artificial intelligence platform - stefanini.com · artificial intelligence technologies (ai). this...

ARTIFICIALINTELLIGENCE

PLATFORMVIRTUAL ASSISTANTS

One of the trends in these environments is the use of artificial intelligence technologies (AI). This technology uses computational tools with the ability to solve problems in a similar way that humans do. AI, along with cognitive computing, enables automated machines to recognize sensory patterns and behaviors while learning to operate like humans.

Artificial Intelligence is a very broad field, growing on a daily basis with hype curve at a peak currently. AI is concerned with a broad field of science encompassing not only computer science but also psychology, philosophy, linguistics and other areas including getting computers to act and do tasks that would normally require human intelligence. We view this phenomenon as humans and smart machines working together, to improve everyday lives.

The history of AI is short, not even a century old, but there have been revolutions within a decade, maybe

less. Since the beginning, there were two major approaches to AI: connectionists or symbolists, quantitative or qualitative, brain or mind. And although we haven’t been able to find the final relation between the brain and the mind, AI seems to be helping us achieve that, at least in artificial models.

According to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military), there will be three waves of AI. In the past, we have had symbolic AIs with handcrafted knowledge. Today, we can see the flowering of the second wave: statistical learning, mainly powered by deep neural networks. We have already seen its great successes, and recently we have become increasingly aware of its limitations. The third wave should be the contextual adaptation.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND COGNITIVE COMPUTING

This paper is part of Stefanini’s strategy to share our view and amplify knowledge on AI technology trends and market transformation. Although Stefanini has a broad portfolio of technology capabilities as part of the Visionary Platform, AI seems to permeate most of the emerging solutions and accelerate at a much more rapid pace. In this white paper, we explain how services are changing, as simple tasks currently conducted by human operators are

gradually becoming automated in order to reduce costs and increase business efficiency. Additionally,

the term “AI” often can be used interchangeably with machine learning, cognitive systems, robotics

and smart machines to represent a self-learning, human-like, decision-making smart computer system.

Sophie

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FIDO.AI, recognized by Gartner as an innovative vendor, reinforces, “both previous waves were strong at some aspects and poor at others. The first wave, handcrafted knowledge, represented strong reasoning and poor learning capabilities, and vice versa in the case of the second wave, in statistical learning. Both ways seem to be very distinct yet very complementary.”

Stefanini has closely monitored this progress in AI technology advancement, investing heavily in the development of a smart platform that enables automation services and a wide range of solutions that addresses business value acceleration. Among Stefanini’s technologies, one highlight is the sophisticated platform Sophie, which is based on artificial intelligence and provided through Stefanini’s innovation company Woopi

Stefanini’s Sophie model for knowledge representation, shown in Figure 1, follows this model, leveraging an amalgamated version of the two approaches and creating a semantic network that allows the concepts to be represented and loaded into the mind using symbolic representation. But it must be related to other concepts and knowledge clusters using the coupled approach, allowing the use of adaptation and learning of those models.

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Figure 1: Sophie’s mind

IVRRecognizes the meaning of spoken input, determines caller intent and routes the call accordingly

Asks the caller questions to clarify ambiguous intent

Handles corrections and verifications by dynamically embedding confirmations in the next prompt for a smooth conversational flow

WEBRecognizes online dialog including user slang, misspellings, acronyms and grammatically incorrect sentences that make up real human conversation

Detects emotions like frustration based on the use of CAPS and punctuation tobetter understand customer needs

Uses appropriate protocol for greetings and farewells, criticisms andcompliments

MOBILESupports human-like spoken or text-based conversations with multi-turn and contextual dialogs

Understands what information is needed to complete a task and prompts for what’s missing

Remembers the context of what users have said and can refine their results without asking them to repeat information

One of the core components of artificial intelligence is the ability to communicate with intelligent systems and humans to tap into the potential of smart systems. Natural language processing and understanding allow users to communicate and simulate human-like communication.

Although Stefanini is investing in several aspects of AI for various solutions and applications, natural language understanding and processing has been a significant focus of the Sophie platform. One of the main objectives of the digital virtual agent Sophie is to become a human-like conversational agent, and the major use of the AI knowledge model is to perform natural language understanding.

