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IVR Service Provider Nuance Intros Virtual Assistant Nina for Mobile Customer Service Apps

By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor

Nuance (News - Alert) Communications, Inc., provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world, has introduced Nina, the virtual assistant for mobile customer service apps. With Nina, companies can quickly add interactive voice response (IVR) virtual assistant capabilities to existing iOS and Android (News - Alert) mobile apps, enhancing the self-service experience for customers.

Nina combines Nuance speech recognition, Text-to-Speech (TTS), voice biometrics, and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology hosted in the cloud to deliver an interactive user experience.

Nuance has also recently unveiled that USAA, a financial services provider that serves members of the U.S. military, veterans and their families, has adopted the virtual assistant for use within its mobile app. A pilot is planned for August and the functionality will launch to all USAA members early next year.

“We believe that the virtual assistant has tremendous potential to make it simpler, faster and more satisfying for our members to manage their financial affairs on their mobile devices,” said Neff Hudson, assistant vice president of emerging channels for USAA.

Nina is the first virtual assistant for mobile customer service apps to incorporate speech recognition and voice biometrics into one solution. Nina is also the first solution to provide an open software development kit (SDK) to support the integration of virtual assistant capabilities into mobile applications. In addition, Nina is the first to allow organizations to brand their own virtual assistant persona.

“Nina is a watershed innovation for the automated customer service industry, not only because it brings the virtual assistant directly into an app, but because it raises the bar through its level of interactive dialog and language understanding,” said Robert Weideman, executive vice president and general manager of the Nuance Enterprise Division.

The Nina Virtual Assistant is comprised of:

Nina Virtual Assistant Persona: Nina is a pre-made virtual assistant persona, which developers can leverage for their app, or use the available source code to create a custom persona, including changing visual persona elements such as being awake, asleep, listening, processing, or answering a request.

Nina Virtual Assistant SDK: To enable the integration of virtual assistant capabilities into mobile apps for Apple (News - Alert) iOS and Android, the Nina Virtual Assistant SDK has three innovative components including Nina Core APIs, Nina Virtual Assistant APIs, and Nina Reference Designs.

Nina Virtual Assistant Cloud: The intelligence of Nina, including Nuance’s speech recognition, TTS, NLU, interactive dialog management and voice biometrics services, is delivered through Nuance’s hosted platform, Nuance On Demand.

The Nina Virtual Assistant SDK and cloud service is available now from Nuance in US, UK and Australian English, with additional languages available later this year.

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