Sparkcentral today introduced its Virtual Agent Framework, a complement to the Sparkcentral Messaging Customer Service Platform to create a complete digital customer care solution that lets companies blend live and virtual agents in the contact center.
The Virtual Agent Framework not only allows the deployment of virtual agents (chatbots) on all chat, social, and messaging channels supported by Sparkcentral's platform at a click of a button, but also gives live agents the flexibility to delegate simpler tasks to artificial intelligence-powered virtual agents mid-dialogue. The virtual agents can also pass the ongoing conversation back to the same live agent who handled the customer before.
"Rather than providing another proprietary chatbot tool in a saturated market, Sparkcentral provides an API that allows enterprises to retain their existing investments into AI and natural language processing on platforms such as IBM Watson, Microsoft LUIS, Google Dialogflow, or Nuance, versus having to rebuild the bot logic in a new tool. This allows companies to connect any virtual agent they create on any platform they prefer via any messaging channel they choose," said Sparkcentral's vice president of product management, Abhay Prasad, in a statement.
"A growing number of brands realize that all customers benefit from conversations that move effortlessly from automated assistance to live agents and back again," said Dan Miller, lead analyst at Opus Research, in a statement. "Sparkcentral's framework encourages the sort of turn-taking that results in a predictive, personalized, and ultimately pleasing customer experience."