Google Cloud recently announced a series of updates to Dialogflow, a development platform that streamlines the process of building chatbots and interactive voice responses (IVR) for contact centers. The technology is the primary inspiration for Contact Center AI, which lends access to virtual agents for repetitive and basic customer interactions, an attempt at removing some of the monotony out of the agent experience.
Google said organizations can now increase the number of seats of virtual agents from 2,000 to 20,000 with its latest feature, in beta, Dialogflow Mega Agent. This delivers a drastic overhaul to the agent experience on many fronts and could help reduce the burden likely felt as call volumes soar to all-time highs amid COVID-19 concerns.
So, how's it work? Previous versions of Google's Dialogflow agent was limited to 2,000 intents. The Mega Agent essentially combines ten agents forming what Google calls a mega agent. In more practical terms, this means, if you have a virtual agent dedicated to orders, it relies on multiple agents to perform simultaneous tasks such as answering queries about balance and ETAs, creating a bot that can essentially multitask.
What this does is create a more seamless and natural conversation, not something typically associated with virtual agents that often have long response times and can present not-so-useful information when someone needs reliable information most.
Google isn't just rolling out Mega Agents, the company's also offering Dialogflow Agent Validation, now generally available. The software finds virtual agent shortcomings in real-time, providing such data could lead to necessary contact center tweaks made in real-time to enhance the customer and user experience.