Norwood Systems partners with AI firm to spice up 'voicemail alternative' tech

Telco tech company Norwood Systems (ASX:NOR), a small cap seeking to disrupt voicemail technology, unveiled another partnership to advance its endeavour.

Norwood has an app, World Voicemail, that has more advanced features than typical voicemails.

These including AI alerts of urgent messages and the ability to discretely read them.

Norwood’s Virtual Assistant (Pic: Norwood)

A virtual personal assistant

This morning, Norwood announced partnered with AI company Amelia to develop an AI solution that will be better than the same old “canned” voicemail greetings.

It will be a new tier for super-premium telco call completion services that complement Norwood’s existing offerings.

Norwood told shareholders this will be just like having a real personal assistant.

Users of Norwood’s Voice Assistant, a feature in its app, will be able to instruct the virtual assistant to route calls, take messages and access relevant information in the app on their behalf.

Amelia promises when callers meet this “virtual agent” it will keep the “natural human feel” thanks to its natural language processing and context switching capabilities.

A ‘revolutionary pathway’ for legacy telcos

The bosses of both companies spruiked their solution as a no-brainer for legacy telcos to adopt.

“The new service offering will provide telcos with a revolutionary pathway to upgrade their legacy call completion platforms,” said Norwood’s Paul Ostergard.

“We predict [it] will deliver deep value and joy to a telco’s subscriber base.”

Amelia’s Andrew Winlaw declared: “We are combining our respective strengths in AI software, telco and services to create a cutting-edge offering that we believe will be very attractive to many telecommunication providers across the globe.”

Shares in Norwood saw a modest rise by 11 per cent this morning but are still down in 2020.