Everything You Need To Know About Virtual Agent

Introduction

Virtual agents are a platform to be fed with massive datasets to mimic human interactions and offer a personalized response to solve a query.Hyper-personalized solutions deliver real outcomes for the rising business complexities and customer expectations. Virtual agents fit the immediate demand of businesses, given the ever-increasing landscape of massive attrition, GenZ, or millennials being impatient and seeking an instant response to their queries.

Automated responses or services that AI virtual agents offer thus better complement processes across customer service or employee support. In this view, virtual agents are digital assistants that empower users to be able to solve issues with well-defined guidance and support in a more humanized manner.

However, we often confuse virtual agents with chatbots or virtual assistants. But, they differ in capabilities and technologies used at the core.

Below, we will uncover significant facts about virtual agents, their benefits, use cases, and more.

Keep reading.

What Is A Virtual Agent?

A virtual agent is an artificial intelligence (AI) software program that can mimic human interactions. A virtual Agent is an entity that exists only in a digital or virtual world. It interacts with users through text or voice chat, and its purpose is to provide information or assistance. Sometimes, Virtual Agents are also called chatbots or conversational agents.

Virtual agents are designed to simulate natural human dialogue and can perform various tasks, such as answering customer questions, making recommendations, or providing information.

How Virtual Agent Works?

Virtual agents use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU), to interpret the intent of users’ queries and generate responses.

Based on the existing workflows that come up every day in the customer handling service or employee support, businesses can prepare dialog and ingest those scripted datasets to the AI data model and train it to respond to queries effectively.

Over time, the automated responses also improve interaction and accelerate process efficiency as intelligent virtual agents gain the ability to learn across the complexities users face and offer solutions for less predictable inquiries by analyzing the chat history.

For example, a virtual agent or conversational AI agent does not repeat the scripted template again and again once the conversation exhausts the existing options. Instead, it uses intelligence and offers real-time suggestions. When those do not work out, it can help with agent handover.

Virtual Agent v/s Chatbot v/s Virtual Assistant

We often hear the terms virtual agent, chatbot, and virtual assistant used interchangeably, but there are some distinct differences between these three platforms. Let’s take a closer look at each one.

Virtual agents

A virtual agent is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer service representative. Virtual agents are designed to simulate a human conversation and can understand and respond to natural language queries. Or more specifically, intelligent virtual agents feed on conversational AI capabilities that can parse human dialog and improves dialog exchange between a human and machine.

Chatbots

A chatbot is a type of virtual agent built on top ofrobotic process automation to offer suggestions and solutions powered by pre-determined dialog and workflows for common queries. Chatbots use FAQ-based resources to respond to users.

Note: In many instances, robotic process automation gets exhausted and fails to meet business expectations regarding hyper-automation needs. Natural Language Processing provides advanced intent detection and entity extraction capabilities to overcome the limitations of FAQ-based chatbots and translate them into conversational AI platforms that can act as intelligent virtual agents. By using conversational ai with app workflow automation, you can create intelligent chatbots.

Virtual assistants

A virtual assistant is a virtual agent designed to perform tasks or services on behalf of a user. Virtual assistants can range from simple voice-activated assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa, to more complex agents that can handle tasks such as scheduling appointments and managing email.

However, virtual assistants also represent human agents who work virtually for a business to assist with customer or user queries. For say, contact centers or call center agents are known as virtual assistants, who use technology to solve customer issues.

Examples of Virtual agent

Virtual Agent Chatbot - Customer Support

Imagine customer support in an insurance company. The contact center receives hundreds of queries, if not thousands, daily. Some seek an instant answer for the claim procedure. At the same time, some may need help with information that could give an in-depth understanding of various health-related benefits they can get with their specific policies.

The insurance company may visualize the interaction capacity that can happen, and thus they create automated responses for the virtual agent platform.So, whenever a customer initiates a conversation, the virtual agent can ask for a policy number and phone number, correlating the data with internal CRM to offer a response. Furthermore, more advanced virtual agents can even help users create tickets instantly if the automated response does not satisfy their questions.

