Businesses seeking the most powerful Generative AI use cases may well be assessing how to weave virtual assistants into their customer experience or operations ecosystem.
Recent research from IDC suggests that 78% of the global 2000 decision makers, influencers, and practitioners surveyed are deploying or have deployed virtual agents or assistants.1
Whether text or voice-based chatbots or more sophisticated, 3D rendered avatars, such as EPAM’s JenAii (Joint EPAM Natural AI Interface), these assistants can deliver more natural, personalized customer experiences, or empower employees through task automation and data-driven insight.
But what should businesses do to achieve success? Technology leaders must put these five fundamentals in place.
Powerful data capabilities
The ability to surface information and gain insight from business data is key. Ideally, virtual assistants should connect to data where it already resides, rather than force organizations to import it at scale. Moreover, this technology should deliver accurate results from both structured SQL data and unstructured data.
For instance, JenAii uses Google’s Vertex AI Conversation as its conversational engine, working seamlessly with data from existing Google Cloud Storage environments, BigQuery data warehouses, Jira data sources and corporate Intranet data.
Data should also not be limited to text. By combining EPAM’s high-performance video index and search capabilities with Vertex AI, JenAii enables innovative capabilities. These include enabling users to search through and query video content using natural language, enabling search, rapid summaries and even sentiment analysis.
Secure and reliable at scale
Svetlana Grill, Head of Google Cloud Platform’s ML/AI department for EPAM Systems, argues that a secure and resilient platform is crucial for building virtual assistants. “With responsibility and safety at the forefront of AI discussions,” she explains, “reliable platforms with proven security are essential for trustworthy AI solutions.”
In highly regulated industries, this needs to align with key security and privacy standards, including PII, PCI-DSS and GDPR. With three of the 12 engineers on EPAM’s JenAii project being security specialists, JenAii was built with a focus on security from the ground up.
Flexible and customizable
Whether public-facing or internal, virtual assistants need to be customizable to match brand and sector requirements.
EPAM’s JenAii uses the Unreal Engine to deliver a convincing, human-like avatar. Nearly every aspect of the appearance and voice can be customized to convey the desired brand image, while the conversational engine can be configured with a specific personality.
Crucially, businesses can use existing documents and data to train JenAii in sector-specific terminology and jargon, so that, whatever the vertical, the assistant talks the language. What’s more, it’s not tied into a specific infrastructure or language model. As AI technology evolves, so can the assistant.
Transparent and measurable
Visibility is crucial. Outputs need to be explainable so that businesses can understand the inputs and processes that led to a particular recommendation. The right guardrails have to be in place to ensure accuracy. Businesses also need clear metrics so that they can measure the efficiency, sales or productivity improvements their virtual assistants deliver. In JenAii’s case, all this is provided through clear dashboards, BI integrations and reports.
Focused on the needs of the customer or user
Businesses need virtual assistants that are laser focused on the needs of customers, using advanced natural language processing to deliver human-like interactions. Assistants need to be able to learn user preferences, so that they can deliver relevant responses through voice and text.
Says Marc Cerro, Global Google Cloud Partnership Leader: “Without a doubt, the integration of virtual assistants and AI will introduce a new dimension to digital transformation. These technologies have the power to make digital interfaces more empathetic, understandable, and efficient.”
Find out more about virtual AI assistants and EPAM’s groundbreaking Google AI solution.
1IDC Research, Conversational AI Tools and Technologies, IDC_P42577_0823, https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P42577