Intelligent-interface company Next It Corp has announced a suite of new APIs that will allow developers to implement its intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) platform, Alme, across even more devices, including smartphones and wearables.

Everyone has a horror story about calling customer support. How many times have you waited on hold for over an hour only to be transferred between multiple departments without ever getting your issue resolved? This is especially frustrating when your issue is something as simple as resetting a password or changing a flight reservation, which, in theory, should only be about a 10-second conversation.

Next It’s Alme platform solves this problem by allowing companies to use an IVA to answer its most common support questions, freeing up their employees to focus on more complicated issues and giving customers the power to quickly and easily solve many of their own problems.

“An increasing number of users today want, and even expect, to be able to solve their customer service problems themselves,” explained Rick Collins, Next It’s President of Enterprise Business. “They want to be able to find the right information easily and quickly. These expectations are being propelled by the digitally native generation, but certainly not limited to them.”

According to Collins, IVAs have become incredibly adaptable, and they are now in a position where they can fit the unique needs of multiple industries.

“You’d be surprised by how many industries are using IVAs,” he said. “At Next IT, we have customers in travel, finance, government, communications, insurance and more.”

“We are also seeing the goals for implementing an IVA swing from simply call deflection to engaging customers and supporting revenue generation,” he added. “For example, in the travel industry, IVA’s are often used to help passengers book or change reservations. Our customer, Amtrak, recently won an award for their IVA, and has seen 30 percent more revenue when customers book with their IVA, AskJulie.”

The new Alme Engagement APIs

Next It’s new APIs greatly expand the extensibility of its Alme platform, and Collins explained that he expects developers to discover innovative new ways to use the technology.

“A primary impulse to our opening up Next IT’s Alme platform through our new APIs is the anticipation of the innovation that will be spurred with access to our AI technology,” he said. “Developers can now integrate IVAs into their apps, deploy contextualized conversation capabilities, or use AI to surface the right media and information for users across any platform.”

There are four new APIs total, which include tools that will allow developers to take advantage of Alme’s natural language processing technology, giving their IVAs the ability to understand and respond to user input in many different ways.

Collins concluded, “With IoT, wearables, mobile and automobile innovation, IVAs and intelligent interfaces will become essential to helping us interact with massive amounts of data and information no matter the form factor, type, or location of device we’re using.”

Photo by peyri