Frequently Asked Questions

Got questions? We've got answers. Learn about the fundamental technologies of Conversational AI and more.

Technology
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Success Metrics
What is the future of contact centers with AI at the helm?
Ryan Smith, Sr. Director, Customer Care Strategy & Operations at GoDaddy discusses practical considerations for taking AI-driven solutions to production. Hear how GoDaddy is balancing human interaction with AI to solve challenges with the agent and customer experience.
How To Choose Customer Care Technology That Exceeds Customers Expectations?
Your guide to implementing superior next gen customer care technology that will let your customers speak naturally, on their channel of choice and increase customer satisfaction instead of frustration.
How to build a successful Digital Transformation strategy?
Simply put, brands that implement a successful Digital Transformation strategy today will excel, and those who stay status quo will become obsolete. 85% of enterprise decision-makers say they have a time frame of two years to make significant inroads into Digital Transformation or they will fall behind their competitors and suffer financially. That’s why we’ve compiled some resources to help you build a successful strategy that continues to evolve with your customers’ demands.
What is an IVA?
Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) is a customer care solutions that seamlessly blends conversational artificial intelligence and human understanding in real-time to offer unprecedented customer experience across channels.
What is AI?
AI is the theory and development of computer systems that sense, reason, act and adapt like humans. There are two main types of AI - pure AI and pragmatic or purpose built AI. Pure AI is what you see in science fiction films - self-sufficient machines whose intelligence is indistinguishable from a human’s. Pragmatic AI or Purpose-built AI is the collection of AI technologies that are designed to deliver specific business values.
What is Conversational AI?
Conversational AI is the art and science of building messaging or speech-enabled assistants or applications that automate communication, offer human-like interactions and create personalized customer experiences at scale. Conversational AI uses various technologies such as ASR, NLP, Dialog management, ML to understand, reach and learn to communicate with humans at a human level respectively. ASR to translate spoken words into text, NLP engine to interpret the meaning behind the text and deep learning to make the solution more intelligent with every interaction.
What is Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)?
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) or speech recognition or speech to text is an underlying technology of artificial intelligence, and a foundational technology that allows computers to understand spoken words. ASR can be trained to understand languages, dialects and accents, and is responsible for taking in speech or sounds and transcribing them into words.
What is Natural Language Processing (NLP)?
“NLP is an umbrella term that covers Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Natural Language Generation (NLG), and Dialog Management. Because the human language is extremely complex, words can mean different things in different contexts. NLP enables an IVA to make sense of a customer’s language and recognize his or her intent, and produce a response.”
What is Machine Learning?
In its simplest form,machine learning is a set of algorithms learned from data and/or experiences, rather than being explicitly programmed. Each task requires a different set of algorithms, and these algorithms detect patterns to perform certain tasks. It is the underlying technology of AI.
What is Dialog Management?
Dialog management is a function of conversational AI that drives the conversation between machine and humans. At its simplest form, Dialog management is to find a perfectly suitable response to a human dialog. The response could be an answer or more questions asking about further information. Grounding the conversation, slot filling, carrying context are some of the key attributes that separate a good dialog manager from others.
What is Deep Learning?
Deep Learning is a type of machine learning that learns from data representations, as opposed to task-specific algorithms. Deep learning algorithms can identify logos, objects, and actions in images and videos and are more accurate in transcribing speech to text. Deep learning algorithms advance emotion measurement by allowing more effective detection of self-reported, social-expressive, and neurophysiological emotion signals at scale.
What is CURO speech and language platform?
CURO speech and language platform is a unified suite of technologies built on a single, flexible platform that includes speech recognition, natural language processing, machine learning, multimodal technologies, voice biometrics, and dialogue management. CURO platform powers Interactions Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA).
What is Adaptive Understanding?
Adaptive UnderstandingTM is Interactions patented technology that seamlessly blends conversational artificial intelligence and human understanding at real time to deliver a human-like experience.
