These are challenging times and we have all had to adapt rapidly to very necessary changes in behaviour, activity and purpose. The same can also be said for the role of artificial intelligence (AI), as the technology has found plenty of new applications in the current landscape.
In a bid to flatten the curve of coronavirus infections, AI has been rapidly repurposed and is now being employed in tasks that range from screening and diagnosis to containment and drug development.
Beyond this, AI could also have a crucial role to play in the severe knock-on effect the pandemic has had on our economy and the profound impact that measures to slow the spread of the disease have had on productivity.
The importance of productivity is one thing that hasn’t changed in recent months. In fact, it’s becoming even more crucial for individuals and industries facing an increased workload through greater demand and reduced staffing.
Volume is an award-winning innovation company specialising in the development of conversational AI platforms and its people are focused on using their expertise to break an over-reliance on keyboards in order to boost productivity through speech.
One of the unique things about Fruut is that users can embed actions within their dictations
Fruut, is a new AI-powered voice-recognition app, that can reduce the time it takes to perform productivity-sapping admin tasks by allowing users to talk directly to their smart device rather than type the myriad of key-based tasks that are usually required as part of their job description.
From healthcare professionals and field engineers to police officers and relationship managers, productivity is often hobbled by the need to generate reports, which often takes up a huge proportion of the average workday. Compounding this problem is the very human desire to get past this stage and progress to something more valuable, which can lead to rushed work and inaccurate reporting. 
Fruut enables professionals to reduce the time it takes to write up reports by simply speaking into their smartphones, while any tasks or actions can be detected automatically and assigned to colleagues through their preferred planning or collaboration tools.
To see how Fruut’s AI would work in the real world we can apply it to one of the many businesses affected by the current crisis: commercial banking.
When the government realised the effect COVID-19 was going to have on the economy, it announced a package of measures to help everyone from established businesses to the self-employed.
One of those measures was the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan (CBIL), which was seen as welcome relief for many small and medium-sized businesses.
NatWest recently revealed it’s having to field nearly ten times as many calls from firms trying to secure emergency loans, but the application process was no different to at any other time, leaving relationship managers across the banking sector in danger of becoming overwhelmed.
This is largely due to the fact that their required inputs remained constrained by the speed and accuracy with which they could type the essential information supplied by business customers looking for help, advice and support.
“Fruut would allow a relationship manager to assess and process more CBIL applications faster,” says Volume’s chief executive, Chris Sykes. “All data entry is handled by the AI and is seamlessly integrated into the bank’s customer relationship management system and the relationship manager’s daily collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams and Planner.
“By talking, rather than typing, the time taken to create a report can be reduced by 75 per cent. Not only does this help reduce admin time, it’s a faster time to resolution for the concerned customer.”
And Fruut is unique in that it uses natural-language understanding, which
neutralises one of the perennial problems users often experience with speech-to-text technology: a high level of errors in the transcript.
“Through user interactions, we have the ability to train the app to understand the business language of an organisation, like a bank, so you can speak as naturally as possible to a digital assistant,” says Sykes. “The more user interactions the app receives, the more intuitive it becomes. This way, workers aren’t in danger of wasting valuable time correcting their own transcripts.”
One of the unique things about Fruut is that during the dictation process, users can embed actions within the report, for example telling Fruut a client would like to book a meeting, see some contracts or review a document.
Fruut will also continue a dialogue with the user, as Sykes explains: “Each action will be categorised, so the system knows if it requires more information from the user to complete the action, and asks clarifying questions if there is missing information.” He continues: “For example, for booking a meeting, Fruut will need to know when the meeting needs to happen, who needs to set it up and where the meeting will take place, online or face to face.”
This dialogue is carried out using voice requests from Fruut back to the user. Once the user has provided the missing information, Fruut generates the final report and sends it to the relevant workflow tools while the actions are sent to a planning tool, such as Microsoft Planner, and automatically assigned to the relevant colleagues for execution.
Fruut backs up its customer-facing skills with a facility to record private reports, on or offline, for confidential or personal notes, making it a one-stop app that is always on and ready to go. This streamlining frees up more time for individuals to engage in higher-value interactions that will benefit their business, as well as lead to increased customer satisfaction.
In conclusion, Fruut has arrived at a critically important time when it’s important we review the habits and work practices that have been in place for some time and identify if they are holding us back from productivity. Freeing ourselves from our keyboards and employing advanced AI might be one of those habits, and Fruut will allow us to have a direct conversation with the technology we carry around with us every day, boosting error-free productivity.
Now is the time to pick fruut.ai, get talking and revolutionise workflow
