Updated July 21

TouchCommerce, long-time player in the multi-channel customer care world, has made the inevitable move toward Intelligent Assistance by adding a new capability to its self-service offerings. Called TouchAssist, it is touted as a “scalable and always available, source of consistent responses” from brands based on targeted delivery of information about its product and service offerings. Answers are offered through human-like dialogues over digital self-service, which represents the fruits of a partnership with Nuance Communications announced in December 2015.

Update: As noted in this press release,  the successful partnership has culminated with a definitive agreement for Nuance to acquire TouchCommerce for a total consideration of $215 million. The Nuance Enterprise Business Group’s portfolio will bring a coherent platform to support customer interaction scenarios that combine self-service and human-assisted service informed by advanced analytics and under the control of each customer.

With a focus on live chat, TouchCommerce helps brands understand their customers and provide them with effective agent-assisted and self-service options. The current product lineup includes tools that analyze customer behavior and understand customer intent during website interactions. Other key offerings include web chat, SMS chat, click-to-call solutions, co-browsing tools, and targeted content for the consumer such a guides and surveys. Customers who prefer self-service can now engage with the TouchAssist intelligent assistant in a conversational manner to get answers to questions without having to search or call customer support.

For brands already using TouchCommerce’s analytical solutions, TouchAssist can be deployed in a targeted manner. For example, rather than simply making the intelligent assistant solution available at the top of a web page, web data can be leveraged to deploy the assistant proactively under specific conditions, such as if the customer is abandoning a filled shopping cart.

The TouchAssist automated agent can also hand off a conversation to a live agent. TouchAssist can be trained to discern situations that require handling by a human agent, in which case the agent receives the history of the customer’s conversation with TouchAssist.

TouchAssist comes with a monitoring dashboard and tools to facilitate populating and managing the intelligent assistant’s knowledge base. Companies can upload live chat transcripts to get TouchAssist started. As the intelligent assistant engages with customers, questions it can’t answer are flagged and recommendations made to speed up the process of adding new content to the knowledge base.

In addition to voice response, TouchAssist is currently available for websites on desktops, mobile browsers and inside brands’ apps. According to TouchCommerce, the intelligent assistant will also be available for SMS after launch. Leaving no messaging platform behind, it can also be integrated as a bot “inside” Facebook Messenger based on client needs.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Nuance Communications, intelligent Assistants, TouchCommerce