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) enables users to interact with intelligent virtual assistants in a conversational manner. Agents built with NLU can tolerate ambiguity and unpredictability, adapt and change the interaction according to context, resulting in higher automation rates and more satisfaction with effortless and personalized customer experiences.

At Stefanini, we believe that NLU can be used to create ubiquitous customer experiences, allowing interactions in every channel available today, with any device, using text or voice. Some examples of the interaction channels are:

NATURAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING

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VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS

Forward-looking enterprises are responding to this demand by implementing conversational virtual assistants: digital personas that deliver personalized, effortless customer service via a human-like conversational interface. Instead of forcing customers to sort through long lists of search results or navigate complex menus and screens, virtual assistants use natural language understanding (NLU) to engage users via voice or text-based conversational dialog and guide them to successful outcomes. The latest virtual assistants are even multichannel aware, knowing when to connect the customer to the right place or person and sending along the full context of the interaction up to that point for a seamless omnichannel experience.

For example, in customer service, providing personalized service that emulates your best live agent with a conversational virtual assistant serves as the ambassador for your brand, aligned with your content and the reassuring voice of your customer service organization. In addition, providing that same experience through various channels seamlessly

increases satisfaction and convenience. By improving the effectiveness of self-service interactions, a virtual assistant can also reduce inbound call volume to the contact center for bottom-line impact.

Stefanini’s digital virtual assistant Sophie has all those features to make your business more agile in the customer service industry, especially for the new generation of millennial consumers. In today’s digital world, people are constantly connected and leverage mobile devices to get answers rather than pick up the phone to call for customer service. Supporting technologies of the future will allow your organization to gain a competitive advantage and offer a better experience for all customers. Stefanini’s solution has been implemented in various industries including telecom, healthcare, hospitality, retail, e-commerce, IT services, to name a few. While adapting AI-based solutions is becoming more common, the potential remains untapped. We believe that this trend will accelerate rapidly in the next few years as enterprises understand the specific business case and value.

Companies leading the race in their respective industry have discovered the benefit of hiring digital virtual assistants as part of their staff financially as well as in enhancing customer experiences. Additionally, over the past several years, consumers have not only embraced virtual

assistants with conversational interfaces, but they’ve actually come to expect them. So, it’s

not surprising that consumers are now demanding the same kind of

conversational interactions when they engage with businesses through other channels. In fact, 51% of people say that a conversational interface would make it easier to get things done when engaging with a company—no matter whether they use an IVR, website, device or mobile app. For

example, Amazon Alexa and Google Home are being adopted in the consumer market, transforming everyday

lives. It is our belief that a considerable volume of interactions will adapt conversational user experience, UX, and without a traditional

computer screen that users are accustomed to today. This trend will accelerate as more enterprises identify specific benefits and values for

various functions within the organizations and with their customers.

The popularization of social networks and mobile devices has brought more power to consumers. By staying connected almost all the time, customers have made their voices heard and have become more demanding with brands. They want products and services with quality, delivered quickly and at the lowest cost. Additionally, everything has to be available at any time, any location, and through any channel. This same quickness is required when consumers need to talk to customer service centers. When expectations are not met, many turn to Facebook or other forms of social media to voice their complaints and share their experiences with their network of friends.Changes that are occurring in the consumer’s behavior are fueling the digital revolution in business. Many business processes, such as call centers, are becoming automated and are utilizing artificial intelligence tools and cognitive computing to lower costs and increase the speed and efficiency of operations.

The concept of automation is old, having first emerged

during the Industrial Revolution with the standardization of production lines. Since then, the process has evolved with the advancement of technology. Experts now predict that, in the future, automated machines will replace humans, when it comes to performing some tasks. In customer service centers, this revolution took longer to begin because there weren’t machines with the capacity to interact with people according to their various languages. The first step to take in meeting these requirements was to launch Interactive Voice Response Units (IVRs), used by call centers and customer service centers and created to speak with humans simply through the telephone keypad. The system provides some options to the users, and then they select what they want to do during their call.

The IVRs emerged in order to reduce the cost of having a human operator check customer information in the pre-service stage, which comes first in the sequence before humans answer the call. Without this pre-service, the operator would ask for all of the

customer information. This automation reduces the average service time and the cost of operation. By reducing the service time, companies cut costs and gain more agility.

