Willow Tree produces and distributes figurative sculptures designed by Susan Lordi, which communicate through gesture about relationships and emotions.

Willow Tree

IT Services and IT Consulting

TELUS Digital

Trees of Color | WillowTree

WillowTree | 27,078 followers on LinkedIn. WillowTree partners with the world’s most customer-centric brands to help them orchestrate winning experiences across the customer journey. Experiences that are personalized, on-brand, and consistent across channels and platforms. Experiences that can both drive customer delight and reduce operating costs.

Partner & Chief Commercial Officer at WillowTree Inc.

Mike Moore

Thomas Saraceno

Mobile dev focusing on product engineering

Fred Medlin

Staff Product Designer

Jonas Phillips

WillowTree

🤔 “Which speech-to-text model should we choose for our voice app?” This question comes up more and more on client #AI projects, so we decided to test 10 popular STT models on performance factors like: ▶ Word error rate (WER) ▶ Words per minute (WPM) ▶ Cost efficiency ▶ Real-time streaming 📊 These metrics matter because they impact the speed, accuracy, budget, and ultimately user experience of your voice applications — from transcribing meetings to powering sentiment analysis in #customerservice environments. 👀 A peek at our findings: ✓ assemblyai-universal-2 had the lowest WER, but ✓ groq-distil-whisper had the fastest WPM, and ✓ four models tied for best multilingual support 🧑⚖ Final verdict: The best STT model is the one that best fits the unique needs of your voice app. This study from Christopher Frenchi and Nish Tahir will help you find it faster. Dive into the results 👉 https://lnkd.in/e9nzAvNZ #GenerativeAI #VoiceTech #DigitalTransformation

📢 2025 is the year of app rebuilds 📢 Apple Intelligence, Google AI, and ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode will make voice-first experiences the norm across mobile, fundamentally changing how users interact with and what they expect from their apps and devices. If you think focusing on your most digitally native users (i.e., Gen Zers) is key to successfully integrating voice into your apps, think again. In his latest article for Forbes, "Mobile Apps Are Back: Why Voice Technology Will Change Everything In 2025," Tobias Dengel , President, TELUS Digital Solutions, challenges this assumption and shares surprising insights to inform your voice technology strategy. 🔑 Key takeaways 🔑 🔍 Generational gaps in voice usage are narrowing 🗣️ Older users show more loyalty to voice tech 🏥 Healthcare case study: Unexpected adoption patterns 💡 Did you know? 💡 ▶ 63% of all ages surveyed use voice technology daily or weekly ▶ Gen Z (ages 18–24) lags slightly at 52% daily/weekly usage ▶ Voice flattens user experience, improving accessibility for all 🚀 Ready to future-proof your voice tech strategy? Read Tobias’s article to discover: ▶ Why age-based biases about voice tech adoption can lead to failed products ▶ How to develop inclusive voice experiences for all users ▶ The unexpected ways different generations interact with voice technology 👉 Click the link https://lnkd.in/eNZxQVR2 to read the full article and ensure your voice tech strategy resonates with users across all generations. #VoiceTechnology #ExecutiveInsights #TechStrategy #DigitalTransformation

🌟 Inspiring the Next Generation of Digital Leaders 🌟 In October, WillowTree welcomed 60 students from Albemarle County Public Schools to our Charlottesville HQ as part of their #Pathways program. It was an incredible opportunity to share what digital consulting looks like and spark curiosity about the many career paths within our company and industry. The students: ✅ Explored our workspace during an immersive tour, saying a virtual hello to our colleagues in offices around the world. ✅ Watched an episode of our #2WeeksToBetter docuseries to see how we tackle real-world challenges ✅ Engaged with a diverse career panel featuring team members from HR, strategy, engineering, business development, and even our dining services team. The highlight? Showing these students that global impact is possible from right here in Charlottesville. By exposing them to the behind-the-scenes magic of digital consulting, we hope to inspire them to dream big and see the vast potential of careers in tech, creativity, and problem-solving. To the students: Your curiosity and energy inspired us just as much as we hope we inspired you. The future of digital is bright — and it starts with you. Learn more about our commitment to bridging the digital divide and making technology accessible to everyone: https://lnkd.in/eqWE347B #FutureOfWork #DigitalConsulting #CommunityImpact #STEM

🔒 New #AI security finding: Your #chatbot might be more vulnerable than you think. With 80% of #customerservice organizations set to use #generativeAI by next year (Gartner), our latest research reveals a crucial security gap for LLM-based chatbots. In developing input filters for identifying malicious and out-of-scope prompts, WillowTree DART team members Will Rathgeb , Yelyzaveta Husieva , and Michael Freenor analyzed 4,000 queries mixing attack and non-attack prompts written by #LLMs and humans. Our findings include: 🤖 Metrics like precision and recall can be misleading depending on the data 🤖 Diverse, system-specific training data is essential (and difficult to come by) 🤖 Human-written data performs differently than LLM-generated data 🤖 The best results come from training sets combining synthetic and natural data Why these findings matter for your business: ✔ Protect sensitive customer data ✔ Prevent unauthorized system access ✔ Maintain customer trust while scaling AI operations Learn how to strengthen your chatbot defenses: https://lnkd.in/ewxGifAG P.S. Want to stress-test your chatbot's security? Our AI red teaming experts can help. #AISecurity #EnterpriseAI #MachineLearning #DataScience