Virtual Agent Chatbot - Employee Support

Harvard Business Review survey predicts that employees want collaboration tools aligned with their internal processes. This is essentially important for the remote workforce who need the information to work efficiently. The survey reports that disparate software spread across departments creates more fragmentation and silos. Virtual agent chatbot that allows app integration and workflow automation helps employee harness information steadily.

Say your marketing executive is working virtually and looking for customer information to send a follow-up message. But, he does not have access to the CRM platform. The point of contact (i.e., the marketing head) is gone on a business trip. As usual, there would ensue a delay of several days or weeks.

But, a virtual agent chatbot can quickly reduce the risk of losing a prospect. With automated app workflows built for a CRM platform and integrated inside your favorite communication tools like Teams or Slack, your marketing executive can easily find customer information and proceed accordingly.

Virtual Agent Chatbot - IT helpdesk

Implementing a Virtual Agent Chatbot within an IT support organization can help human agents in several ways.

First, it can help deflect routine support inquiries, allowing agents to focus on more complex issues.

IT help desk has routine inquiries for system malfunctioning, credential issues, and more, such as

• Password resets
• Printer issues
• Device provisioning

More such routine issues add to poor employee experience.

A virtual agent chatbot can be programmed to help users with knowledgebase articles or FAQ-based feeds to solve the most mundane and error-prone activities.

So, with a virtual agent chatbot, you can automate several repetitive tasks and increase employee productivity and satisfaction.

Read more.

Benefits of Virtual Agents- Role of Virtual Agents in your business

You must have an excellent team for your customer service, like one of the superheroes. Your team handles various aspects like emails, online chats, social messages, and direct phone calls; however, virtual agents can add to elite customer service.

A collaboration between a customer service team and a virtual agent lowers the workload of your hard-working team and improves SLAs.

We’ve listed down why it's necessary to onboard a virtual agent and some best practices.

1. Cost savings:

You can reduce ticket handling costs and save big on operational expenses.

• Each ticket for L1 support costs $20, which you can reduce to less than $2 by using chatbot automation for the IT help desk.
• Free up 30% of agent capacity, thus reducing dependencies on agents and additional costs for agent salary and incentives and insurance.
• No-code platforms can provide the flexibility to use hyper-automation by leveraging NLP and generative AI for automated chatbots or virtual agents. So you can reduce in-house development costs.
• Virtual chatbots are cloud-native and available as a SaaS model from anywhere without investing in costly infrastructure maintenance and licensing fees.

Workativ automates workplaces and reduces costs for building expensive and developer-intensive chatbots, app integrations, and workflows.

2. Improved customer satisfaction:

One thing is always at the top of the mind of every customer, no matter if you’re running a Forbes 500 company or a local online store. Customers will always seek out positive customer experiences.

And one of the concrete ways of measuring customer satisfaction is to count on your response time and the speed of your services. It is essential to understand what you’re losing and what you’re gaining while providing the best customer service.

Virtual agents can provide high customer satisfaction, as they are available 24/7 and often provide faster resolutions to customer issues.

When customers get responses in real-time using virtual agents, it meets better service level agreements. Timely resolution of issues doesn't get bigger and leads to customer satisfaction.

3. Automates repetitive tasks-

Virtual agents automate  your employee  IT issues and service requests with an intelligent virtual agent Bot combined with workflow automation. Virtual agents can quickly scale up or down to meet changing customer demands. They take care of the repetitive queries that make humans feel like machines, allowing live agents to focus on priority work.

For example, HR can streamline communication and reduce manual intervention to respond to each query regarding policies and procedures ( exit, onboard, BYOD, health insurance, car loans, clearance, bookings, participation queries, donation drives, recruitment drives, and more). With consistent forms, answers, and automated solutions, an HR can focus on more important things than those unproductive daily tasks.

