Source: Interactive Media

The focus on technology has been a common characteristic of the company, since the beginning. We started by building IVR systems, adding later speech technologies and network protocol integration to keep our Solutions on the leading edge. Multichannel capability has been another focusing approach as well as the capability to deliver inbound and outbound service automation. The design of IM Network IVR drove us to build high-reliability systems capable of massive call handling. Following the spread of video technologies in 3G and wired networks, we designed the core of the IMS Suite for Network Carriers. At the same time, the speech technologies were applied to recording systems in Call Centers. The last step was the design of a software platform which is capable of managing multimodal interactions based on natural language processing. This allowed IM to create feature-rich applications like Virtual Assistants voice/chat using 5th generation avatars on the web and Automated Agents on the phone which talk to customers like a human being.

Answering the demand for easy, personal automated services in the consumer-empowered economy means allowing people to access their information and execute their transactions from any device on any communication channel.

IM Conversational Agents automate complex and repetitive customer self-service transactions using key language technologies, work on the phone and the web, free CSR's from ordinary tasks, and generate solid and measurable ROI.

The Conversational Agents listen, understand, and speak to customers behaving like human agents. They give customers the feeling of communicating with a 'real' person; they answer questions and understand the context of the conversation. Once the IM Agent is "trained" for a task, it will always perform it with the same promptness, courtesy, quality and efficiency.

They use Natural Language Understanding techniques to streamline the human-machine interface and make the user experience easy and effective.

By specializing in diverse application functions and working on specific tasks, which can even be combined and integrated, there is no limit to the scope of the Conversational Agent's skill, other than… your own.

1. IM.MIND, Media Integrated Natural Dialog design and development methodology
2. IM.Meltemi®2.0, Multimodal Service Delivery Platform

Our Natural Language Solutions Group can design and deliver applications according to Client requirements and/or customize existing templates.

Conversational Agents improve user experience, service availability and accessibility, human agent efficiency, and customer care automation. Thanks to IM Agents, our Clients achieve results like:

• Enhanced customer satisfaction by providing around-the-clock service
• Improved contact center efficiency
• Increase in self-service automation
• Simplified access to automated services for every customer

Customer Care is a process that relies on automated and/or assisted service. A human agent, who is necessary for assisted service, can handle the most complex and valuable interactions. A Speech or Web system handles simpler transactions.

How can we manage complex operations, improve Quality of Service, enhance Customer Experience, and cut Customer Care costs?

IM Agents are the answer for handling such issues in a user friendly, safe environment. With IM Conversational Agents, you can build speech/web applications where customers are prompted by a comfortable "Hello, how may I help you?" and the dialog becomes "natural".

IM Agents use an open, natural, free flow dialog to overcome traditional IVR/Web constraints (menu depth, tedious interactions):

• They understand user requests and people no longer need to learn how to use the IVR/Web systems.
• Applications are no longer menu-driven and do not ask users for one piece of information at a time.
• They listen to user sentences and are able to ask just for any missing piece of information.

IM Agents are a comprehensive interactive Customer Care solution consisting of three distinct "layers": methodology, language platform, service delivery platform. These layers work together to implement a flexible solution to ensure customers the right answers for their specific needs.

Customers reach their goals easily and quickly, the range of operations handled automatically is increased, and self-service applications are easier to use.

Used in Speech IVR and Web self-service Solutions (on premise or outsourced), the IM Conversational Agent represents a valuable addition and integration to existing and new Contact Centers.

The integration with customizable 3D 5th generation Avatars adds feature-rich capabilities to web multimodal services using voice, chat, sms, and email to interact with Customers.

A Voice Portal is a means to enable integration of voice self-service into the Contact Center. Customer-facing business processes, such as information management, automated transactions for personal data collection, and event notification work by using automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), speaker verification, and standard interfaces that support Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP). The addition of Natural Language Understanding makes the Voice Portal much more user-friendly than a standard Speech IVR system.