Next year, the world’s stored #data will reach ~200 zettabytes. For #AI practitioners, this means increasing urgency to: ▶ Condense long texts into clear, concise, and accurate summaries. ▶ Evaluate text summaries at scale to improve system performance. The latest guide from the Data & AI Research Team (DART) at WillowTree proposes using LLM-as-a-Judge 🧑⚖️ to evaluate text summarization performance, an approach that outperforms traditional metrics like ROUGE and BLEU. By combining LLM-as-a-Judge with human review and traditional metrics, AI practitioners can unlock and refine emerging use cases for AI like: 📣 Aggregating thousands of news articles into digestible snippets 📚 Analyzing long legal documents for streamlined review 📊 Improving the speed and accuracy of executive reporting DART researchers Gail Smith , Agner Piton , Tobias Sartori Da Silva, and Christopher Frenchi share their methodology and results from testing LLM-as-a-Judge to evaluate generated summaries. Step up your text summarization 👉 https://lnkd.in/eqmF8JKj #LLM #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #DataScience #GenerativeAI

🔒 Securing Enterprise LLMs: New Frontiers in Adversarial Attack Identification The more #LLMs integrate into enterprise operations, the more robust security measures need to become — but practitioners have few case studies to follow. Our latest research from Lauren Alvarez and Michael Freenor explores a novel way to identify compound adversarial attacks using unsupervised learning techniques. 🔍 Key insights for #EnterpriseAI leaders: ▶ Unsupervised learning can effectively analyze compound attacks, even with limited training data. ▶ OpenAI embeddings + KNN clustering show promise in categorizing complex adversarial prompts. ▶ GPT-assisted analysis offers a generalizable tool for understanding attack clusters — and shows the need for more advanced clustering methods to understand emerging subcategories of attacks. For enterprises navigating the complexities of #AI and #LLMsecurity , this research opens new avenues for protection without extensively labeled data. 🛡️ Read the case study to learn how you can bolster your #AIsecurity strategy 👉 https://lnkd.in/ebnDhdi8 #GenerativeAI #MachineLearning #DataScience Thoughts? Let's discuss how unsupervised learning could reshape your approach to AI security.

Is your app getting left in the digital dust? There’s hope! Apple ’s recently announced #AppleIntelligence could revitalize apps that users download and quickly forget. In this article, WillowTree’s Margo Bulka shares helpful insights for digital leaders looking to re-evaluate their underperforming apps: https://lnkd.in/e95b67qy Takeaways include: ● Apple Intelligence will act as an aggregator, using personal context and integrations like ChatGPT to provide users with relevant information in and across apps — without requiring users to open and use those apps directly. ● Niche or situational apps will gain more opportunities to re-engage users with new features and content. ● Developers must reconfigure their apps using #AppIntents to take full advantage of this new technology. Apple Intelligence may redefine user engagement with "forgotten apps," paving the way for new, unforgettable experiences. This one’s a must-read. #Siri #AI #Apple #VoiceTechnology

🏆 Exciting news! We are thrilled to share that our collaboration with Brightline Trains has earned us a spot as a Finalist in the Digital Experience category for The Drum Awards 2024! This nomination is a testament to our team's expertise, insight, and commitment to delivering exceptional digital experiences. We're on the edge of our seats as we eagerly await next month’s results. Want to learn more about our innovative work? Check out our submission: https://lnkd.in/e-FxZ9DK or take a look at the Brightline Trains case study on our website https://lnkd.in/eciCn625 ❗Stay tuned for updates and join us in celebrating this milestone! #DigitalTransformation #DigitalExperience #TheDrumAwards

The WillowTree team is headed to Money20/20 in Vegas next week and we’re excited to explore how the future of AI is reshaping digital banking experiences. Our financial services practice works with banks, credit unions, and fintech companies to transform their digital products to deliver exceptional customer experiences while driving operational efficiency. Want to discuss your digital transformation journey? Reach out to meet with our team of financial services and data & AI experts, Kate Pyle Gallaher , Charley Adams , Parshant Dhiman , and Taha Shaikh, MBA . #Money2020USA #DigitalTransformation

☕ Brewing Digital Success: Scooter's Coffee's Recipe for QSR Loyalty Ever wondered how a rapidly growing QSR maintains high-speed service while boosting customer loyalty through tech? WillowTree's Ross Koon shares the story of Scooter's Coffee 's remarkable digital transformation! https://lnkd.in/ek7PVPKx In just 9 months, WillowTree partnered with Scooter's to revolutionize their digital ecosystem: 🔷 Launched a new native mobile app 🔷 Reimagined loyalty strategy 🔷 Implemented cutting-edge MarTech stack Key ingredients for success: 1️⃣ Real-time, integrated data flow 2️⃣ Hyper-local personalization 3️⃣ Gamified loyalty campaigns 4️⃣ Building trust with franchisees The results? A recent 5x weekly challenge campaign drove nearly 500% increase and a half-million dollars in incremental revenue in just one week! 🎧 Want more insights? Hear the full story on our "Room for Growth" podcast episode with Scooter's Coffee Sr. Director of Loyalty & Digital Mitch Walden ! https://lnkd.in/eugUgKZX What innovations are you seeing in the QSR space? Share your thoughts below! 👇 #DigitalTransformation #QSRLoyalty #CustomerEngagement #MarTech

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