What is Human Assisted Understanding?
Human assisted understanding (HAU) is Interactions flagship process of transferring low confidence score utterances to humans, also called as intent analysts, at real time and using human intelligence as an addition resource for recognition and intent classification. HAU is typically used in cases of heavy accents, alphanumeric information exchange, background noise or multiple speakers.
Who are Intent Analysts?
Intent analysts are humans that decipher the intent of the conversation from utterances that the conversational AI was not able to understand or understood with low confidence score. It’s important to note that Intent Analysts are not call center agents. IAs never directly speak with the end customer, but rather classify utterances for the automation and bring business agility.
What is GDPR?
GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, holds businesses accountable for the protection of individuals’ personal data. The set of regulations apply to any business collecting and/or processing data within the European Economic Area (EEA) and businesses outside the EEA that collect and/or process the personal data of EEA citizens, or that monitor customer behavior in the EEA.
What contact center technology is outdated?
Technology to improve communication between business and customers is nothing new. In fact, these technologies have been evolving for more than 50 years. And although advancements have been made, many companies still rely on the first few technologies in the field: DTMF and IVRs.
What is a chatbot?
What is a chatbot? Why do chatbots fail to meet customer expectations? Check out our explainer on chatbots and how they fit into customer experience.
What is a digital agent?
A digital agent is an automated self-service technology in the contact center that can perform the same role and tasks as a human agent.
Call Center PCI Compliance
Work-from-anywhere call center agent models increase PCI compliance risks. Lean about call center PCI compliance.
What is an utterance?
An utterance is a fragment of conversation that a human speaks or types into an automated system.
What is ‘Success Based Pricing’?
Success based pricing is Interactions unique business model where our clients only pay for transactions that are successfully completed. We work with clients to build a business case and define successful transactions. We tie our fees to the success of our product and our clients This shared risk model aligns Interactions and our clients on mutual success and partnership.
What is a transaction?
A transaction is the successful completion of a conversation point that is determined by a business.
How long does it take to deploy?
Deployments generally take 3-6 months, but may depend on the complexity of the application and number of call centers.
What is an IVR?
An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated system that responds to speech or touch-tone and is limited to directed dialogue, routing, and rule-based transactions.
What is DTMF or Touchtone?
DTMF stands for Dual Tone – Multi Frequency and it is the basis for your telephone system. DTMF is actually the generic term for Touch-Tone, which is the dialing functionality for an analog phone
What is a chatbot?
Chatbots are designed to simulate how a human would behave in a conversation. These pre-programmed automated interfaces communicate on digital channels, such Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, WeChat, and more. The bots are programmed to pull replies that match the most amount of keywords or the most similar wording patterns based on what has been composed by the customer.
What are contact center technologies?
Call Center technology encompasses a wide range of telecommunications hardware and software including automated phone systems capable of answering incoming phone calls and performing outbound auto dialing.
What is a workforce management solution?
Workforce management (WFM) is an integrated set of processes that a company uses to optimize the productivity of its employees. WFM involves effectively forecasting labor requirements and creating and managing staff schedules to accomplish a particular task on a day-to-day and hour-to-hour basis.
What is an ACD?
An automated call distribution system is a telephony device that answers and distributes incoming calls to a specific group of terminals or agents within an organization.
What is AHT?
Average handle time (AHT) is a call center metric for the average duration of one transaction, typically measured from the customer's initiation of the call and including any hold time, talk time and related tasks that follow the transaction.
What is NPS?
Net Promoter or Net Promoter Score is a management tool that can be used to gauge the loyalty of a firm's customer relationships.
What is CSAT?
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a customer satisfaction survey method that measures customer satisfaction with a business, purchase, or interaction. It's calculated by asking a question with a corresponding survey scale, such as "How satisfied were you with your experience?"
What is FCR?
First call resolution is properly addressing the customer's need the first time they call.

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