What is an Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA), for AI call center software?

If your company has a call center, you need to start looking into AI, because it has the ability to dramatically improve your call center in many ways. One of those ways is using an intelligent Virtual Agent (or IVA). But what is that, and what exactly is it capable of?

In this video, I explain what an IVA is and detail four primary benefits to your company.

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About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

if your company has a call center, one of the things, especially in the last year or so that has arisen, is that you definitely need to be looking into artificial intelligence. This is something that’s really revolutionizing call center software. If you haven’t looked at it already, it is definitely time. And within that realm of AI, within that category. One of the things you absolutely should be looking at is an intelligent virtual agent and IVA. I’m going to tell you why. I’m going to tell you all kinds of cool stuff. I’m not even going to tell you a cool story that really makes a lot of sense in a second. But first,

My recommendations

if you like my recommendation on the best call center software vendors to quote for your organization, maybe ones who have IVA or even if not just the best vendors to, quote, reach out and contact me, send me an email, give me a call (714.593.0011). I’d love to help you. It’s the reason why I do these videos. So it’s a nice way to say thank you. Anyway, if this video is beneficial and I will help you make a lot better decision in a fraction of the time. More information on that at the end of the video.

Also, don’t forget to take a look at our Web site, Aerocominc.com on our Web site. We’ve done a lot of cool stuff. You’re able to browse, call center software vendors by feature. You can filter them down by feature. You can read reviews. IT vendors got reviews from I.T. departments, and then also you can watch videos on them, read all kinds of cool information, learn more about them. All kinds of cool stuff. So take a look at that. And as always, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. Hit the like button, Ring the bell that helps our videos get out to more people. And I’d really appreciate it.

What is IVA

Let’s talk about intelligent virtual agents. I. It’s a category of A.I. that I think if you have a call center, you definitely need to consider. And, you know, there’s a lot of benefits of it.

My story illustrates IVA’s importance

We’ll talk about that. But just a quick story. My wife and I went and saw a comedian talk is a few months back and he was probably 25 years old. And he was kind of joking about his generation. He said, if I go to a gas station, I put my credit card in and it says, please, the attendant. I don’t really like talking to people like most people in our generation. And I will just drive to a different gas station rather than talk to the attendant. I don’t want to talk to someone live. I thought that was pretty funny. But what was strange, more strange than that is we came home and talked to our daughter who’s 20 years old, and we’re joking about that. And my daughter said, Oh yeah, I’ve done that three or four times. I couldn’t believe that. So it just it it gives you just a glimpse into the future generations and how they are more comfortable dealing with an automated system sometimes than they are with live people. So knowing that, you know, from my standpoint, I’m 49 years old. So from my standpoint, I’m thinking, you know, sometimes I don’t want to deal with an automated service right? Well, I want to talk to a live person. Well, that’s not going to be the case always as the younger generation start to purchase things that are being the people calling in. Right. So something just an interesting story, kind of food for thought.

3 Things IVA can do for you

So what is an intelligent virtual agent and IVA? What that is, is it’s a bot that uses a large language model or conversational AI or generative AI sometimes to interact with your customer. It could be on voice, it could be on website chat, it could be on text message. Those all fall under the same umbrella of IVA. So it’s just a bot that interacts with them. And one of the coolest things that it does right now

is it’s really based on conversation. So if you’re like me, you’re thinking, Hey, I don’t know if I like those bots. Like, you know, when I call into my bank and it gives me these automated, you know, ways of like talking into the system, it’s really cumbersome.

It just takes forever. You know, I have to say the right thing. Well, that’s not IVA idea is really more of a it’s all about intent. It can detect intent through these large language models. So and IVA system is able to give, you know, a customer, an intro, something like how can I help you today? And the customer will explain what they’re looking for in their own words.

And the IVA will be able to detect that language and know what the customer is looking for, even though every person that calls in is using slightly different language in a slightly different way to explain it, that’s an IVA solution. Not saying please select from the following menu and say it out loud. That is not IVA. Avie IVA is the ability to to detect the semantics being used and detect the intent. Just letting your customer talk that is an IVA solution.

