Custom voice assistants put customers in the driver’s seat. Using one feels like talking to a real person, where customers can speak naturally, interrupt, ask questions, and dive in and out of different topics. PolyAI needed large enterprises to shortlist them as a viable option, but their identity didn’t convey the reassurance those titan accounts needed to feel confident. The brand was void of a deeper story that showcased its strengths, aspirations, and dedication to being human-centric.

‍

Through our tight collaboration with the PolyAI team, we learned that many in this space claim to be voice-first. A closer look revealed that competitors take a general-purpose approach and try to solve for every channel and interaction type. While claiming to be voice-first, competitor technologies are often unable to keep up with the natural flow of conversation, being thrown off by multiple streams of information at once.

‍

PolyAI’s human-centered approach was a strong differentiating factor that we could leverage in brand strategy into an ownable position — one that centered on the many different contexts of conversations and the challenges facing both contact center leaders and enterprise businesses at large.

Inspired by the power of conversation, the new logo tells the story of the future of customer-led voice assistants — a future in which they build moments rooted in understanding. The logo connects the dots between past and present technologies, reflecting the effectiveness of human conversation while meeting modern business demands. Each piece intentionally represents the process of PolyAI's technology: listen, understand, and respond.

While voice is central to PolyAI’s strength, the challenge was to depict voice in ways that weren’t cliche or misleading. It’s easy to confuse PolyAI’s strength in voice with alternative formats, like text or chat, when trying to convey how the product works. Our goal was to communicate humanity, depth, and emotion with an air of cleverness.

‍

We set out to represent the experience visually — from confusion and anguish to clarity and relief. Using the same visual cues in the mark, PolyAI’s dot language shows voice with movement and motion. Emboldening photography positions contact center leaders as the hero. Transformative textures deliver the premium look and tone of the brand. Clever product illustrations demonstrate how conversations connect to the product and seamlessly help users.

PolyAI's color system is a mixture of confidence and cleverness. The bright green, named Macaw, represents PolyAI’s premium product and exudes confidence. It symbolizes the fresh new take on how people interact with customer service over the phone. The neutral blacks and grays balance the palette and give the brand a high-end look and feel. The secondary colors add an empowering and approachable tone to the brand, further harmonizing the color palette.

‍

The typographic family of Matter SQ was chosen for its clean and modern characteristics. It reflects the clever and transformative qualities of PolyAI and lends a slick look and feel. Basis Grotesque Mono is PolyAI's secondary accent font. Used for subheadings and occasional body copy, it provides technical contrast to balance the brand's tone.

The PolyAI website was reinvented from the ground up, complete with designs for all of the key pages on the site, in addition to reusable page templates for blog posts and case studies.

‍

During our research, we found that the best showcase of PolyAI’s product was actual, real-life call recordings. However, the existing web experience didn’t direct visitors to areas where they could experience the recordings for themselves. The Focus Lab team saw this as an opportunity to develop components and visual styles that make listening to those recordings an exciting experience throughout several key areas of the site — most notably on the home page.

‍

To top off the project, the Focus Lab team created a completely new design system that allows PolyAI to effortlessly create and iterate on new pages, ensuring that PolyAI’s digital presence remains as tight as possible for years to come.

‍

PolyAI came into the project with audience research and established voice and tone attributes: concise, confident, and conversational, like a friendly, helpful advisor. Now, we needed to update the copy to communicate their voice, vision, and value.

We focused on simplifying language, adding personality, and elevating the brand’s distinctiveness. We also ensured that the copy acknowledged the unsung hero of customer service: the call center leader.