Nuance has reportedly acquired one of the leaders in the Web-based virtual assistant business, VirtuOZ. The 10+ year-old company (founded in France in 2002), which opened its U.S. operations in 2009, has focused exclusively on creating software and processes that support “intelligent virtual agents.” The Web sites of PayPal, Michelin, SFR, H&R Block, and Symantec already feature online advisers built on VirtuOZ’s technology.

When we talked to VirtuOZ in May of last year, the company’s Web-based agents had already processed over 166 million queries. That statistic is important because the software basically “learns” from the terminology that a visitor uses to get questions answered. They’ve also been able to build “frameworks” for specific types of virtual agents, including sales and technical support, with analytic packages to measure performance along classic performance measures – such as first call resolution, successful transfers or successful upsells.

At the time, VirtuOZ had an inhouse trial of a “mobile” virtual assistant based on Nuance’s speech processing technology, but they noted that its clients and prospects regarded speech-enabled, animated agents on Web sites as “gimmicky.” From Nuance’s perspective, VirtuOZ’s frameworks fit very well with its efforts to support natural interfaces for self-service or, what Doug Sharp, Nuance’s VP of Engineering, referred to at its recent Customer Experience Summit as making a transition from a “personal assistant” to a “personal advisor.”

The company’s “cloud-based” approach is also important and should dovetail with the self-service as a service efforts offered by Nuance On Demand. The architecture should also be conducive to Nuance’s overall strategy of managing conversations that cross multiple domains and channels; involve speech as well as text, images messaging and have an understanding of the underlying context of the interaction.

Over the years, VirtuOZ raised over $20 million in venture capital, including: $2 million Series A in 2005 and other rounds which added Inventures Group, Mohr Davidow Ventures; Venture Round and Mohr Davidow. Because Nuance is a public company, we will soon know how much it paid for VirtuOZ. If it provides the traditional return expected by these sophisticated investment houses, it is a real vote of confidence in the growth of Virtual Assistants supporting enterprise sales, customer service and technical support efforts.

Categories: Articles

Tags: speech processing, Nuance, acquisitions, personal virtual assistants, VirtuOZ