Chat bots are increasingly being used by organizations to improve the customer experience and Microsoft is no exception with their recent acquisition. Microsoft recently acquired Genee, an artificial-intelligence-powered scheduling service. Microsoft plans to integrate Genne’s AI technology into Office 365.
Genne Co-founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee, who will be joining Microsoft, started Genee two and a half years back in 2014 with the idea to simplify the time-consuming task of scheduling (and rescheduling) meetings. Such a technology is extremely useful when it comes to large groups and for when you don’t have access to someone’s calendar.
Genee makes use of natural language processing and optimized decision-making algorithms to make the interaction with a virtual assistant almost similar to having an interaction with a human being.
To illustrate how Genee works, let’s take a look at one of the most common scheduling problem. So if the user wishes to meet a potential customer, Diana, for coffee, he or she simply needs to send an email to Diana and copy Genee, as you would to a personal assistant. Genee understands that the user wants to ‘Find a time to meet with Diana for coffee next week’ and will accordingly streamline the process by emailing Diana directly with appropriate options that work with the user’s calendar and preferences. Genee will even send out the meeting invite on your behalf – freeing up your time, scheduling a coffee meeting in a snap.
“I am pleased to announce that Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Genee, an artificial-intelligence-powered scheduling service. I’m excited to welcome the Genee team to Microsoft. As we continue to build new Office 365 productivity capabilities and services our customers value, I’m confident the Genee team will help us further our ambition to bring intelligence into every digital experience” said Rajesh Jha, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Outlook and Office 365 in a blogpost on The Official Microsoft Blog.
Genee co-founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee explained in a separate blog post “We are pleased to announce that Genee has signed an agreement to be acquired by Microsoft. We consider Microsoft to be the leader in personal and enterprise productivity, AI, and virtual assistant technologies, so we look forward to bringing our passion and expertise to a team that is committed to delivering cutting-edge language and intelligence services.”
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