After the IVRs evolved and began to perform more sophisticated operations, the next step was to offer self-service, such as online services provided by the web through virtual assistants. For example, today a bank customer can sign up for a credit card using the internet and without leaving their home.

After the web, it was time for mobile applications to arrive, automating an infinite number of tasks that were previously performed by physical agents. For example, certain apps exist that allow users to schedule vacations without traditional travel agencies, purchase airline tickets, book hotels, request taxis and a range of other services wherever they are—simply by using their smartphone or tablet.

For many of these operations, there are automation tools that can replace the human agent, especially when it comes to repetitive tasks or script-based functions, which use a standard script to perform the service. Previously, if a customer wanted to buy an airline ticket, for example, the travel agent had to sign into the airline's website, choose the day, schedule options, and then relay all of this information to the customers.

Nowadays, the consumer can do this without the help of a travel agent and pay for the airline ticket with their own credit card through the mobile application. Many times, human agents are only accessible if there is a problem.

AUTOMATIONUsing automation and virtual assistants adds significant speed to business operations.

Artificial intelligence systems can be used in various applications to automate repetitive tasks that are currently being performed by human beings. One of the services that has experienced benefits from this technology for some time now is the call center, with the substitution of virtual stations for physical agents.

Contact centers and customer service centers will gain huge advantages in efficiency with automation and augmentation of human labor.

Today, the majority of in-person and online customer service interactions are carried out through self-service applications. Specialists confirm that the trend is for this technology to increase in usage. They argue that about 50% of call centers operate with agents looking at a computer screen. They talk with a client on the other end of the line, performing repetitive jobs. Certain interactions, like when consumers call only to ask about their credit limit or the delivery date of a purchased item on the web, can be automated. Specialized studies show that artificial intelligence systems will create a big impact in the job market. Humans will stop performing many roles. There is a discussion as to how much automation may threaten jobs. However, the Future Today Institute says in its analysis that automated machines will complement human tasks. Many people will be relocated to take on more strategic roles for their businesses.

Gartner analysts confirm that the idea is not for intelligent machines to replace people, as human agents will always be necessary. For example, people still need to operate ships, and they are critical in interpreting digital results. Gartner explains that the purpose of using automation and virtual assistants is to avoid inefficiency and increase the speed of business operations. The research institute acknowledges that the consumer’s preference for using internet and mobile services will boost commercial efficiency and optimize time management. This need puts pressure on industries to improve relationships with their clients through simplifying and automating. Keeping this in mind, many companies are trying to minimize manual interventions during processes so that they are more intelligent and allow consumers to help themselves.

The consumer preference for using internet and mobile services will boost commercial efficiency and optimize time management.

STEFANINI’S SOLUTIONDesigned with artificial intelligence algorithms, Sophie has replaced human service based on scripts for automation.

The objectives of implementing automation technologies in customer service and call center services are to yield more operational efficiency, increase the speed of performing tasks, reduce errors, and improve metrics. All of these are essential in increasing competitiveness between businesses.

The artificial intelligence platform Sophie reduces costs by providing training, lowering turnover, organizing knowledge bases, and managing human resources.

Stefanini can help your company automate processes with a wide variety of solutions, such as call center portals, mobile apps, and cognitive systems developed internally. These are technologies that can be integrated with partner tools and are provided according to your company’s specific needs. The offers can be purchased or outsourced with Stefanini.

With a design based on a set of artificial intelligence 3rd wave algorithms, the purpose of Sophie is to replace human, script-based services with highly sophisticated tools that interact with the user while understanding their needs.

MARKET

These vehicles are expected to be launched in 2020, causing a revolution in both transport models: individual and collective. Studies from Future Today Institute show that around 2047, there will be a totally different automotive and transportation market.

In IT services, this trend is no exception. The research firm IDC indicates that new technologies for automation will drive the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry and robotics. IDC also predicted that by 2018, about 50% of all applications developed in the global market will incorporate some artificial intelligence tools, driven by the demand for automated machines. This trend is proving true today in the IT digital workplace. The consultancy estimates that in 2020, U.S. companies will achieve savings of $60 billion by reducing costs and increasing efficiency in workflows through virtual agents.

Scenarios like these will likely make almost every major technology company examine this new trend and invest in technologies based on artificial intelligence and cognitive tools. One current example is IBM, which has made significant investments in order to create the supercomputer Watson for processing large volumes of information; it currently

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operates in various segments of the economy, such as in the healthcare, manufacturing, and industrial sectors, for diagnostics and big data analysis. Additionally, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and other industry giants are also investing significantly and developing in this area.

