Voice assistants are the future! We can create voice-driven conversational AI solutions to take on multiple business functions. Whether it be across platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant or deployed into an automated IVR system.
A voice assistant is a digital assistant that uses voice recognition, speech synthesis, and natural language processing (NLP) to provide a service through a particular application.
Voice assistants are often referred to in different ways depending on the application: Intelligent Personal Assistant, Smart Assistant, Automated Assistant.
Voice assistants can also come in a number of different guises. Such as smart speakers that listen for a wake word to become active and perform certain tasks. Amazon’s Echo, Google’s Home, and Apple’s HomePod are types of smart assistants. Some assistants also live on Smartphones such as Siri and Google Assistant. Others are an integral part of a vehicle navigation and entertainment system.
At the cutting edge of technology is the conversational IVR system which is where legacy IVR systems are replaced with AI powered assistants which are connected to telephony engagement channels. Therefore a voice assistant can be connected to any telephony channel to handle and route calls and the complex numbered IVR menu system can be replaced with an advanced voice assistant.
Smart Speakers and Smartphones
Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning and advances in speech recognition technology have made a huge impact on how we interact with our smart devices. In fact, Google’s speech recognition technology has a 95% accuracy rate when the spoken language is English and Google is not the only tech company working on the perfection of voice recognition.
Siri by Apple became the first digital virtual assistant to be standard on a smartphone when the iPhone 4s came out on October 4, 2011. Siri moved into the smart speaker world when the HomePod debuted in February 2018. Google Assistant on the Android platform followed.
Smart speakers quickly followed with “Alexa” and “Hey Google” to became a part of many household conversations. Alexa by Amazon is part of the Echo and the Dot.
Google Assistant is part of the Google Home with its latest speakers coming under the Nest product line. Each range now include models combining a speaker and screen.
Samsung has Bixby. IBM has Watson. Microsoft has Cortana on its Windows 10, Xbox One machines, and Windows phones, and Nuance has Nina.
Developing for the many platforms can be complex. Each platform has its own developer environment: Siri, Google actions, Alexa skills, Bixby Capsules
Creating successful conversational experiences requires a breadth of expertise; conversation design, development skills and experience in the platforms of choice.
At The Bot Forge we aim to craft conversations that are natural and intuitive for users. We will help scale your conversations across all devices to help users wherever they are.
Smart speakers are becoming more commonplace in households around the globe and as smartphone use is widespread its no surprise that voice search is becoming increasingly important.
For example in addition to presenting your content as a rich result on Google Search, with the correct mark-up, Google can automatically build an Action that presents your content on the Google Assistant and creates an entry in the Assistant directory.
For optimum results you will have to regularly fine-tune your SEO strategy. As well as creating voice experiences The Bot Forge can help you optimise for voice search.
Telephony Systems connected to Voice Assistants
Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing and speech recognition technology have given a boost to the creation of voice assistants.
At the same time the development of voice gateways which enable chatbots to be connected to telephony engagement channels via SIP/RTP has massively extended the reach of chatbot technology into contact centres, enquiry numbers and helpdesks across all industries.
Voice gateways provide the technology to connect Telephony services over SIP to chatbots. We work closely with our partners Audiocodes as their chatbot solutions provider to create advanced conversational IVR solutions using their Voice.AI Gateway.
AudioCodes’ Voice.AI Gateway brings the most intuitive form of human communications to our chatbots, supporting phone and WebRTC voice calls. Easy connectivity from any telephony channel to any Bot Framework
“AudioCodes Voice Gateway is the perfect solution for us to quickly and easily bring our advanced chatbots to new voice based telephony based use cases” (Adrian Thompson, Founder; The Bot Forge)
Conversational IVR
Voice Virtual Agents Inbound and Outbound
Passive Bots used as Agent Assistant
Voice Bot to help automate services to the employees within the enterprise
The benefits of Conversational IVR
We use Dialogflow extensively. AudioCodes One-Click Telephony Gateway for Google DialogFlow provides us with an easy way to integrate telephony services with our chatbots and virtual agents developed on the Google Dialogflow framework.
Replace Legacy IVRs With Conversational IVRs 🙂
Do you have a voice assistant use-case?
https://i1.wp.com/www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Google_Assistant_News_from-_IO2018_blog.jpg?fit=750%2C650&ssl=1 650 750 ajwthompson https://www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thebotforgelogo@154x100-b.png ajwthompson2018-05-12 16:37:452018-06-21 07:00:41Google Assistant news from io2018
https://i0.wp.com/www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/google_give_an_amazing_demo_of_their_assistant_making_phone_call_blog-2.png?fit=750%2C650&ssl=1 650 750 ajwthompson https://www.thebotforge.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thebotforgelogo@154x100-b.png ajwthompson2018-05-09 10:55:292020-12-30 12:42:43Google give an amazing demo of their google assistant making a phone call