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While compiling the “Decision-Makers’ Guide to Enterprise Intelligent Assistants” one of the most important criteria for rating a technology provider was its “Track Record”. We asked each of the companies under consideration to provide a list of companies that have deployed their technologies to provide intelligent assistance, whether as an avatar in a mobile app, a virtual agent on the company’s FAQ page or as a full-fledge human-like guide or advisor supporting multiple channels.

A surprising finding is that the 13 firms cited in the report accounted had implemented their Intelligent Assistant solutions for well over 1,000 companies around the world. They support hundreds of millions of queries each month. The verticals that are proving to be proving grounds for Intelligent Assistants are Financial Services, Telecommunications, Health Care, Insurance and Cable TV, Utilities, Government and Higher Education. In these environments, they have already proven that they support Web chat, mobile personal assistance, and life-like interactive voice response. They are capable of answering questions, conducting natural-language search and performing intelligent “escalation” of interactions from Web chat to live chat or spoken conversations with live agents.

Some of the most admired brands and companies have put EIAs to use in the real world. A partial list of the firms named as clients by the companies under study includes Aetna, AIG, Alaska Airlines, Amtrak, ANZ Bank, AT&T, AutoDesk, Banco Santander, BBVA, Best Western, CapitalOne, CIBC, Cincinnati Bell, Citibank, Coca Cola, Cornell University, Dell Computers, Deutsche Post, Domino’s, E*Trade, Hyatt Hotels, Fiat, GM, Groupon, HSBC, Humana, IKEA, Lenovo, Lloyds Banking Group, McAfee, Movistar, NTT, Penn State University, Petrobras, Royal Bank of Canada, Toshiba, Schlage, Sony, Tangerine Bank, Telefonica, Telenor, Ticketmaster, Trane, TXU Energy, USAA, U.S. Army, U.S. Bank, Verizon, ViewSonic, Vodafone, Yale University, Webroot and Whirlpool.

After issuing the report, Opus Research was contacted by other EIA providers who claimed even more implementations. For example, The CX Company has its EIAs on the job for T-Mobile, Plusnet (an ISP owned by BT Group), Talkmobile (an MVNO that runs on Vodafone’s network), EPlus (Telefonica), FedEx, ToysRus, KLM, Philips and others. The French EIA pioneer Do You Dream Up claims “more than 2 million questions” processed each month by recognizable brands like Samsung, PSA (Peugeot Citroen), EDF (the French electrical utility) and France’s “first e-commerce and travel agency” voyages-sncf.com.

This formidable roster of well-respected brands is getting a head start; learning the ins and outs of encouraging customers to interact with EIAs using their own words. Feedback that we’ve received from a sample of implementers is that results, thus far, have been positive and companies are following a predictable pattern of adding more expectations and use cases for the EIAs that they have already put into service.

That’s why the Intelligent Assistants Conference 2015 in New York City (October 13-14) is so timely. Not only will executives from of U.S. Bank, BMW Financial, Amtrak, Ticketmaster and Telfonica Movistar provide attendees share their experiences with EIA implementation in their respective organizations to meet the needs of their clients; the conference will also feature panels of C-level execs from leading EIA platform providers to address the issues that are shaping the EIA market. How EIAs provide a consistent set of answers to customer questions across multiple communications channels? How do you balance automated assistance and the human touch? What measures are being taken to preserve customer privacy while anticipating the best way to serve their needs? How will Mobile Personal Assistants (like Siri, Nina, Cortana, Hound or Google Now) interact with branded EIAs, like those mentioned above?

You don’t need an Intelligent Assistant of your own to tell you that the age of Intelligent Assistance is already upon us (although it could). The work they are doing for millions of customers of hundreds of firms in dozens of countries speaks for itself. The EIA business and deployment models provide a coherent way for IT, Contact Center and Customer Experience execs to understand and justify the billions of dollars they are investing in software and platforms for Automated Speech, Natural Language Processing, Big Data Storage and Analytics and Machine Learning.

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Categories: Conversational Commerce, Intelligent Assistants, Coverage Areas