Technology products with the brand 'make in Vietnam' reach international level

Using technology to solve real problems

That is the story of businessman Le Anh Tien, Outstanding Young Vietnamese Face of 2019, CEO of Vietnam Chatbot Technology Joint Stock Company.

The young businessman always sees Chatbot not only as a simple technology product but also as a bridge for the whole community to enter the digital age. PHOTO: NVCC

Since he was in high school, Mr. Tien has always been curious about computers and simple applications, such as a small program that automatically solves math problems, his classmate's first sales website... At that time, many people only saw Mr. Tien as a "dreamer", because he spent hours tinkering with a few lines of code, while his friends chose to play soccer, sing or do other extracurricular activities. It was those initial moments, when he saw an inanimate tool like a computer that could transform ideas into useful products, that ignited the belief in the student at that time that technology is not simply a machine but a power that can change the way people work, communicate and develop society.

Mr. Tien said: "At that time, very few people understood the importance of digitalization. They thought that just selling traditional goods and opening small shops was enough to make a living. But I saw the shortcomings very clearly: remote shop owners did not know how much inventory they had, customers had to spend hours looking for product information, the administrative procedure process was still entirely on paper... I wondered if there was a solution to help people and businesses automate part of their work, save time and costs, would that be an opportunity for everyone to develop together faster? From that thought, I deepened my belief that technology, although at that time it was still a "tool of the future", would definitely become the foundation for all economic and social activities."

In the past, whenever someone said "technology is only for techies", Mr. Tien thought the opposite: "Those who are sensitive and dare to change can create breakthroughs. Therefore, even though I am considered idealistic, I still firmly follow the direction of finding bottlenecks in life - from small-scale sales, serving customers in traditional ways, to cumbersome administrative procedures - then aim at them to apply technology in the most practical way".

Mr. Tien added that the first experimental steps with his friends participating in the science and technology competition showed him the limitless potential, that a small idea can change hundreds, thousands of users. That is the biggest motivation for him to believe that in the future, technology will not only play a supporting role but also be a launching pad for the whole community and the whole country to rise strongly.

Investing heavily in technology is the key to going far

Since the end of 2016, when messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger and Zalo started to explode, Mr. Tien realized an essential but neglected need: businesses needed a solution to automate interactions with customers so they could respond anytime, anywhere without depending entirely on humans.

Mr. Le Anh Tien (left) has developed "made in Vietnam" technology products that have reached international standards. PHOTO: NVCC

When testing open source frameworks such as Dialogflow, Botpress or Rasa, the young man from Da Nang City clearly saw the potential of Chatbot in reducing the workload for the customer service department, while bringing a faster experience to users. The initial experiments of Mr. Tien and his colleagues, with a simple Chatbot to answer basic questions about opening hours or prices for a few cosmetics stores and coffee shops, helped them save 30 - 40% of the cost of replying to messages. This result motivated Mr. Tien to decide to pursue Chatbot seriously.

In mid-2017, Mr. Tien and two friends officially established Vietnam Chatbot Technology Joint Stock Company. At first, the team had only 3 members, both developing the rule-based feature to ensure that Chatbot could respond according to the set scenario and directly meeting customers to understand their actual needs. After many months of testing, they realized that rule-based Chatbot easily fell into a "dead" state when encountering complex questions. So from the beginning of 2018, the whole team started developing the sales AI module, applying machine learning technology to make Chatbot capable of handling sales-related stories, thereby gradually improving accuracy to 85 - 90%. With this achievement, they confidently closed the Seed funding round in September 2020, earning 500,000 USD from an investment fund of Nexttech Group.

"The investment helps us expand our staff to hundreds, build more multi-channel integration modules and perfect the user behavior analysis reporting system," said Mr. Tien.

In 2019, when version 2.0 of Botbanhang.vn was officially launched, Mr. Tien and his team focused on 3 important areas: advanced marketing technology, multi-channel connection and customer behavior analysis. Thanks to that, the number of customers increased rapidly within 1 year, from the F&B, fashion to education industries, surpassing the milestone of serving more than 10 million monthly users...

