You’ve heard of the IVR system.
It is a foundational part of most contact centers and busy calling environments.
But what about intelligent virtual agents (IVAs)?
IVAs represent the future of call management, self-service support, and staff empowerment. They handle repetitive, straightforward actions on behalf of human agents, allowing business leaders to enhance customer experience.
We’re living in a world where companies and customers alike are increasingly comfortable with interactions involving bots and automated systems.
Virtual agents, powered by AI and natural language processing (NLP) technology, feel just as natural to engage with as a smart speaker or voice–activated assistant.
IVAs are key to augmenting customer service staff and unlocking better experiences for customers in the age of digital transformation.
What Is an IVA?
IVA technology is an evolution of the IVR system intended for routing calls and handling simple tasks.
Virtual agents use AI to power speech-or chat-enabled environments where customers can solve problems, complete payments, check balances, book appointments, and more.
Modern IVAs may also have natural conversations with customers and pull information from various contact center environments to fulfill requests.
Although IVA technology has gradually made its way into the modern business landscape, it has gained significant traction in recent years. The COVID pandemic pushed countless brands to accelerate their digital transformation strategies and embrace innovation to deal with increased service demands and new customer expectations.
The use of IVAs shot up by around 46 percent in 2020 alone.
Nevertheless, interest in IVA technology goes beyond post-pandemic demands. Indeed, many consumers have become accustomed to engaging with conversational AI via voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa.
The Benefits of IVA for Self–Service
Self-service is quickly gaining traction, as digitally savvy customers prefer to resolve service requests themselves before seeking assistance from human agents.
The trend is pushing forward the growth of IVAs, as one of the most valuable tools companies can harness to empower and enhance self-service operations.
In the past, self-service solutions were notoriously clunky and complicated technologies. Although some automated systems were available, it was often exceedingly difficult for any solution to fully understand and respond to each customer's needs.
Nonetheless, even before the COVID pandemic, companies discovered that their customers preferred using self-service for various tasks.
After all, no business wants customers to wait in a 30-minute queue only to ask: where is my stuff?
Today, IVA solutions for self-service allow customers to quickly and easily find the information they need and complete tasks without waiting for assistance. These tools enhance and transform the customer journey.
When a customer needs live assistance, virtual agents can also pass on a transcript of the initial stages of the interaction, lowering the subsequent agent effort.
How Does IVA Technology Work?
The functionality of IVA solutions differs depending on the software and chosen use cases. However, vendors offer many of the same core capabilities.
Virtual agents use AI, speech recognition, and integrations with various backend systems, including the CRM, to engage with customers and complete service tasks.
Using a code-free, visual IVA development interface like the one offered by Five9, businesses can build virtual agents by dragging and dropping functionality into the interaction flow of your task.
Also, companies can start with pre-built task templates, like a credit card payment, appointment maker, or order lookup, and customize them to fit their needs.
Most cloud-based AI solutions will also integrate with technology at the heart of business operations.
An IVA solution integrated with your contact center could ask a customer what they needed help with today and then use NLP to respond to open-ended prompts. This allows the virtual agent to recognize keywords and phrases to push the customer forward with their purchase or self-service journey.
Once a virtual agent completes a task, like sharing a customer's balance with them, it passes collected information from within the conversation back through the system for logging and reporting.
Suppose a call needs to be taken to the next level and delivered to a human assistant. In that case, the virtual agent can share contextual information from the interaction, ensuring customers do not have to repeat themselves.
The Evolution from IVR to IVA
An IVA allows businesses to automate more contacts through systems integrations, natural language technologies, and RPA.
As such, it frees up valuable time for human agents to focus on other complex customer concerns.
Moreover, because the technology never needs to rest or take holidays, it helps businesses to free up the staff to support customers with complex problems quicker.
Alongside the technologies noted previously, an IVA is an upgrade from an IVR in bringing together the following:
- Speech Recognition: IVAs can understand human voices in more than 100 languages, responding to queries with text-to-speech technology.
- Text–to–Speech: Using algorithms built into the contact center solution, an IVA can respond to all kinds of queries from your customers.
- Voice Biometrics: With built-in voice biometrics, an IVA can enhance security strategies to verify callers and allow access to their account information.
- Sentiment Analysis: IVAs often use sentiment analysis to identify frustrated tones in a customer's voice and automatically route the call to an agent who smooths things over.
- Intelligent Callback: An IVA can offer customers the option to request a callback rather than waiting on hold. The virtual agent then "waits" in the queue for the next available live agent and passes on context from the self-service interaction to prepare the live agent for the call.
In combining these capabilities, IVAs are sometimes indistinguishable from live agents when handling use cases like arranging payments over the phone or renewing subscriptions.
Why Is IVA Technology Essential Today?
IVA technology might seem futuristic, but it's been around for quite some time. Only recently, however, has the technology become accessible to mid-market businesses. As a result, more companies are discovering the value of IVAs.
