Richardson-based AmplifAI has introduced AI-based technology that allows companies to deliver smarter, more-personalized training and coaching to improve the performance and morale of employees who contact customers.

Sean Minter

Founded by Sean Minter in 2014, the startup is developing the new artificial intelligence technology in partnership with the University of Texas at Dallas. It uses automated machine learning algorithms to understand the behaviors and actions of a business’ best-performing employees, trainers, and managers so that their best qualities can be spread throughout the organization.

It allows for rapid feedback from managers to their subordinates, improving morale and performance, Minter told Dallas Innovates.

Data from AmplifAI’s tools helps restore the managers’ focus on the individual employee and their interactions with the customer.

“You’re on the phone all week long, and with a manager for 30 minutes once a week,” he said. “We can resolve all those problems by making managers better trainers.”

Minter is a veteran entrepreneur who has been in the private equity realm, too.

He has been involved in the business world since 1995, starting in the telecom arena. His other ventures include ALT Communications, IP Communications, and since 2003, he has been the founder and chairman of Reallinx.

Minter was chief operating officer and chief information officer of PRC from 2007 to 2010, and was senior vice president of operations and chief operating officer of Alorica from 2010 to 2013.

INSPIRATION FOR AMPLIFAI TECHNOLOGY

The idea for AmplifAI came while Minter was working on a five-year turnaround effort for a company that had customers all across the U.S.

“I was trying to figure out why they managed the way they did,” Minter said. He said he needed to look at its operations through fresh eyes.

Minter said there wasn’t a lot of sharing of information and data within the company, and that general managers there did whatever they wanted. The sharing of best practices was impossible because they were running different processes, he said.

To solve his problem and better understand what their best practices and efficiencies were within the company, Minter created a business intelligence tool to help him manage the layers of employees at the company — who was doing better at customer service and who was doing better in sales.

“When you have a large number of people doing measurable activities, no matter what the work, AmplifAI is the ideal product for that business.”
Sean Minter

His tool helped him identify who was doing better and why, and that tool became the basis for AmplifAI.

“When you have a large number of people doing measurable activities, no matter what the work, AmplifAI is the ideal product for that business,” Minter said. “It’s hard to figure out how to make 15,000 people better.”

Minter said that AmplifAI’s main vertical is in contact centers, sales people, field technicians, and other measurable fields.

Health care will be the second area to be addressed, he said. Eventually, it will expand to manufacturing, and field services.

Minter, who has an engineering background, funded AmplifAI himself so that he could better control the development and early marketing of the company.

“Once you raise venture capital, your ability to pivot and change goes away,” he said.

AmplifAI is a Microsoft Azure native app on the cloud, so “we don’t have to worry about scale,” Minter said.

AmplifAI is profitable, he said, and that once the company is a proven quantity, he will raise capital to help market the product.

AMPLIFAI, UT DALLAS PARTNER ON TOOL

AmplifAI’s arrangement with UT Dallas is beneficial to both.

“UT Dallas is excited to help the AmplifAI management team bring this revolutionary product to market by providing world renowned talent and access to resources within the university,” Chris Bhatti, assistant dean of the Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UTD, said in a release. “This mutually beneficial partnership furthers our goal of building an entrepreneurial ecosystem driving innovation in our community.”

Gopal Gupta, department head of Computer Science at UTD, and an expert in the field of AI, is an adviser for AmplifAI.

“AmplifAI’s experience with supporting enterprise customers with tens of thousands of employees with analytics and employee development, combined with the latest AI technology and expertise at UT, uniquely positions AmplifAI to innovate a new paradigm associated with motivating and developing employees,” he said.

This is the manager’s view of the AmplifAI tool. [Screen capture courtesy AmplifAI]

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