COVID-19 has radically transformed the university experience with the shift to remote classes. Many college students have decided to postpone their undergraduate studies; many of them will never enroll. Others are on contemplating whether to drop out or not. This not only presents a challenge for the colleges but also for society in general as those with just a high school diploma are expected to learn ~£1M less on average than those with their bachelors over the course of their lifetimes. Purlos is a personalized engagement platform built on Salesforce that helps academic institutions retain students by engaging and communicating with them in the channels that students are already actively using. The platform works to address the concerns of potential students during the admissions and enrollment process. The company’s digital assistant, Jenni, provides support through its AI-powered chat and for issues that cannot be addressed, the platform will escalate issues directly to administration. For the institutions, they are provided with a robust data analytics console that identifies the students that are most likely at-risk to drop out. London TechWatch caught up with CEO David Bartlett to learn more about the challenges facing higher educational institutions, the company’s traction, future plans, and much, much more.
Chatbots
Cheer The Year Of Co-Bots By Correcting Human Blunders
The ball is just days away from dropping in Times Square with revelers anticipating 2019 by making resolutions to act better in the coming year. The most human of all traits is to make mistakes. Correcting our wrongs is often a long, arduous task; however, machines are far more capable at avoiding mistakes by isolating […]
How NOT To Build Your Voice User Experience
I think we’ve forgotten what it means to talk. Over the last couple of months, I’ve held dozens of discussions with colleagues, clients, and friends on what it means to build a Voice User Experience (VUX), also known as Conversational UI. I found out that although we are struggling to solve technical issues building voice and chatbots, the real […]
Emerging Chatbot Trends: What You Need to Know
In looking for new market opportunities, I got involved in chatbot technology. If you are not familiar with a chatbot yet, it is a conversational user interface that delivers either text-based or voice-based information to a customer. This can be down through a website, mobile device or kiosk. A chatbot uses natural language processing (NLP) […]
Reprogramming Nature Into Swarms Of Cyborgs
Summer is not without its annoyances — mosquitos, wasps, and ants, to name a few. As the cool breeze of September pushes us back to work, labs across the country are reconvening tackling nature’s hardest problems. Sometimes forces that seem diametrically opposed come together in beautiful ways, like robotics infused into living organisms. This past […]
What Is an Alexa Skill?
Amazon’s Alexa is the cloud-based brain behind Echo/Dot/Tap. It is similar to Apple’s Siri and Google Home. Similar to these devices, Alexa gives the benefits of a personal assistant at your fingertips. With just the sound of your voice, it searches the Web, shops online, creates a to-do list, and delivers weather reports. It even […]