Astute yesterday launched Email Virtual Assistant, or EVA, an automated customer service tool that processes inbound emails and writes highly accurate responses using artificial intelligence that learns from how human customer service agents respond to customer issues.
Using natural language processing, EVA reads incoming messages, interprets the correct case coding from the text, and uses response history from human agents to craft the reply. The tool can even determine the amount and type of goodwill, including replacement products, coupons, and gift cards, to send as needed. Finally, the completed case and email response passes to a human agent before sending for refinements or edits as needed.
Astute puts its customers in complete control of how they use EVA. The functionality can be turned on or off as needed, and companies pay only for the emails that are successfully processed through the automation.
"Many customer care teams were struggling to stay on top of inbound email prior to the COVID-19 pandemic," said Astute's president and chief technology officer, Alex George, in a statement. "And with massive spikes in contact volume, many feel overwhelmed by their email backlog. We developed EVA to relieve this pressure while considerably reducing the cost per interaction. EVA frees agents to focus on meaningful engagements with consumers instead of tedious and repetitive work."