MIT’s Technology Review, in its 10 Emerging Technologies 2009 rated Intelligent Software Assistant as one of the emerging technologies of 2009.

Search is the gateway to the Internet for most people; for many of us, it has become second nature to distill a task into a set of keywords that will lead to the required tools and information. But Adam Cheyer, cofounder of Silicon Valley startup Siri, envisions a new way for people to interact with the services available on the Internet: a “do engine” rather than a search engine. Siri is working on virtual personal-assistant software, which would help users complete tasks rather than just collect information

These ‘do engines’ are not new. In fact, Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers have talked about and built such limited, task-specific, intelligent software entities for decades now. In fact, the first such Sevak or Intelligent Software Assistant was built to engage in a conversation with its user – like a therapist. Eliza, the first Sevak, was built in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum with just 200 lines of computer code. Things have moved a long way from these humble beginnings, but the task of building ‘useful’ Sevaks or ‘doers’ as opposed to just agents that ‘search’ has kept the attention of many researchers and has captured the attention of a few VCs as well.

More recently, such Intelligent Software Assistants are being commercially deployed is Contact Centers. Botego, Virtuoz, MyCyberTwin, NextIT, SitePal, Soliloquy, and Intellichat are some of the firms that specialize in developing voice or chat-based contact center ‘virtual customer service agents’. They are being used by a number of companies, including PayPal, eBay, Buy.com, Continental Airlines, AMP, and National Australia Bank – just to name a few. While comparing these Agents and their applications is a worthwhile (and sometime amusing) exercise, I will reserve that for a future post. Here I would like to expand on five key characteristics that such Sevaks should exhibit.

• Social – Being able to engage in a conversation with a user that is beyond the immediate task is a critical characteristic of Sevaks. Customers are used to engaging in a conversation beyond their immediate reason for contacting the company. Failing to design an agent that can engage in such conversations can easily expose the agent to abuse and mistrust. For example, one of the sites allows the user to have a conversation with the cyber twin of Paris Hilton. Even a simple question, such as ‘I thought you were a Hotel in Paris?’ results in a incongruent answer, ‘Paris looks like a beautiful city. I’d love to visit the tower’.
• Purposeful - Sevaks or agents need to be pro-active or purposeful. They should explicitly ask for the user’s goal or infer it, before providing an appropriate response. Failing to have this characteristic, will result in ‘entertaining’ but useless applications from a commercial perspective.
• Autonomous – These agents must be autonomous or require no human assistance behind the scenes to resolve customer issues. While it might be acceptable to handle Level 1 questions and pass the customer to a ‘Live Agent’ for Level 2 questions, requiring human monitoring of all agent conversations will increase overhead and costs.
• Rational – The answers provided by agents must follow a logical sequence and be acceptable as adequate explanation for why they answered the way they did. While humans might be irrational when they make decisions, having a Sevak that provides irrational answers will not be conducive to building ‘trust’ that is an essential attribute for success in this domain.
• Emotional – Finally, having a Sevak emotionally connect with the user or empathize with the users’ concerns and issues will be critical. While a virtual customer service agent might be able to take all the abuse from human customers, being emotionless in its response will be counter-productive as well.

SPARE - is a minimal set of five characteristics that Sevaks in contact centers must exhibit. How does one build such intelligent software agents and how do some of the agents mentioned in this blog stack up against there characteristics will be explored in future blogs.  If you are interested in exploring more (and having some fun) why don’t you visit my CyberTwin here or even go to the original Eliza and see how far the technology has evolved (or not!!) since 1966.

Top 5 Characteristics to Look for in Intelligent Software Assistants – The Next Generation of ‘Sevaks’ is a post from: Connections