Avatars who understand natural-language-posed questions via IVR and the Web are becoming the next generation ‘customer service assistants’: personalizing the interface between humans and machines.

 

Thanks to a new strategic partnership between avatar developer Next IT and Language Weaver, which provides statistically-based automated language translation, these avatars will now communicate in the tongue of customers’ choice. With Spanish, French, and increasingly Chinese being used in North America and with customers from all over the world interacting with firms via the Internet, this solution is timely and needed. It is much less expensive to use multilingual avatars than multilingual agents or translators and more convenient to communicate with customers via them if they are on your Web site compared with asking them to call.

 

Language Weaver’s translation software will be tightly integrated with Next IT’s premier solution, ActiveAgent. Next IT’s technology engages the user through an organic, conversational medium; it discovers the user’s needs and wants by accurately uncovering intent and consistently resolves the user’s needs. ActiveAgent catapults the effectiveness of communication with users, regardless of the service channel utilized, increasing the efficiency of a self-service strategy by integrating seamlessly throughout an organization. In one solution, ActiveAgent leverages an organization’s complete asset and resource portfolio through multiple service application including web, call center, intranet, mobile and other user touch points.

 

Language Weaver’s solutions are built on reliable, statistically based technology and have been deployed in organizations in numerous industries and levels of government worldwide. They are designed for organizations that need to translate large volumes of information into one or more languages, at high speed and high accuracy. The products have been engineered from the ground up for easy integration with virtually any application.  The latest version, 5.1, released last month, includes an enhanced user interface, more powerful multi-language processing, and expanded file format support. It also offers enhanced syntax-based language pairs and supports new bi-directional language pairs (Indonesian/English, Pashtu/English).

 

 “This is not merely a ‘bolting together’ of two powerful technologies,” said Next IT Chief Technology Officer Dr. Charles Wooters, in a statement. “We have worked closely with the research team at Language Weaver to tightly integrate our solutions. The result of this collaboration is that our Virtual Experts will be able to understand multiple languages and their language comprehension skills will continue to improve as they engage with users. [This gives] users the power to choose how they communicate with organizations.”