"In mid-2021, when the Chatbot market became more competitive, I realized that I needed a strong step forward to maintain my leading position. Therefore, we expanded our sales team to neighboring markets such as Thailand and the Philippines. By the end of 2022, Chatbot Vietnam was present in many countries, serving more than 50,000 large customers in many fields related to e-commerce...", CEO Tien said.

From 2023 to present, Mr. Tien said that the goal of Chatbot Vietnam is no longer just to automate conversations. Mr. Tien and his team are focusing on building a customer behavior analysis platform based on chat data to support businesses in optimizing marketing campaigns and making smart upsell/cross-sell suggestions. At the same time, developing multilingual Chatbots, deeply integrating APIs into customers' CRM/ERP ecosystems, and planning to expand to other markets such as Indonesia and Canada.

Looking back on the journey of developing Chatbot Vietnam, Mr. Tien shared: "The continuous development, from a small team of only 3 people to a company serving millions of interactions each month, has proven that innovative thinking, focusing on customer experience and investing heavily in technology are the keys to going far. We are also more confident that we are on the right path, continuing to develop "make in Vietnam" technology to support thousands of domestic and regional businesses, while inspiring the young generation to start a business."

Bringing technology closer to the people

In particular, through Chatbot Vietnam, Mr. Tien wants to bring technology closer to people, regardless of whether they are in urban or rural areas, or know a lot or a little about technology.

Mr. Tien (right) and his colleagues develop technology to support thousands of domestic and regional businesses, while inspiring the young generation to start businesses. PHOTO: NVCC

Mr. Tien said that Chatbot is designed to run directly on the platforms that Vietnamese people are most familiar with, such as Zalo, Facebook Messenger or messages on e-commerce websites. When a market vendor, a car mechanic or a kindergarten teacher wants to introduce a product or service, they do not need to know how to code or download additional complicated software. They just need to log in to a platform they use every day, turn on the Chatbot feature, and with a few clicks, they can automatically chat with customers, answer basic questions, receive orders or provide payment instructions. That helps them see that technology is no longer something strange or difficult to understand.

"In addition to integrating on existing channels, we built a simple Chatbot management interface, similar to a text editor. Users just need to drag and drop or select from available question and answer templates, change the logo and color to match the brand. Whenever there is a new promotion campaign or announcement, just update the content on the system, Chatbot will automatically send messages to customers according to the installed list. Thanks to that, small shop owners or individual businesses do not have to spend time researching but can still access automation technology, significantly saving operating costs," Mr. Tien confided.

An important point that Mr. Tien always emphasizes to the development team is that the Chatbot's language must be truly "Vietnamese", from the greeting to the explanation, it must be close and friendly like when we chat with a friend. When Chatbot knows how to use simple, easy-to-understand sentences, can explain each step to customers when they ask about how to register, how to order or how to return a product, people will feel that they are not left behind in the sea of technology information...

The young businessman always sees Chatbot not only as a simple technology product, but also as a bridge for the whole nation to enter the digital age. Therefore, from the very beginning, he focused on building a solid foundation of three main pillars: people, infrastructure and social orientation.

In terms of social orientation, Vietnam Chatbot does not only stop at serving businesses but also aims to support the community. Vietnam Chatbot has coordinated with agencies, ministries, branches and schools to organize many training programs to popularize AI and popularize digital education for people and youth union members. From there, the young generation has early access to digital transformation thinking, understands how to automate work, and knows how to set up virtual communication scenarios to reduce the burden on humans.

"That's how we create the foundation for the whole community to quickly enter the digital era. From there, we contribute to bringing the whole country to a new era, where technology is not just a tool but truly a part of everyone's life," Mr. Tien shared passionately.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/san-pham-cong-nghe-make-in-vietnam-vuon-tam-quoc-te-185250609185214463.htm