Freeday, the AI company pioneering the concept of digital employees for different teams, has opened the doors of its new office in New York. The company has seen significant growth of its platform in the Benelux region in 2021 and has now set its sights on international expansion starting with the United States.
The pandemic has forced every industry to digitalise and in an era when talent is not easy to find, Freeday helps companies with its digital employees (AI assistants) platform. The Rotterdam-based company has helped a large number of organisations adopt digital tools and automate their operations in the Benelux region. With momentum on its side, the company is focusing on the internationalisation of its business.
US expansion is all about opportunity
The US finds itself in a rather difficult situation with initial jobless claims dropping to the lowest level since 1969. Employers are afraid to let their workers go because finding replacements has become a major challenge. In October, the US reported more than 11 million job openings and the big resignation has led to a large group of workers in the US switching employers at record numbers.
The situation is so dire for employers that some employees are even leaving their jobs before finding a new one. This has led to a boom for the automation of boring and repetitive tasks. Freeday is an expert at automating repetitive jobs with its digital employees platform. With the ongoing situation in the US, Freeday finds this to be an opportune moment to expand its international operation.
The company says that wage costs remain relatively high in America even though the labour market remains scarce. Despite the situation, Freeday expects a cost saving of more than 50 per cent on average for its Dutch customers. Freeday’s expansion into the US is also based on increasing customer demands for companies.
The Dutch company says it is becoming challenging for many organisations to achieve the same service level offered by some ecommerce platforms. With digital employees, the organisations will be able to temporarily scale their operations to peak times and even use these AI assistants as the first line of contact.
“The US lends itself extremely well to our services because of its scale and business culture. Our result-driven proposition is well received. After in-depth market analysis, we know which regions within the US offer the most opportunities and which industries lie the most challenges,” said Marcus Groeneveld, co-founder of Freeday.
Freeday: What you need to know
Freeday is an AI startup founded in October 2020 as a joint venture between Ciphix and Numa. Through Freeday, organisations are able to hire digital employees, who can take over for repetitive operations like contact centres or customer service, finance and accounting, IT help desks, HRM and healthcare administration.
Clients don’t have to pay in advance, but can instead pay an amount per ticket or task handled. Digital employees offered by Freeday bring major cost savings. Freeday says hiring digital employees can result in 50 per cent lower costs than a full-time employee. These digital employees (or AI assistants) are also available 24/7 and Freeday says they are five times faster than a human team member.
Since these employees are digital assistants, Freeday makes them scalable that allows clients to scale up or down every month. The digital employees from Freeday also have real names like Jessy, who handles HR, while Jennifer supports contact centres. Florence, Richard and John are responsible for healthcare, IT and finance departments respectively.
A digital employee can also start with a new organisation within 2 to 3 weeks. Freeday also offers a Performance Dashboard that allows its clients to evaluate their need for digital employees and can accommodate peak moments using these digital employees.
Digital Worker: What you need to know
A digital worker is no longer a human employee with digital skills. The definition of digital worker has evolved to include a category of software robots trained to perform specific tasks or processes in collaboration with their human counterparts. A digital worker generally includes intelligent automation and robotic process automation to work alongside regular employees.
Digital workers are designed to work in conjunction with humans and are designed to understand the intent of their human colleagues. They are designed to respond to questions and take action on behalf of humans. However, authority and control are left in the hands of humans.
Freeday makes digital workers that are specifically trained to take over repetitive human tasks and interactions. These digital workers use artificial intelligence capabilities like computer vision, natural language processing and machine learning to execute a sequence of tasks that they are trained to do as part of a workflow.
Florence, the healthcare assistant from Freeday, is capable of errorless and fast quality registrations. She is also capable of ensuring that outpatient administration is always on time. Jennifer supports contact centres by taking over primary contact via email, chat and telephone. She can handle frequent tasks, questions and interactions. In the case of complex questions, Jennifer is capable of passing the work on to the specialist agents.
Richard is available 24/7 as an IT support assistant. He opens, closes and manages support tickets. John is the financial assistant ensuring that your balance is always up to to date and invoices are processed automatically. Jessy is the HR assistant capable of arranging all your pre-employments verifications and onboarding.
Digital workers can be used beyond digital tasks and are being utilised in the supply chain, human resources, sales and product support. However, the challenges with digital workers such as lack of tasks to automate, unstructured data sources and scaling could limit their adoption. Freeday helps organisations overcome these obstacles and with its international expansion, the startup could normalise digital employees across business verticals.