IM Voice Portals allow the Contact Center to :

• Leverage the power and flexibility of multichannel self-service and enterprise databases.
• Empower customers to speak their requests in a single sentence rather than enter information on a touch-tone keypad or enter one piece of spoken information at a time.
• Deliver information to customers automatically and dynamically.
• Collect customer information to streamline call routing to the appropriate skilled human or automated agent.

Web Self-Service is a kind of automated support which allows customers and staff to access information and performs routine tasks over the Internet, without requiring any interaction with a business representative. Web self-service is widely used in customer and employee relationship management. For employees and customers, self-service offers 24/7 support, and immediate access to information without having to wait for an email response or a returned telephone call. Ultimately, the success of Web self-service depends upon the quality and quantity of information available and the ease with which it can be accessed. Deploying Web self-service applications benefits a company in a variety of ways. The most evident motivation is the lower cost compared to telephone or email services carried out by a staff member.

IM Web self-service Solutions are based on multimodal avatars that use speech technologies and natural language understanding and communicate via voice and chat. These applications represent instances of Virtual Assistants and appear on the website as 5th generation avatars.

Moreover, IM email response and classification solutions lower the workload of human agents in the Contact Center thanks to the virtual assistants working behind the scenes processing incoming messages.

The integration of IM Automated Agents and Virtual Assistants in the Contact Center re-shapes the way businesses interact with customers. The automated application represents the "face" of the business which is seen by the customer. And the behavioral reliability of IM Agents and Assistants ensures the best level of Customer Service, anytime, anywhere. Avatars can be personalized for customer segment and type of request; they can understand and react to the customer's mood, trigger human agent intervention in given circumstances, change look and emotion according to dialog content. These features give businesses the possibility to really personalize customer service according to policies, needs, and opportunities.

IM Applications for customer self-service are a Customer Interaction Hub (CIH). "The customer interaction hub (CIH) is a multichannel infrastructure that includes voice, video , Web chat, email, fax, self-service, interactive voice response (IVR), collaborative browsing and social feeds like Twitter and Facebook. It focuses on centralized processing for external customer interactions, and is integrated with back-end CRM, ERP and supply chain management (SCM) systems. The key functions are centralized business rules, aggregated integration points, channel independence and customer experience management. The primary objective of a CIH is to solve as many transactions as possible in an automated manner, or to provide operators with the necessary information and tools in one interface to resolve an interaction request at the first point of contact. The CIH must ensure that every interaction is understood (analyzed) and dealt with in an optimal manner (priority, agent, channel, automated or manual, etc.). For example, an inbound fax might trigger an outbound phone call if the content is important. Master data management and customer data solutions will be the key to the emergence of a CIH, because they will be the operational data stores¹."

Since Customer Care is becoming a strategic differentiator in today's hypercompetitive business environment, many companies are turning their Contact Centers into Customer Interaction Hubs (CIHs) to achieve the following goals:

• Use easy and comprehensive interactions as a competitive advantage.
• Reduce customer interaction costs and generate new revenue.
• Improve quality and consistency of services across all channels.
• Optimize contact center productivity and increase self-service adoption rates.

Interactive Media's Customer Interaction Hub runs on Meltemi2.0 robust and scalable platform with a proven track record in the management of billions of interactions/year in business and mission critical environments.

Source: Interactive Media

You can get the benefits of outsourcing customer services with the advantages of cloud computing with IM.Meltemi®2.0 platform available as a service. This allows you to build your own applications, control operations and reports using a service center.

For telephony applications, the Client can use IM Service Creation Environment or ask IM to build the service; a phone number is assigned to the service; Client's customers call the number to access application services; service reports and data are available to the Client through a web interface. The IM cloud service modality is also available for email response and classification.

Access to the telephone and data networks is granted through the agreements in place with leading telecom carriers.

Thanks to IM's Natural language Interactivity, Clients can design enhanced, feature-rich services that help to build a competitive advantage in a pay-as-you-go pricing model. All the benefits come with no capital expense, no maintenance responsibilities and no long-term contracts.