Caring, Korea's leading senior care company, is partnering with ElevenLabs, an artificial intelligence (AI) audio research and development startup, to upgrade its services.
Caring announced on the 22nd that it is expanding its "AI Emotional Care" service by adopting ElevenLabs' agent platform. AI Emotional Care is a service that uses AI technology to make phone calls to seniors living alone during hours when caregivers are not visiting, providing regular conversations.
"ElevenLabs made a decisive contribution to establishing truly personal care by using voice AI to boost the self-esteem of seniors receiving care and reduce the burden on caregivers," a Caring official said.
Caring worked with ElevenLabs to provide a senior-friendly service. The service features natural pronunciation, honorific speech, and emotional warmth, while also leaving room for long-term expansion based on multilingual capabilities. The companies ran a first pilot project from November to December last year and conducted a second expanded pilot project in January this year. The first pilot project recorded a 100% call completion rate, a 0% call rejection rate, and an average call duration of 4 minutes and 22 seconds (with a maximum of 10 minutes). The second pilot project logged 120 total outgoing calls, a 100% re-engagement rate, and an average call duration of more than 5 minutes.
Founded in 2019, Caring is Korea's largest senior care company. It operates services for approximately 12,000 seniors through home visit care and daycare center models. The company currently runs 60 centers nationwide under 100% direct management, with about 900 employees and a pool of more than 60,000 caregivers.
"With concerns growing over care gaps due to the increasing elderly population and shortage of care workers, we must actively adopt AI technology to reduce gaps in senior care," Caring CEO Kim Tae-sung said. "Through ElevenLabs' technology, we will protect the self-esteem of seniors and fill the empty hours of care."
"We are pleased to join Caring in pursuing innovation in care," said Hong Sang-won, head of ElevenLabs Korea. "ElevenLabs' agent platform will provide a reliable conversational experience and support the empty hours of care that are difficult to fill with human workforce alone."
