[24]7 AIVA Becomes First Virtual Agent with Emotional Intelligence

 <24>7.ai,  has announced the addition of advanced conversational capabilities to its AI-powered virtual agent <24>7 AIVA. With this announcement <24>7 AIVA is now the first virtual agent to possess emotional intelligence, the ability to detect user emotion during interactions, acknowledge it and respond empathetically. This new capability is part of the<24>7.ai Summer 2018 Release that furthers the company’s vision of humans and chatbots working side-by-side as the live agent can now be aware of the customer emotion and handle the interaction accordingly.

<24>7 AIVA, which handles more than a million interactions monthly for top Fortune 500 companies, will further leverage AI to interpret complex layers of human speech and the different possible meanings of phrases to detect emotions. This enables a new level of self-service because the bot can not only detect positive or negative emotion, but also analyze the strength of those emotions and react accordingly before handing over to a human agent as needed.

According to Opus Research, enterprises will spend a projected $5.5 billion by 2021 on licenses and professional services that support Intelligent Assistants.

“The market has become crowded, and the ability to respond based on recognizing an individual’s emotional state is a key differentiator,” said Dan Miller, Lead Analyst at Opus Research “We believe that reacting to sentiment and collaborating with human agents will result in faster resolution, increased satisfaction, reduced effort, and stronger customer engagement. This should be a top consideration for Fortune 500 companies.”

“Human interactions are complex, but through artificial intelligence we can now handle more complex issues the way a human would,” said Scott Horn, chief marketing officer for <24>7.ai. “Using advanced AI techniques to detect emotion, <24>7 AIVA can not only understand how customers feel, but also take logical actions the way your best human agents would. This frees up agents while ensuring that customers feel heard, resulting in a better overall experience.”

The Summer 2018 Release also includes the following enhancements:

• Easier Conversational Model Design – In an industry first, <24>7 AIVA features an improved modeling workbench that exposes the AI behind the solution to end users offering them self-serve options. The new graphical user interface enables non-data scientists and business analysts to easily build and test conversation models. The technical capabilities also incorporate machine learning to proactively suggest improvements to intent models, meaning a better understanding of what the consumer is trying to do. These intent models can be implemented quickly to anticipate and improve the customer experience and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

• New Visualization Capabilities – <24>7 Customer Journey Analytics now features new visualization capabilities that enable analysts to view dominant customer behavioral paths more interactively, making it easier to connect the dots between data and insights. The Single Customer Journey Viewer provides a consolidated view of customer engagement, including interactions across channels and transactions across systems, for improved customer service and complaint resolution.  In addition, with the unstructured data player, analysts can get to root cause of a customer event quicker by listening to calls and reading chat transcripts from within the workspace.