In a transition that is not trivial, long-time call recording, quality assurance (QA) and Workforce Optimization (WFO) specialist VPI (aka Voice Print International) launched a new, cloud-based virtual assistant (VA) service called VPI VirtualSource. The service is positioned as a “scalable workforce in the cloud,” not as a hosted IVR, according to Patrick Botz, VPI’s vice president of marketing. It employees Nuance automated speech recognition with statistical language modeling in combination with VPI’s proprietary “intelligence engine” (referred to as “the brain”) to support conversational, phone-based interactions.

The company, which has 1,500 customers, is now rolling out the service to organizations of all sizes and in all industry sectors. VPI’s value proposition is to “do all the work” of setting up an agent. The start-up process takes 4-6 weeks and accounts for about 3-4 “person days” all told. That includes feeding it the live recordings, suggested scripts and other tuning information. Unlike a typical speech IVR system, VirtualSource does not use or require companies to maintain logic trees. Instead, VPI uses about 10-20 recorded conversations (preferably with successful outcomes) and augments it with information, rules and logic from training manuals, call-flow diagrams or interviews with contact center managers or supervisors. Performance should improve with time, as the system carries out more and more conversations.

VPI customers can run the virtual agents side-by-side with live customer service reps. Comparisons of the two can be used to tune the virtual agent or to determine which tasks should are most eligible for automated handling. Visit here (scroll down) to listen to sample conversations. At this point, the company uses a slightly robotic aspect to the voice rendering, which allows the virtual agent to adapt more rapidly to dynamic conversations.

The “brain” or “intelligence engine” integrates important cognitive functions including “short- and long-term memory, natural language understanding, reasoning, learning mechanisms, goal-directed behavior and meta-cognition.” It’s service cloud is PCI-compliant and Botz believes that companies will see value in using virtual agents to receive payment instructions securely (less prone to human error or theft.)

VPI bills on a per use basis at $0.25 per minute (including tuning) with a monthly minimum and a one-year term agreement.

Categories: Articles

Tags: customer care, Contact Center, Natural Language Understanding, self-service