Caantin’s AI Goal is to speak for Call Centres

Artificial intellect (AI) is the ability of computer systems to carry out activities like learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making that normally need human intellect. It also refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines, enabling them to perform tasks that typically require human cognition. The vast area of artificial intelligence (AI) includes a variety of tools and methods intended to allow robots to simulate human cognitive functions. 

It has already been used in the call centre industry, and Caantin, a Zambian AI communications company, aims to reduce the cost of phone calls for businesses by using AI speech assistants that can carry on these discussions at scale.

For many businesses, communication is essential. Phone calls are an essential component of everyday operations for anything from FMCG businesses pursuing daily orders from mom-and-pop stores to fintechs encouraging customers to complete signups or repay debts. That task has historically been left to big or outsourced contact centres or internal support teams, which come with overhead expenses, staffing challenges, and inherent limitations—a human can only handle so many calls in a day.

A new AI communications firm called Caantin believes it has a better solution: large-scale AI voice agents. 

Caantin, a Zambian startup that bills itself as an AI communications firm, was founded in 2021 and first operated as Topup Mama, a restaurant procurement and administration software. The company claims to aim to lower the cost of phone calls for companies.

Njavwa Mutambo, CEO and co-founder of Caantin, stated, “There are several reasons why businesses struggle to scale, and when you dig deeper, you end up with a communications issue—the cost of communicating.” “We assist companies with cost-effective, contextual, and intelligent customer communication.”

TechCabal attempted to use Caantin’s remarkably lifelike AI speech bots by posing as a small business attempting to place orders. The chat felt quite natural, with the exception of a few communication lapses. The call had the pauses, intonations, and unintentional breaks of a discussion in real life. You may converse with the AI chatbot in Igbo, Hausa, Swahili, and Yoruba, the four main African languages.

Mutambo says the firm has improved the productivity of the companies it works with. Mutambo, for instance, claims that Caantin assisted Nigerian fintech Cowrywise in achieving 100,000 calls in three months with just one employee—a feat that would typically require 30 staff.

The first point of entrance is voice, and despite the fact that AI applications on the continent are still in their infancy, mostly because developing and maintaining models is expensive, Mutambo anticipates that speech AI will become the most common use of AI in Africa. Mutambo believes that speech, not text or chat, is the most viable interface for AI adoption at scale because of the low smartphone penetration, erratic internet connectivity, and high illiteracy rates in many areas.

“In Africa, voice is how AI will be distributed,” Mutambo stated.

However, he contends that creating context-specific use cases that complement how businesses function on the continent is more important than merely creating speech bots. For Caantin, it means creating voice agents who can complete sales flows, increase collections, and lower customer support costs—all at scale.

For instance, Caantin’s voice bot may use webhooks to integrate with payment processors like Paystack and Flutterwave and prompt payment during conversations.

Additionally, Caantin wants to include a tool that would analyse a large number of phone calls and draw conclusions that might be applied to business choices. 

Caantin’s revenue-generating strategies, functions similarly to a telecom provider, charging for phone calls on a per-second basis. It costs four rands (2 cents) every second in South Africa and around ₦117 (7 cents) each minute in Nigeria, which is almost nine times the price of a local telecom.

By citing the larger expenses that companies usually pay to manage extensive customer service operations, Mutambo supports the pricing.

“All of the overhead that goes into running a call centre, including staff salaries, power, and internet, must be taken into account when doing the math,” he stated. “AI is viewed as a cost-cutting tool rather than a cost centre by the majority of chief commercial officers with whom we collaborate.”

According to Caantin, the scalability, reliability, and round-the-clock accessibility that AI voice agents provide—along with the absence of the unstated expenses associated with overseeing human teams—make up for the higher per-minute cost. According to the corporation, it is profitable right now.

Differentiation and competition

Traditional call centres and business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, as well as international firms like YC-backed Bland AI, are Caantin’s primary rivals. Caantin is constructed with an African perspective, in contrast to its international rivals. Compared to generic language models, the chatbot is better at understanding regional accents, dialects, and speech patterns. 

ToumAI, a Moroccan AI company that collects and analyses speech data for companies including telecom providers, banks, and contact centres, will directly compete with Caantin’s ambition to offer an analytics tool.

Earlier this year, the fundraising and future plans of the business was to secure an undisclosed investment from Ventures Platform. We questioned whether Caantin’s objective of improving startup customer service would mean the demise of BPOs.

Mutambo predicted that BPOs will either have to change or fight to stay in business. Call centers won’t simply be in difficulty when Caantin’s AI is flawless, which isn’t presently the case. Lunch will be served.