Chatbots.org Business News

Automation technologies like natural language interaction and IVR have revolutionized the way customers interact with the customer service function.

VirtuOz, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for online marketing, sales, and support, has been recognized as a finalist in the 4th Annual 2012 Golden Bridge Awards in the software innovations category. 

“Each and every employee at VirtuOz is committed to delivering leading virtual agent solutions that exceed both our customers’ and their customers’ expectations,” said Alex LeBrun, CEO and president of VirtuOz.  “Today’s digital consumer is more demanding than ever, and we are privileged to partner with global industry leaders who are willing to explore new customer engagement frontiers in order to deliver winning customer experiences.  We are honored by the industry and peer recognition of our efforts that this Golden Bridge Award represents.”

VirtuOz, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for online marketing, sales, and support, announced today that VirtuOz’ Intelligent Virtual Agents have been recognized by three industry award programs in May 2012 alone, including the Best in Biz Awards EMEA, Silver Winner for Best New Service of the Year; The American Business Awards Finalist in the Relationship Management Solution Category for the second year in a row; and TiE50 Awards Finalist, where VirtuOz beat out over 2000 entrants. 

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.

noHold, developer of the most interactive and diagnostic Virtual Agent technology, has the ability to embed a Virtual Agent directly into social media platforms, Facebook integration for ViewSonic serves as the first example.

As social media increasingly becomes a hub for customer interaction and support, noHold aims to help businesses cover these channels with Virtual Agent implementations. With a few simple lines of code, the same Virtual Agent that runs on a company website can assist end-users within their favorite mode of social media, such as Facebook. This provides end-users with an extra layer of interactivity and support, without the time needed to implement a second Virtual Agent.

Definitions of ‘virtual agent’ within the chatbot industry seem to vary according to developer’s objectives. In interviews between CRM Magazine and three virtual agent companies, the following definitions of virtual agent were identified:

• Mark Gaydos, vice president of worldwide marketing at VirtuOz: The ability to interact with a customer and, in a sense, understand what the customer wants to do and guide them to an answer to their question.
• David Lloyd, CEO of IntelliResponse: It is a way of interacting and delivering customer self-service.
• Ashutosh Roy, chairman and CEO of eGain: A virtual agent is a human-like bot that understands natural language interactions and guides a visitor though a conversational interface using text and/or speech input and output.

Efficient online self-service is essential for online retailers-particularly since 57% of U.S. online consumers say they are very likely to abandon an online purchase if they cannot find quick answers to their questions, says a new Forrester Research Inc. report.

Virtual agents represent an efficient option to bolster a company’s self-service options, particularly since they reduce customer service operational costs by deflecting agent-assisted costs because they lower the number of customers who call a contact center. Virtual agents-typically with a digitalized human appearance-are software services that provide automated assistance by simulating a two-way conversation in which they can help customers do anything from perform online tasks to locate online information.

IM specialist IMified, the world’s largest hosted instant messaging application development and deployment platform, has been acquired by IVR specialist Voxeo. Voxeo provides standards-focused Unified Communications and Self-Service platforms.