IBM Adds New Features to Watson Assistant for Call Centers

Automation in the call center is critical technology for smooth operations. Most callers don’t need a live agent, as their calls are routine: balance requests, mailing address, appointment confirmations and general business questions. Live agents are costly, and most contact centers hire the minimum number of personnel they can in order to maintain quality and service levels.

That said, call center automation can be a confusing morass of technologies that, when properly implemented, will help. When improperly implemented, they can hinder agents and turn customers off with long waits, button-pushing and circuitous non-answers.

This week, IBM (News - Alert) launched new capabilities for its Watson Assistant, the company’s platform that lets users build conversational interfaces into apps, devices, and channels with the help of intelligent virtual agent technology. The new capabilities are courtesy of a collaboration with communications platform-as-a-service provider IntelePeer (News - Alert) that makes it easier for users to set up and test Watson Assistant voice agents. A new Agent App allows for a more seamless handoff to a live agent.

The new features include:

Add voice capabilities to Watson Assistant. The IntelePeer Atmosphere Communications Platform-as-a-Service is now available as an add-on in Watson Assistant so that users with a Plus and Enterprise plan can set up voice capabilities and a new phone number for a virtual agent quickly. If businesses already have an existing contact center phone system, IntelePeer can also provide the connection between Watson Assistant and the existing phone system using industry standards.

First-call resolution with Watson Assistant Search Skill. Watson Assistant’s Search Skill feature now includes short-answer retrieval, which is based on a question-answering (QA) system from IBM Research. This enables the virtual agent to return an answer in a few words from longer sentences or passages and provide the context on where the answer came from.

A seamless hand-off with the new agent app: Watson Assistant’s new agent app feature is designed to help customer service agents pick up with a customer right where the virtual agent left off. When a customer calls in, IBM’s speech detection models, which are designed to provide more accurate transcriptions out-of-the-box, deliver a near real-time transcription of the conversation for the agent.

“One critical challenge facing nearly every business today is the need to better communicate with their customers and employees across all channels,” says Daniel Hernandez, general manager of data and AI, IBM. “We’re continuously delivering new innovations in natural language processing, automation and advancing responsible AI, and building a strong, open ecosystem with partners like IntelePeer to help businesses transform customer care with Watson Assistant.”

Edited by Luke Bellos