Hearti Lab upgrades chatbots with IBM's conversational services

The Watson-powered bots will respond to natural human inquiries 24/7.

Singapore startup Hearti Lab has developed a Watson-powered chatbot for its mobile application, Hearti Chat, IBM said.

The chatbot is targeted towards employees of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It aims to help users understand the coverage of their general insurance, identify the gaps within, and make data-driven recommendations.

The chatbot has been built on the IBM Cloud, which uses Watson Conversation services to respond to natural human queries 24/7.

Sompo Insurance Singapore Pte. Ltd was the first insurance company to use the chatbot, which they called Serene. Serene was trained to ‘learn’ from Sompo’s database of answers to queries on travel insurance.

Hearti Lab’s new conversational interface is able to accurately determine the intent of users’ questions and quickly return high-confidence answers, IBM said.

Hearti Lab chief executive officer and founder Keith Lim said, “We have seen the vast potential cognitive computing holds in reshaping how businesses grow and transforming the customer experience. In saying that, we chose IBM Watson as we believe it has the capabilities to power cognitive virtual agents that quickly provide users with information.”