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Robot Secretaries for All Cofame,Inc. IP
Website: Cofame,Inc.
Category: IT
Cofame's AI chatbot searches multiple platforms to keep business relationships up-to-date
The ongoing IT revolution is expanding the ways people connect and communicate. Business communication, too, is moving beyond phone and email into social media and beyond. Cofame, Inc.’s newest service enables users to unify and manage all of their business relationships across multiple platforms through a single, AI-enhanced, real-time search function.
Founded in Osaka in December 2013, Cofame made its debut with an electronic business card application for smartphones, bringing social media contacts together and cutting down on the time and effort needed to manage such information by hand. Released in 2015, the app boasts approximately 110,000 users today, largely located in the East Asian regions of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Cofame, Inc.’s chatbot searches multiple sources to return results about business contacts; courtesy of Cofame, Inc.
Chatbot Secretary Service
Building upon this experience, the Cofame is now developing a sophisticated chatbot for tracking and organizing business contacts. Users input a search term such as an email address, and the AI will seek out real-time information about that person from a variety of internet sources, as well as email and calendars on mobile and messaging applications, bringing a network of information together into a single place.
Cofame’s chatbot uses this information to return relevant details such as the individual’s location, place of employment and SNS usernames, storing it on a secure server for future (and faster) retrieval.
“It’s almost like having a personal secretary,” explains Kanji Noguchi, co-founder and COO of Cofame. “The service manages your contacts to help you focus on your business.”
Cofame has patented the way in which it collects data, eliminates duplicate hits, and saves information on its Cloud-based server. Noguchi sees the service as particularly useful for sales professionals who want the latest news on clients in advance of important interactions.
Messenger Test
The first incarnation of Cofame’s chatbot is now appearing on Facebook's Messenger application; users can simply “friend” the bot to begin using it. Development is being rolled out for other platforms as well, including Slack, a team-centered messaging app, under a freemium model where basic features are free, with a paid version for business use.
Kanji Noguchi, co-founder and COO of Cofame, Inc.
Noguchi hopes to further improve Cofame services through partnerships with database companies. “The more data we have access to, the better our service will become,” he says, citing how such collaboration could support corporate clients such as call centers.
Cofame is currently in the process of developing its Palo Alto office in the heart of Silicon Valley, California. As the company builds its database and the capabilities of its chatbot’s artificial intelligence, Noguchi says he wants Cofame to grow as a world-class program used not only in the U.S. and Japan, but Europe and the rest of Asia as well – meaning that, perhaps someday soon, everyone will have their own robot secretary.
Based on interview in October 2016
Cofame, Inc.’s system allows easy access to business card information as well; courtesy of Cofame, Inc.
Website: Cofame,Inc.