4. Lead Generation

If you’re a small startup owner, it is possible that your primary goal is to increase lead generation. In that case, virtual agents function efficiently through outbound telemarketing resulting in multiple leads. They take the sales rep's work and push it forward by following up and analyzing data to identify prospective customers.

For example: while you’re busy doing errands for your new business, a virtual agent can collect data like name, phone number, city, email address, and what you are looking for– some similar sections and feed into a database and later using software/tools you can design a cold email pitch for your customers and sell your services directly in their inbox.

5. Omni - channel support

Be there where your customers are. Omnichannel support will not only drive your sales but, at the same time, ensure better customer service.

For an excellent support strategy, you must present everywhere- you never know where your customer is sitting– cribbing about service or hogging a quick solution.

A virtual agent can be configured to an omnichannel support environment to ensure the escalated conversation can be routed to the correct queues.

For example, Workativ virtual agents can easily sync with your communication channels and increase user adoption as they can interact directly via Slack or Teams.

Few more benefits to unlocking opportunities for your business.

Call Centre

Virtual agents can work with the full-time functionality of a regular call center. They can also automatically pull data from databases to provide instant solutions to customer inquiries.

Promotes Sales

Virtual agents can help sales teams close more deals and boost productivity by automating repetitive tasks and providing accurate and up-to-date product information.

Some of the top benefits of using virtual agents for sales include the following:

-Increased accuracy and up-to-date product information

-More deals closed

-Increased productivity

Provides 24/7 support and self-service

Virtual agents handle calls 24/7 and solve customer cases quickly, so human contact is unnecessary. Their engagement with customers helps in the efficient provision of self-service as well.

Build or Buy Virtual Agent - Things to consider while choosing the virtual agent for your business.

According to a survey by MIT Technology Review, 90% of businesses reported considerable improvements in complaint resolution after using chatbots. That brings us to our next element- Should you build a virtual agent or buy one from companies that will customize them to suit your requirements?

Here are a few parameters to check before deciding -

1. Project Vs Product: Building a virtual agent has implications like hiring a developer, a UI/UX person, testers, and a product manager to ensure these are handled. But if you buy the VA, you’ll have access to the software immediately.
2. Finding Skilled developers: To build a Virtual Agent, you need a highly skilled developer but isn’t that also a challenging task?
3. Cost / Affordability: Clearly, buying a virtual agent and customizing it to suit your requirement is cheaper than actually building one from scratch.
4. Ease of Deployment: Deploying a virtual agent on your private hosting platform is difficult, but it is easy as there is zero downtime when it is a SaaS product.
5. Ease of Maintenance: In the case of virtual agents, maintenance also implies maintaining the conversations. While buying one, the responsibility lands in the SaaS company’s hands, but if you build it, it is constant work.
6. Need for data for continuous training: When you buy a Virtual Agent, the vendor regularly updates it, but while building one, the commitment lies on you.
7. Time-to-market vs Time-to-value: If you build a virtual agent, the time-to-market will be at least a minimum of 6 months. Besides losing on the time-to-value, the need to hire, the costs involved, and the data required to train the bot are just additional expenses.

How to build a Virtual Agent Chatbot in a no ode- platform?

RPA tools offer UX support, but it tends to be restrictive, so it needs to be more reliable. Developers focus on programming to automate processes as No Code solutions reduce the need to code for RPA, increasing accessibility.

Workativ Assistant is a SaaS no-code platform that builds, automates, and deploys conversational AI chatbots with workflow automation. Watch this space where we create an intelligent Virtual Assistant in less than 10 mins.

From chatbot builder to workflow builder to chatbot integration, the video explains how virtual agents solve IT issues, and one-click integration with ITSM tools, along with downloading pre-built ITSM apps and Virtual assistants and going live in minutes.

To learn more about how to build your virtual agents with a no-code platform such as Workativ, book a demo today.