Voice Assistant Development

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.

illustration of voice assistant examples

What is a Voice Assistant?

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

Advances in Technology

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.

Smartphone based voice assistants

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-speaker based voice assistants

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 voice assistants

Developing for the many platforms can be complex. Each platform has its own developer environment: SiriGoogle actionsAlexa skillsBixby 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.

Developing content for voice search

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.

Smart IVR

Advances in Technology

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

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)

Bringing our chatbots usability to Telephony and Voice based use cases

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

  • Offload tasks from live agents
  • Reduces service costs
  • Quick answering
  • Scalable
  • Easy Escalation to a Human Agent
  • Inbound and Outbound support
  • Agent assistant support role
  • Advanced Analytics provided by Chatseer

One-Click Telephony Gateway for Google DialogFlow

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 :)

Happy Clients

Jamie (Help For Heroes)

"I’m really pleased with the bot and services we’re getting from The Bot Forge. Since we started working with Adrian, he completely lived up to his promises. The end-to-end process has been very slick.

The team was very straightforward to deal with. It was very much about them looking at how they could deliver in the quickest amount of time, with the least amount of investment required.

The Bot Forge understood our pain as a charity with a small team, and they took away a lot of the mystery and fluff from the process."

Chris (Director, Model Office)

"The Bot Forge provides custom software development services for a RegTech company. The team developed a compliance chatbot for the client's platform to provide guidance to their customers.

Excellent, very happy with the personalised services, accommodation of our specific needs within financial services. Their personable and innovative approach was impressive."

Emily (Xe.com)

"We came to The Bot Forge to gain an insight into Chatbot technology, its capabilities and its applications. We found them to be knowledgeable and insightful when discussing bots and AI.

We were particularly interested in how chatbots could help us save on customer service costs and provide a new channel for us to connect with new and existing customers.

The information which we obtained from speaking to The Bot Forge will be invaluable in making more informed decisions in the future about using this technology and we hope to work with them again."

Scott (CEO, Skin Check Champions)

"SPOT BOT has generated a few thousand unique users since its launch without any paid advertising or promotion. Every user is completely organic, spread (as designed) through shares and word of mouth, leading to thousands of skin checks booked and tens if not hundreds of skin cancers found.

A great first dip into the Messenger Bot pool which we're really excited to build on with Bot Forge as a vital partner... It's really lovely to work with them. Very clear communicators. Quick and efficient responses. Strong experience - well applied. Adrian was a really great partner, setting us up for success at all turns. Can't recommend him and his team enough."

Katie (Human Race Events)

"The Bot Forge offered a great service to us for the Saddleback Fred Whitton Challenge, which was really helpful for our customers and customer service team alike! They created a Facebook Chatbot based on the FAQs on the event website, which developed over time as more questions came up. Not only did this take some weight off our team and enhance customer experience, but it has also allowed us to better understand what information our riders are seeking, so that we can better answer their questions proactively through the website and social media. Adrian is always available at the drop of a hat, and eager to provide helpful solutions and developments."

Paul (Stitch)

"They’re responsive and organized, providing all the necessary information to track project progress.

The team is incredibly easy to work with. They took our idea and made it into reality."

Carolyn (Fred Whitton Challenge)

"I’m impressed with the chatbot it seemed to work well.

I think it is a good source of help and with it learning as it goes along it would answer lots of questions going forward.

If it cannot help it still contacts the organisers where we can answer."

Jack (Clifford Chance)

"The CIPS Professional Services Group (Procurement) approached The Bot Forge regarding consultancy and the creation of a demonstration Chatbot to support a conference presentation regarding industry 4.0 Technology. This was shown in front of ~100 Procurement professionals on December 2018 at Clifford Chance (London).

The Demonstration Chatbot built by Adrian at The BotForge was brilliant and we received really good feedback on the idea and execution. The Bot Forge perfectly met our requirements.

The team at Botforge will do everything they can to ensure your project is a success at the right price to suit budget! Would fully recommend!"

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