Now that the New Year is upon us, we have an opportunity to reflect back on the evolution of enterprise intelligent assistants (aka virtual agents and customer self-service bots) and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) over the course 2015.

For enterprise intelligent assistants, I observed three major trends. Some of these trends align with those that Dan Miller wrote about in his Decision-Maker’s Guide to Enterprise Intelligent Assistants.

• Growing customer expectation for self-service and automation
• Customer shift to mobile and rise of the chatbots
• Shift from assistant to smart advisor or coach

Throughout 2015 we’ve seen customers shift to a preference for self-service options over calling a human customer support agent. At Opus Research’s Intelligent Assistants Conference this past fall, many company case studies made it clear that offering customers digital self-service options is mandatory. It’s too easy for customers to hop over to a competitor’s app or site if they’re not finding the digital engagement they’re looking for with a brand.

2015 also proved that the shift to mobile is here. With that shift has come increased use of SMS and messaging apps to interact with brands. Nuance added natural language understanding (NLU) capabilities to its real-time two-way SMS solution. Pandorabots worked with Spontena LLC to offer Japanese users of the Line messaging service branded automated chatbots. Imperson helped media brands like The Muppets promote shows by letting people chat with fictional celebrities.

This year we’ve also seen a trend for companies to move from offering assistants to providing personalized, helpful advisors. A prime example of this trend is USAA’s Savings Coach. The Savings Coach combines innovative gamification techniques with knowledge of the customer’s savings goals. The end result is a very beneficial service for the customer that can build tremendous brand loyalty.

Now for a quick look at the evolution of VPAs in 2015. There’s been a lot going on, but I’ll focus on just two trends.

• Evolution of specialized intelligent concierges
• The rise of messaging and chatbots

My first post for 2015 covered an article that Peter Sweeney of Primal.com posted to Medium on the evolution of intelligent assistants. Sweeney noted that to be effective VPAs would most likely trend towards both specialization and greater autonomy.

Facebook’s M is the most prominent example of this shift. M combines AI with human agents to assist users in executing simple to complex tasks that end in a purchase. Amazon’s Alexa can make purchases with a voice command. Niki launched a smart-purchasing agent recently that enables users in India to order a rideshare car or top off their mobile data.

Facebook M and Niki are both seamlessly integrated into messaging apps. Our VPA concierges are increasingly embedded into the apps we use most and waiting in the wings for us to get their help.

To sum up, intelligent assistants are permeating all aspects of our lives. 2016 is shaping up to be a year when enterprise intelligent assistants go fully mainstream and when our reliance on VPAs as advisors and smart concierges continues to increase.

Categories: Intelligent Assistants

Tags: Natural language processing, intelligent Assistants, Personal assistant, Bots