Massachusetts-based virtual assistance specialist Interactions has long taken a unique approach to supporting Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs). As I described in this post, its “Adaptive Understanding” technologies date back to 2004 and have demonstrably shortened the time and effort required to launch life-like voice assistants capable of booking travel, deal with billing problems or answer the variety of questions that customers ask retailers, utilities, healthcare providers, to name a few.

With the introduction of Task Orchestration, Interactions applies Generative AI (GenAI) in conjunction with “human intelligence” to extend the impact of its proprietary approach to virtual assistance and reduce the time, effort, and expense associated with development and fine-tuning bots that perform complex, yet repetitive interactions and transactions. Instead of transferring complex conversations to live agents when “human intervention” is required, Interactions’ IVA is able to complete requests by parsing them into “subtasks or worklets” that can be resolved by agents in the background. That’s “orchestration” in a nutshell. Employing this approach shortens the time it takes to resolve problems and eliminates time spent on hold waiting to converse with a live agent.

An AI-informed Bridge Between Self-Service and Agentic Applications

A customer’s first contact is with a AI-assisted chatbot, available immediately and on-demand. AI is used to recognize the caller’s overall intent and, then parse it into smaller steps that can be shared and completed by a blend of automation and human intervention. The approach has been put to the test successfully at GoDaddy where it significantly reduced the average handle time (AHT) associated with handling complex topics. GoDaddy reports that its customers are happier (thanks to shorter sessions and reduced effort) and that its customer care agents are less stressed.

For Interactions, this marks a logical expansion of Adaptive Understanding. It also defines an orderly progression toward digital transformation and more autonomous virtual agents. As noted in its press release, “It pays for itself by significantly reducing a contact center’s agent minutes and enabling agents to serve more customers per work hour.”

Other solution providers will have their own definitions and approaches to Task Orchestration, perhaps treating IVAs as “agentic applications” capable of carrying out more tasks automatically on behalf of customers or agents. The path from virtual assistants to virtual agents is taking shape as I type this. Interactions is demonstrating the business value of such an approach.

Categories: Intelligent Assistants