Voice Bot at Scale

Offers personalized, human-like multilingual support to enhance customer experience Meesho, India's only true e-commerce marketplace, has announced the launch of the country's first multilingual Gen AI-powered voice bot at scale, setting a new benchmark for customer support in the e-commerce industry. By offering personalized, human-like assistance in multiple languages, the voice bot underscores Meesho's commitment to delivering a user-centric support experience, tailored to handle a range of consumer interactions while embracing India's cultural diversity. Given that 80% of Meesho's users come from tier 2 cities and beyond, the voice bot is built for adaptability, performing efficiently on basic smartphones and even in noisy environments. Its intelligent interruption-handling feature further enhances interaction flow by distinguishing between casual affirmations (like "yes," "ji," or "okay") and genuine interruptions, ensuring the conversation continues smoothly unless a meaningful interruption occurs. As a result, the bot offers seamless support, achieving 10% higher Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores. Designed to autonomously handle a wide range of customer interactions, the voice bot currently handles ~60,000 calls daily, providing fast and efficient resolutions. With an impressive ~95% resolution rate, it significantly reduces the need for human intervention, streamlining support and minimizing escalations. This efficiency has also contributed to a ~50% improvement in Average Handle Time (AHT), resulting in quicker and more effective customer service. The voice bot ensures consistent and accurate service with strong adherence to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), boosting reliability and user satisfaction. This positions it as a best-in-class solution for seamless, 24/7 customer support. By efficiently handling routine queries, the bot frees up human agents time to focus on more complex issues, further enhancing service quality and optimizing overall support efficiency. "Spearheading the AI revolution in e-commerce, Meesho's Gen AI-powered voice bot showcases our dedication to groundbreaking, industry-first innovations," said Sanjeev Barnwal, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. "Engineered with India's rich multilingual landscape in mind, the voice bot leverages advanced Gen-AI, Large Language Models (LLM), and cutting-edge natural language processing to empower users to communicate seamlessly in their preferred language, fostering unparalleled accessibility and inclusivity. Its human-like interaction is a standout feature, enhancing communication ease, building trust, and delivering support that feels natural and relatable. This pioneering approach not only elevates the user experience but solidifies Meesho's position at the forefront of technological advancements, delivering efficient, intuitive solutions that meet the diverse needs of our users." Meesho's voice bot leverages cutting-edge technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), and Large Language Models (LLM) to provide fast, accurate, and culturally relevant responses. Designed to cater to India's diverse linguistic landscape, the bot currently supports Hindi and English, with plans to expand to six additional regional languages. Future updates will introduce emotion recognition capabilities, enabling the voice bot to detect user emotions for more empathetic and responsive interactions. About Meesho: Meesho is India's only true e-commerce marketplace. With a vision to enable 100 million small businesses, including individual entrepreneurs, to succeed online, Meesho is democratizing Internet commerce and bringing a range of products and new customers online. The Meesho marketplace provides small businesses, which includes SMBs, MSMEs, and individual entrepreneurs, access to millions of customers, a selection from over 30 categories, pan-India logistics, payment services, and customer support capabilities to efficiently run their businesses on the Meesho ecosystem.

AI helps India's Meesho cut customer call costs by 75% | TechCrunch

Softbank-backed Meesho has rolled out what it claims to be India's first generative AI-powered voice bot among e-commerce firms for customer support, paring down some expenses by 75%. The Bengaluru-based e-commerce startup, which serves 160 million customers in India, said Tuesday its AI bot currently handles 60,000 customer calls daily in English and Hindi. The startup, which also counts Prosus and Elevation among its backers, plans to add support for six more Indian languages. Rather than developing its own large language model, Meesho has for now combined existing AI large language models with custom-built components that understand local context and language nuances. The system includes specialized building blocks for speech recognition and natural language processing. "We haven't built our own LLM because we believe the off-the-shelf ones available out there were doing well in Hindi and English," said Sanjeev Barnwal, co-founder and chief technology officer of Meesho, in an interview with TechCrunch. The system had to overcome several technical hurdles, he showed TechCrunch in a demo. "Voice quality matters a lot. Many users are on low-end smartphones and there's often noisy background like buses honking," said Barnwal. The bot had to be engineered to improve latency and filter out street noise while maintaining natural-sounding conversations. The startup, which recently generated positive cash flow, said the voice bot had cut the per-call cost to the firm by 75%, but declined to elaborate on the expenses. The startup also claimed a 95% query resolution rate through the bot, with only 5% of calls requiring human intervention. Customer satisfaction has also improved by 10%, it said. Meesho said that the voice bot has reduced its average customer call handling time by half, but asserted that the technology wasn't aimed at replacing human agents, who is said had been redirected to handle more complex queries and seller support. Another key challenge was preventing the AI from straying beyond strict guidelines about policies like returns and refunds. The rollout underscores how India's tech companies are racing to deploy AI to become more efficient, even as they weigh whether to build proprietary models or rely on existing ones. "I don't think we have the enough talent today to build the foundational models. Play the war that you are capable of winning," said Hemant Mohapatra, a partner at Lightspeed, at a recent conference.