Chatbots.org Business News

Online Virtual AssistantsVirtual Assistants increasingly becoming the first point of contact for users who need help from customer service. However, sometimes it is inevitable that a real customer service agent steps in and deals with the customer query. And here comes the twist; to whom does the service agent turn to when he or she needs help in resolving a question? To a virtual assistant of course!

Recently Creative Virtual Ltd was shortlisted for the Econsultancy Innovation Awards 2012 in the category of ‘Innovation in Customer & User Experience’ for their integration of O2 UK’s virtual agent Ask Lucy with Live Chat from LivePerson via a seamless handover process. Each year the Econsultancy Innovation Awards recognise the finest creative thinking, ideas and implementations that are changing the landscape of the digital industry. This year more than 450 companies submitted entries, and around 150 have been shortlisted across the 19 categories. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in London on 23 February 2012.

Every now and then someone writes an article on whether Back to the Future II got its predictions right. Well, judging by the presence of voice activated TVs and remote controls at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year, I think we can add a tick in the box to the TV that you talk to. But as a report by Leo Kelion on the BBC website has pointed out, it is not without its flaws.

Virgin Media is the United Kingdom’s leading entertainment and communications company—the first to offer consumers broadband, digital TV, phone and mobile from one company.  Today Virgin Media is the largest Virgin branded company in the world, with almost 13,000 employees and ten million customers across the UK.

noHold, Inc., developer of the most interactive and diagnostic Virtual Assistant technology and Confederated Knowledge, announces that leading companies in Hi-Tech industries like PC, and networking are choosing to connect their Virtual Assistants via Confederated Knowledge.

noHold creates Virtual Assistants for web based self-service that increase customer satisfaction, reduce support costs, and capture actionable customer intelligence. As products and services become increasingly interconnected, the need for support across company boundaries is imperative. Confederated Knowledge or CK, is a patent pending feature that allows one Virtual Assistant to connect with multiple Virtual Assistants. For example: When you have an issue with your PC, it could be related to the security software, a peripheral device or the Internet Service Provider (ISP). CK empowers you to start the conversation on your own terms and get answers from a network of interconnected Virtual Assistants.

VirtuOz, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent virtual agents (intelligent virtual agents) for online marketing, sales, and support, today announced that Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content and threat management solutions, has extended the mission of Lena, its VirtuOz IVA, to online sales. By integrating Lena into its online retail operation, Kaspersky Lab can now provide personalized sales assistance to customers 24/7.

Life is much too serious and we all need more laughter in our lives.

Now that we are starting off fresh in the New Year it’s a good time to bring out your best – your sense of humor combined with your love of new technology.

Speech Technology Group cordially invites you to enter our speech humor contest.

Here is how it work’s – it’s easy:

The best submissions received by January 27th will be posted at http://www.speechtechnologygroup.com

The winner will be announced on February 3rd and gets a Kindle Fire.

Are you game?

For a quick sample to get your juices flowing and to sign up, do to http://www.speechtechnologygroup.com/speech-humor

On November 1, 2011 I gave a talk to Google on natural language processing, including chatbot technology and issues in understanding simple English sentences for a story-game demo which tries to act out the sentences. Download the PDF or read full text below.

Fresh Perspectives

I am an AI research engineer. I want to create things that people use, but that stretch the boundaries of the possible. Whatever I work on, I research it and then try to come at it with a fresh perspective. A fresh perspective is something Google and I have in common, though we approach things from opposite directions. Typically my fresh perspectives involve understanding a domain and then writing a new application-specific scripting language to encapsulate insights I have gleaned. Google’s perspectives come from access to massive amounts of data and hardware.

I research everything. I even researched how to give this talk. I thought about making a lot of clever PowerPoint slides. Then I read up on using and abusing PowerPoint. I abandoned that plan.

First IBM’s Watson beat Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Then Apple captivated mobile consumers with the iPhone 4S, which included an enhanced version of Siri, the voice-driven assistant born at Menlo Park, CA-based SRI International. Suddenly, the idea that computers might be just as good as humans at carrying out certain types of requests seemed a lot less far-fetched.

For companies trying to win corporate and consumer adoption of their own NLP technologies, this is a long-awaited moment. And one of the firms that thinks 2012 could be the year this market really takes off is VirtuOz VirtuOz, Inc., a Paris-born company that moved its headquarters to Emeryville, CA, in 2009.

VirtuOz, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for online marketing, sales, and support, today announced that it processed a record 166 million conversations in 2011 on behalf of its customers.  This growth was fueled, in part, by expansion of VirtuOz’ client base across multiple verticals including high tech, telecommunications, retail, and consumer packaged goods.  In addition, the company noted the expansion of IVA usage from customer service, to sales and marketing via a growing number of touch points, including mobile phones and social media, such as Facebook.