Market research news

VirtuOz, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for online marketing, sales, and support, today announced that it processed a record 166 million conversations in 2011 on behalf of its customers.  This growth was fueled, in part, by expansion of VirtuOz’ client base across multiple verticals including high tech, telecommunications, retail, and consumer packaged goods.  In addition, the company noted the expansion of IVA usage from customer service, to sales and marketing via a growing number of touch points, including mobile phones and social media, such as Facebook.

Online Virtual Assistants are becoming more widespread and consumer appetite for them is growing, as highlighted by an independent survey of 1,500 consumers across Europe.

Results showed that 81% of people said they would be more likely to engage with an online Virtual Assistant if it improved their online experience, 72% welcomed them becoming part of every website and a similar number said they would spend longer on a website that had one.

Virtual assistants can take on multiple roles on a website, such as answering customer questions, performing various helpful tasks and connecting to enterprise systems when needed. Their intelligence allows them to remember facts, learn from their conversations and maintain a two-way dialogue with visitors but what other characteristics should they have?

VirtuOz, the leading provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for online customer service, today announced that virtual assistants were a key criterion for determining for CRM Web Customer Service. In addition, the report ranks “new and additional customer access channels” as the number one business case driver for WCS deployments.

Independent analyst firm CCM Benchmark predicts that virtual agent implementations will be an industry standard in 3 to 5 years, a critical component in customer services and even the main point of contact in 2014.

The firm surveyed 57 global ecommerce leaders in Q1 2011 on their plans for deploying virtual agents as part of their customer service strategy. This group predicts a 100% increase in virtual agents in 2011, with that number skyrocketing to 400% by 2014. Virtual agents are services such as an automated, intelligent, virtual human on a website, assisting consumers during purchases or for customer service in natural language, therefore also often referred as virtual assistants.

In addition to the growth predictions, the majority of respondents cited use of the virtual agent for “right channeling” purposes as the most promising emerging application. Integration of the AI avatars with live chat (66%) and use of the virtual assistant as the point of first contact for all online customer interactions (56%) gained the most interest.
This study meets findings from VirtuOz 2011 user conference, at which 75% of respondents agreed that virtual agents will be used as the first point of contact for online sales and service by 2014.

Additional value drivers highlighted in the study include:

• 67% note eDeflection from higher cost customer service channels as a key benefit of VAs.
• 51% believe that VAs will increase their “customer requests” handling capacity.
• 36% believe virtual agents will provide insight into user trends to determine and optimize new service issues as they arise.
• 33% believe that VAs will address search limitations.

“Ecommerce vendors serve on-line savvy consumers who are demanding more sophisticated self-service tools that offer a richer and more satisfying customer experience,” said Steve Adams, CEO and president of VirtuOz, a US/European provider of virtual agents for online customer service.

Chatbots.org also noted a steep rise of interest in the application of virtual assistants in customer services. The website lists all implementations of virtual humans across the world in three main categories: customer services, e-learning and gaming. The application in the customer service area is growing fast; in 2010, 95% of registered implementations were related to customer service and e-commerce.

What is the perfect term for those seemingly intelligent ‘things’, which are popping up everywhere, and which feel more ‘natural’ as time goes by?

Well, we have found 155 synonyms (155!!! No typo!!).

As the leading business and research community in humanlike conversational artificial intelligence, we hope to increase understanding of this field, to provoke discussion and to initiate discussion on standardization of this huge list of different terms, some of them with slightly different implications but mostly genuine synonyms.

We are introducing the most popular, excellent candidate terms to be adopted by the industry and those synonyms which are really eye catching or controversial, and we will just list the remaining synonyms.

Analyst Firm Gartner predicts that “by year-end 2013, at least 15 percent of Fortune 1000 companies will use a virtual assistant to serve up Web self-service content to enhance their CRM offerings and service delivery”. Chatbots.org agrees with the upcoming industry growth, especially since it matches their earlier market estimates for 2015 defined back in 2004, but has some criticism as well, especially on the vendor criteria and lack of identifying challenges within the industry.

The white paper aims to help organisations and businesses understand what chatbots are, how they are being used to win more customers, grow revenues, improve customer satisfaction and reduce cost.

A new white paper on deploying chatbots has been released by virtual worlds and chatbot solutions provider Daden Limited. The white paper aims to help organisations and businesses understand what chatbots are, how they are being used to win more customers, grow revenues, improve customer satisfaction and reduce cost.

Chatbots are known by a wide variety of terms including virtual assistants and virtual agents. Some are quite sophisticated whilst others offer no more than a simple site guide and although the concept of chatbots have been around since the 1950’s it is only in the last five years or so that early adopters, such as Ikea, have been using them. They are however growing in popularity and the E Commerce Times reported in June that “approximately 10% of the Fortune 1,000 already have them”.

Daden have over a decades worth of experience of working with chatbot technology and speech systems. “We have seen an increasing interest in chatbots and chatbot technology over the last three years - so much so we felt the time was right to issue a white paper to help demystify the subject and explain the different types of chatbots.” said Daden’s Managing Director David Burden.

Efficient online self-service is essential for online retailers-particularly since 57% of U.S. online consumers say they are very likely to abandon an online purchase if they cannot find quick answers to their questions, says a new Forrester Research Inc. report.

Virtual agents represent an efficient option to bolster a company’s self-service options, particularly since they reduce customer service operational costs by deflecting agent-assisted costs because they lower the number of customers who call a contact center. Virtual agents-typically with a digitalized human appearance-are software services that provide automated assistance by simulating a two-way conversation in which they can help customers do anything from perform online tasks to locate online information.

In a recent issue of Technology Review Magazine published by MIT listed Intelligent Virtual Agents as one of the 10 emerging technologies of 2009. Intelligent virtual agents are able to interact intelligently with users, reduce support costs, encourage self-service and customer loyalty, and serve as a branding tool for the enterprise. They provide a unique, interactive and personal way for users to get answers and assistance on your website, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This press release seems to be sponsored by Botégo.

O2 UK’s online chat service ‘Ask Lucy’, is currently receiving around 1,000 questions per day as it nears the end of its pilot period, Mobile Today reported. The results of the pilot so far show that customers are choosing instant messaging over a telephone conversation to resolve service issues. Orange UK, T-Mobile UK and 3 UK also offer live chat services with agents on a PC, who ‘chat’ with customers to sell, upgrade or solve problems. T-Mobile’s chat service ‘Ask Laura’, was launched in February. T-Mobile head of the service Elliott Lawrence said feedback has been positive and that T-Mobile will look to further develop the service.