Prosperia offers a turnkey solution for self-employed workers and businesses that need to make calls, explains Maxandre Poirier. These calls are automated by artificial intelligence. “The AI will know how to respond, according to the scripts we feed it, then it will be able to make appointments or qualify them to create lists of sales leads,” he says. Often, self-employed workers have difficulty carrying out cold calls (solicitation by call). » The solution developed by Prosperia makes it possible to seek out new customers, a process that is quite long and difficult on morale, especially at the start of a career. “I like finance, but prospecting is not my strong point,” he adds.
More broadly, AI will be able to respond to potential customers’ objections, provide a script that must be better than humans, because there will be no flaws. She won’t have to take breaks either, she won’t have feelings, so being told no won’t do anything to her, unlike a human being. And if the person on the other end realizes they’re talking to an AI, won’t they just hang up? “We will not launch the product if it is detectable,” replies Maxandre Poirier. We want there to be no flaws. We don’t want him to look like a robot. We really want it to sound like a human being, to make people feel like they’re talking to a human, a human who can insist and make an appointment. »
Today, AI makes it possible to reproduce voices and the Prosperia team uses several platforms and numerous tools to achieve this. Tests have already been carried out, however in English, because more voices are available and the response time is shorter. “What we tested is really impressive,” admits the financial director. In English, the response time is fast, the tone is natural, but in French, synthetic voices are still being developed, emphasizes Maxandre Poirier. Despite this, Prosperia continues to experiment and remains confident. We know that eventually, French voices will catch up, and our AI will be able to offer the same quality of interaction in both languages. At the same time, I imagine that things will move quickly and we, human beings, will learn to detect robots more and more. » But beyond the technical aspect, Maxandre Poirier envisions a future where call automation will not only be accepted, but integrated into current practices. He believes that users will gradually get used to receiving AI calls.
“We are in the middle of a technological boom, and this automation of prospecting tasks will gradually become a standard. Receiving a call from an AI will no longer be surprising, and it will even become commonplace. » In the long term, the Prosperia team believes that automation will be omnipresent, accepted and integrated into the daily lives of businesses, as the effectiveness of this technology is so promising.
Prosperia is in the pre-launch stage and has set itself the goal of launching its product by January 2025 in beta phase. As the founders are advisors themselves, they will carry out numerous tests before launching their product. To date, the biggest pitfall remains latency, but Maxandre Poirier is hopeful that the problem will be resolved by January 2025 to begin distribution.
Maxandre Poirier and his colleague Alexandre Ferguson, also a financial security advisor, won the prize for incubating businesses during the Financing Ace event at the Alphonse-Desjardins Shawinigan Entrepreneurship Center (CEADS). Prosperia thus benefits from a $500 bonus from the Coup de Pouce program, which allows companies incubated at CEADS and DigiHub to obtain financial support for various initiatives.
Interview: Marie-Hélène Brousseau