1. Calls completed in seconds vs minutes

Now why is it such a big deal? Well, there’s a bunch of benefits, but four benefits right out of the gate is number one, it helps solve things in seconds instead of minutes. So if you’re calling in, needing one piece of information or you’re web chatting in, needing one piece of information, instead of putting someone through an auto attendant with several different menus and having them go through that menu and get to the right place, whether it’s a voice auto attendant, you know, voice activated, or if it’s just numeric, however it is, or if it’s just on chat, forcing them to have to, like, go further and deeper and deeper and deeper takes sometimes minutes, as opposed to letting a customer get right what they need right away, just by letting them specify it right out of the gate. So it’s going to improve dramatically. Your customer experience

2. No wait time for customers

another way, it’s going to improve your customer experience. And you know, number two is that there’s no wait time. So if somebody is calling in to your company today, they’re having to wait to speak to a live agent. IVA obviously is a computer software program, so there’s no wait time. It’s an unlimited amount of times. It can it can take in the calls. So no one’s having to sit there on hold and wait for a live agent. So again, improving the customer experience,

3. Less likely to make mistakes than humans, on compliance

a third benefit is compliance. If your company has specific compliance requirements that have to be met on every single call, certain questions need to be asked, certain things need to be said in order to screen calls, in order to notify customers of certain things. Well, relying on humans, sometimes that stuff can get accidentally skipped, but with an IVA system, that stuff is never skipped. So it helps your company with compliance, which you know, if you take that down further on down the road, that can actually save you a lot of money from, you know, actually breaching the compliance.

4. Save money on payroll

And lastly, and probably most obviously it can save your company a lot of money. So we all know having, you know, people live, people in the office that are answering the phones is expensive. Employees cost companies a ton of money. That’s usually employers number one cost they have. Well, the people who are sitting there answering the phone, answering the most basic questions are usually your lowest paid, highest turnover call center agents. Those folks don’t really enjoy their job a whole lot because they’re just doing mundane things. They’re not really getting creative with their answers.

They’re just kind of repeating the same things all day long to customers. So it’s not very fun. So they don’t get paid a lot and they turnover quite a bit. It’s expensive for your companies to pay them. It’s expensive for your companies to hire them. It’s expensive for companies to train them. So if you can eliminate that first, you know, that first tier of calling and use IVA for that, whether it’s on the phone, you know, on webchat, on SMS, on social media, stuff like that, you can save your company a lot of money. So it’s definitely something you need to think about because if you’re not thinking about it, your competitors might be improving customer experience, saving money, improving compliance, all that good stuff.

Still confused? Reach out and contact me

Well, I hope that was helpful. As always, if you’d like my recommendation for the best call center software vendors who have the best IVA solutions for your company in particular, reach out and contact me. Send me an email, give me a call (714.593.0011). I’d love to help you if you found benefit from the video. It’s a nice way to say thank you. To me. It’s just it’s the reason why I do these videos. Just reach out and ask me for my opinion. I can tell you the handful of vendors your company should be quoting and why. I’ll introduce you to the best salespeople. At those vendors, I’ll oversee the quoting process to make sure your company gets the best pricing on the vendor of your choice. Overall, I hope you make a faster or better decision and a lot faster time, a lot shorter amount of time. And the nice thing is, on top of all that, hey, I won’t charge you a dime for my services. The service providers pay me my broker fee, so there’s no excuse not to at least reach out and see what I might have to say. I might be able to help you. So send me an email. Give me a call. I love to hear from you. I love obviously talking about this stuff all day long.

Check out our custom built search engine

Also, don’t forget to go to our website. Aerocominc.com You can search call center software vendors buy feature. You can also read reviews on them and watch videos on them. Learn all types of cool information. It’s a great website to go check out. I guarantee you’ve never seen a website like this when it comes to our industry. And as always, don’t forget to hit the like button. Subscribe to the channel, Ring the bell. That’d be a big favor to me. I’d appreciate it. Well, thanks for watching and I will catch you on the next one.