Building Digital Assistants, Virtual Agents, and Chatbots: A Vendor Guide - PDF Format

Building Digital Assistants, Virtual Agents, and Chatbots: A Vendor Guide

William Meisel, President, TMA Associates

Be part of this major trend!

Automated interactions with customers and employees using human language is a major trend. The technology of using “natural language” in digital assistants and chatbots—communicating by text or voice conversations—has passed well beyond the tipping point of usability and is supporting true interactive conversations. The number of channels that support this intuitive connection with digital systems has exploded—mobile apps, customer service lines, web sites, home devices, messaging services, and more.

Connecting with customers with a digital assistant is efficient for customers and cost-effective for companies. Customers simply say or type what they want and interact until they meet their goals. The digital assistant is your representative and can be available to your customer even across multiple channels. It is rapidly becoming a requirement to be available through the general personal assistants such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Facebook Messenger, but this requirement is also an opportunity to do the basic research that leads to an independent branded company digital assistant—eventually as necessary as a company web site.

You don’t have to be an expert in natural language processing, speech recognition, or machine learning to be part of this trend. Many companies supply basic technology, tools, and support in creating natural-language assistants that can be customized to your goals.

A major resource!

Dr. Meisel has created the ultimate reference guide for finding the best match of resources to your needs and to your desired level of involvement in development. The report covers 189 companies that can develop a complete digital assistant for you, some for specific channels or vertical markets and some addressing multiple channels. In addition, the report covers another 154 companies that can provide a part of the solution (e.g., a custom text-to-speech voice for your branded digital assistant). At almost 500 pages, the in-depth insights in the report not only save you time, but help avoid mistakes.