Chatbots.org Business News

Artificial Solutions™, the natural language interaction (NLI) specialist that enables users to have a meaningful, humanlike interaction with technology, announced today that TAP, Portugal’s leading airline, has deployed a digital employee powered by Teneo to strengthen its online customer service.

An Artificial Intelligence startup has today announced ranges of flirty and sexy software-driven chat partners. The London-based company Erotic Chatbots Ltd aims to provide chat characters having the personality of an entertaining, interesting and amorous partner, who remembers past conversations with their user, and learns more and more about their user as time goes on.  The flirty and sexy conversations will come from the company’s “chatbots” – computer software available in male and female versions. The company’s launch products will all be straight, but later there will be lesbian and gay versions.

noHold’s Call Center Virtual Assistant (CCVA) is revolutionizing the way call center agents interact with customers. Already, thousands of agents are experiencing the benefits CCVA offers. Industry leaders and experts alike agree that Business Process Outsourcers (BPOs) will benefit from introducing automation/artificial intelligence to their call centers.

noHold, a leader in web based self-service solutions, was named ‘Cool Vendor’ in Business Process Services, 2015, published on April 13 2015. Similar to Gartner’s Magic Quadrants, the ‘Cool Vendor’ series is used to discover emerging innovative SMB vendors with interesting and highly original technology that impact their respective markets in a meaningful way.

Out of the five companies chosen as ‘Cool Vendors’ in the Business Process Services space, noHold was the only Virtual Assistant vendor selected. noHold offers unique capabilities as its platform provides:

• noHold Connect (NHC) – allows communication between multiple Virtual Assistants, making it possible for clients to leverage content from partners’ Virtual Assistants.
• Single Point of Search – the ability to search for content from a single repository, even if the solution resides in other systems (i.e. CRM, Knowledge Management, communities)
• Procedural Guidance – using noHold’s Natural Language Processor and Inference Engine to guide users through complex solutions without the creation of scripts.
• Device Connect – the ability to connect to physical devices to retrieve information or perform tasks on the device.

It’s an interesting fact that despite Elbot’s successes in numerous artificial intelligence competitions it was never the intention that people would mistake him as a human, after all he does claim to be a robot. Behind the sarcastic chatterbot lies a variety of social psychological theories that provokes the user to act predictably, creating not just a very different chat experience, but one where the human believes that they are in control.

Smart machines are transforming everyday technology and disrupting how to think about business opportunities this decade. A gold rush is underway, sparked by improved AI algorithms, new high-performance hardware and big data to consume and understand. Garner explored five sample Cool Vendors and named Creative Virtual, one of the Chatbots.org partners one of them.

Cantoche and Toshiba won the 6th edition of the Miss Client trophy, during the Client Strategy Conference in Paris, France. The award acknowledges both organizations for technical excellence and their distinctive approach to building customer relationships.

According to Thierry Spencer, founder of the prize, “Yoko was recognized for her efficiency, her aesthetics, and her relevancy.”
“Based on 31 criteria, she is distinguished by her rich interface and variety of options available to the customer. I would add that she is an example of remarkable site integration, and great consistency with the Toshiba brand.” Thierry Spencer concludes “Yoko offers an innovative self-care experience for the client that is rich and different.”
Yoko is the Toshiba France Virtual Assistant who holds conversations with more than 2000 users per day on its website since October 2013.
Available 24/7, Yoko welcomes users on the Support Web pages, speaking and acting as a real person. She understands clients’ needs and accelerates basic support processes by answering technical questions and orienting visitors to the correct Web pages.

Virtual Assistants have to the ability to integrate with live chat, and work together to enhance a company’s customer support options.

noHold’s live chat connectors are a set of open API’s that link noHold Virtual Assistants to any live chat application. The integration of the two provides a way for companies to better support their customers, while getting them most out of their investments.

First, the end user asks the Virtual Assistant a question. The Virtual Assistant will either provide the end user with the correct information (ending the interaction for that customer), or if it does not know the answer, it can provide the option to escalate to a live chat agent. If the latter occurs, the chat log is sent to the live chat agent. This will provide the agent with an understanding of the customer’s need and can address the issue quicker; without the end user having to repeat the problem. Once the live chat agent is available, there is a seamless transition between the Virtual Assistant and live agent within the same interface, improving the experience for the end user.

noHold, Inc. is excited to share that ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solution products, has decided to continue its relationship with noHold. ViewSonic and noHold are dedicated to being innovators and share a passion for creating a cutting-edge customer support experience.

Before Virtual Customer Assistants (also known as Virtual Agents)  became popular, customer-centric brands like ViewSonic, were already seeing the need for 24x7 interactive web support. The company launched its first Virtual Assistant on its support site in 2002.

noHold and Cisco collaborate on Virtual Assistant, SARA, Services Automated Resolution Agent. As traditional Virtual Assistants and Virtual Customer Assistants aim to answer basic questions and perform simple tasks, SARA will revolutionize the interaction by integrating with sophisticated back office systems and deeper understanding of complex problem resolution.