Virtual assistants are nothing more than the expansion of the customer service team from any company or service that answers queries from users, whether they are customers or not. However, in this article we are not going to talk about the world of human virtual assistance, but rather its current, inexorable evolution towards the intelligent virtual assistance.
As you know, artificial intelligence is a transformative force that will continue to revolutionise our personal lives and, of course, numerous work processes that are suitable for automation.
In the case of intelligent virtual assistants, they’ll answer the most frequently asked questions quickly and in a standardised way, so as to handle user enquiries as efficiently and satisfactorily as possible. Would you like to find out more about how intelligent virtual assistants work? In this Euroinnova blog post, we’ll reveal all!
What is a smart virtual assistant?
We can define an intelligent virtual assistant as a artificial intelligence software which carries out specific tasks for an individual.
Although many business-oriented smart virtual assistants are designed to provide information and answer questions in text form, there are other personal virtual assistants whose functions are more general in nature and have no commercial purpose.
Some of the most talked-about virtual personal assistants are Alexa, Siri or Cortana. They are housed in small devices designed to be placed anywhere in the home to carry out everyday tasks such as playing music, giving the weather forecast, searching for recipes, telling a joke or setting alarms using voice commands.
How does a virtual assistant work?
Intelligent virtual assistants operate by combining different techniques of machine learning such as deep learning or natural language processing. For a virtual assistant to be considered intelligent, it must have been thoroughly trained beforehand so that it can respond to as many queries as possible to the highest standard.
This training process is common to all artificial intelligence systems: the future intelligent virtual assistant must be fed vast amounts of information as input.
Next, intelligence algorithms are configured so that the machine does what we ask it to do and produces a satisfactory output; in this case, personalised responses that meet the user’s intent. The machine itself or the programmers then assess the accuracy of the responses to determine whether to continue refining the algorithm.
Companies wishing to create intelligent virtual assistants to serve as the main point of contact for customer service on their website often turn to classified data from other conversations with users which have been collected over the years in the CRM.
By feeding this valuable information to the virtual assistant, you will be able to group all types of queries together that users have asked over the years, and will match them with the most frequent and accurate answers. Best of all, the artificial intelligence will continue to collect and analyse data on an ongoing basis to improve its responses and tailor them to users using deep learning techniques.
What can virtual assistants be used for?
There are many different types of sectors and businesses that can benefit from using intelligent virtual assistants. Below, we illustrate this by looking at the benefits they can offer various sectors in terms of resource efficiency and productivity:
Medical care
They can provide information on symptoms, remind users of medical appointments, and offer basic health advice. Obviously, they could never replace real doctors or make definitive diagnoses without human supervision.
Education
Virtual assistants can help students carry out research and complete exercises as a support tool, provide explanations on educational topics and answer any queries, as well as promote distance learning.
Home automation
With these, residents can control smart devices in the home, such as lights, thermostats and household appliances, amongst others. This is the case with virtual personal assistants based on artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. If we have household appliances and an extensive electrical network with Wi-Fi connectivity, a virtual assistant such as Siri or Alexa can turn our home into a smart home.
E-commerce
Virtual assistants can recommend products to customers and do cross-selling based on their preferences and shopping habits. It is the equivalent of a sales assistant in a physical shop, with the difference that the intelligent virtual assistant can track customers’ entire journey through the website down to the last detail and recommend similar products with a high success rate.
Human resources
They fulfil a customer service role, but internally, answering employees’ questions about company policies, benefits and other work-related matters. Furthermore, some HR departments have already integrated virtual assistants to screen candidates during an initial, basic stage of the recruitment process.
Government services
Public services are often overwhelmed by the high demand placed on them by the public; virtual assistants can therefore help to reduce waiting lists, assist citizens in finding information about administrative procedures and public services, and provide answers to frequently asked questions.
Is a chatbot the same as a virtual assistant?
Whilst both are conversational interfaces and perform very similar functions, there are some differences between a chatbot and a virtual assistant. And although people also talk about intelligent chatbots, their scope is different from that of an intelligent virtual assistant.
Firstly, A virtual assistant processes human language at a higher level and are able to answer a wide range of questions phrased in various styles and with a variety of turns of phrase, whilst A chatbot is usually limited to a topic and provide users with more definitive search options.
Secondly, An intelligent virtual assistant can carry out more tasks than a chatbot, such as comparing two different products on an e-commerce site or advising a user during a complex decision-making process regarding a service or product.
As we have already mentioned, personal virtual assistants can switch lights on and off, set timers, lock and unlock doors, adjust the air conditioning, and so on. In stark contrast, a rudimentary chatbot or voicebot would be unable to perform this wide range of functions.
In conclusion, intelligent virtual assistants represent the inevitable evolution of customer service towards a more advanced and efficient level. With the ongoing advancement of artificial intelligence, intelligent virtual assistants will continue to realise their potential to transform the way we interact with technology and simplify our lives in the future.
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