Inference Solutions Unveils Virtual Agent Capabilities for WhatsApp at VentureBeat Transform 2019

Inference Solutions, a global provider of Intelligent Virtual Agents for sales and service organizations, today announced that its platform now enables virtual agents to provide customer care over the popular WhatsApp messaging application. VentureBeat selected Inference to demonstrate its new WhatsApp integration at Transform 2019 at today’s Innovation Showcase, during which Inference CEO Callan Schebella will give attendees an early look at the company’s forthcoming Studio 6.2 release.

Visit VentureBeat’s Facebook page at 2:53 p.m. on Wed 7/10 to view the livestream of Inference’s WhatsApp demo at the VB Transform Innovation Showcase.

“We are honored to be chosen to unveil our new WhatsApp integration at Transform,” Schebella commented about Inference’s inclusion in Wednesday’s Innovation Showcase. “Each iteration of the Studio platform opens new engagement paths for companies to connect with their customers, and Studio 6.2 will make it possible for businesses to use WhatsApp to not only provide customer service, but also to deploy new and innovative marketing campaigns.”

WhatsApp’s Global Opportunity

With over a billion users across 180 countries, WhatsApp’s ubiquity makes it an ideal messaging platform for reaching customers across the globe, particularly in countries where mobile devices are the preferred (and in some cases, the only) means of connecting to the internet. Using Studio to build and deploy intelligent virtual agents on WhatsApp will enable businesses to connect seamlessly with customers to provide support, facilitate educational campaigns and even convert sales directly on the platform.

“This new engagement channel opens up new opportunities for our consumer brand partners to deepen their connections with customers in various African countries, especially emerging nations where many rely on mobile devices as their primary internet connection,” said  Christian Mouton, Chief Digital Officer at Wunderman South Africa. “We are thrilled to partner with Inference to bring intelligent virtual agent capabilities to our customers via WhatsApp’s B2C ecosystem.”

Studio 6.2 enables businesses to create WhatsApp messaging tasks and instruct their virtual agents to respond to their customers via the WhatsApp messaging interface. Bringing text-based NLP capabilities to the WhatsApp messaging platform enables swift and direct resolution to even the most complex customer queries. In cases where further education and/or interaction is required, businesses can both send and receive rich media, including images, PDF attachments and even video files.

Also New to Studio 6.2

In addition to the WhatsApp integration, Studio 6.2 brings key natural language processing (NLP) enhancements with deeper support for Dialogflow, including phrase hints as part of Studio’s Open Form node. Phrase hints improve the accuracy of speech recognition via the ability to send a list of phrases with each request.

Studio 6.2 also includes new natural language tasks that use pre-built Dialogflow agents to automate appointment scheduling with Google calendar and display locations using Google maps.

Studio’s underlying speech platform has also been fine-tuned to improve the way barge-in behavior is handled in noisy environments. This improves the overall customer experience when using the NLP functionality within Studio.

Lastly, Studio now offers 59 new voices, comprised of a combination of Google WaveNet and Standard voices across a dozen different languages. These new voices are available as part of the NLP session class within their respective regional and global Google voice packages.

Visit https://www.inferencesolutions.com/ to learn more about Inference’s intelligent virtual agent platform.