Using cognitive and artificial intelligence technologies provides advantages in automating various tasks, as opposed to having only humans perform this work. One significant advantage is that machines are able to process large volumes of information in a short amount of time. However, automated machines can’t make critical decisions. But they have infinite memory and can technically remember, for example, the technical characteristics of all the products sold by the online retailer Amazon.

According to McKinsey, companies face a difficult task when deciding which opportunities to pursue, among the hundreds available, but they can narrow their options through a structured approach. The first step involves picking an industry focus. It’s true that a company’s expertise and capabilities will influence this decision, but players should also consider industry characteristics, including the sector’s size.












Artificial intelligence technologies and cognitive computing are gaining more traction in the market, with the widespread popularity of mobile devices and the advancement of the Internet of Things and accelerated digital transformation. Take the automotive industry, for example, as it produces autonomous cars equipped with such highly skilled automated machines that eliminate the need for a driver.










The potential for disruption within an industry is also important, which McKinsey estimates by looking at the number of AI use cases, startup equity funding, and the total economic impact of AI—defined as the extent to which solutions reduced costs, increased productivity, or otherwise benefited the bottom line in a retrospective analysis of various applications. As McKinsey identified, the greater the economic benefit, the more likely that customers will engage projects for an AI solution. Figure 2 shows the data McKinsey compiled for 17 industries for these AI-related metrics.





















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Figure 2: McKinsey compilation of AI metrics by industry

VISIONARY PLATFORM



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Stefanini’s Visionary Platform





















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Figure 3: Sophie at the center of Stefanini’s Visionary Platform

Sophie is an innovative technology that standardizes the processing of mechanical skills. By transferring certain tasks to Sophie, physical agents will be available to focus on the interactions that require critical and strategic decision-making for the company’s business.

In addition to reducing call center positions, Sophie reduces costs by providing training, lowering turnover, organizing knowledge bases, and managing human resources, which increase Service Level

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Agreements (SLA). These are benefits that make a large impact on the competitiveness of the business.

Launched in the market in 2014, the artificial intelligence platform Sophie has the capability to process an unprecedented quantity of data and interpretation. At the moment, Sophie’s mind has almost 3 million concepts and relations, and she is able to learn on her own, becoming more precise with every interaction.Through the platform, Stefanini has increased its efficiency in business customer service call centers










and IT operation for all of its clients. This is the result of investment in the first set of technologies developed in the company’s laboratories, and many more are in development. Intended for use in retail, finance, telecommunications, and health, Sophie is integrated with next-generation technologies and was developed in-house as well as with international

partners like Nuance, a world leader in voice processing. Sophie’s capabilities continue to be enhanced by the R&D team and with new, emerging technologies and capabilities at Stefanini’s research and development laboratory globally. The focus of this work has been to bring competitive advantages to our customer base and unique differentiators to the virtual assistant market.

VOICE

CSIANALYSIS

CHAT

TEXT

WEB

SOCIAL

GENERATORSSYSTEM

TECHNICIAN

WORKFLOW

PROCESS

KNOWLEDGE

ESCALATE/TRANSFER

VISIONARY PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT DATA DRIVEN DECISION MAKING

MEDIA INPUTS

OUTPUT DESTINATION

Sophie

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- Multilingual platform

- Capable of comprehending complex contexts

- Able to understand synonyms, typing errors, verb tenses, and common expressions

- Editorial tool that allows editors or business analysts to create new contexts without the need for programmers

SEVERAL HIGHLIGHTS ARE:












Sophie is an innovative technology that standardizes the processing of mechanical skills. By transferring certain tasks to Sophie, physical agents will be available to focus on the interactions that require critical and strategic decision-making for the company’s business.

In addition to reducing call center positions, Sophie reduces costs by providing training, lowering turnover, organizing knowledge bases, and managing human resources, which increase Service Level

Agreements (SLA). These are benefits that make a large impact on the competitiveness of the business.

Launched in the market in 2014, the artificial intelligence platform Sophie has the capability to process an unprecedented quantity of data and interpretation. At the moment, Sophie’s mind has almost 3 million concepts and relations, and she is able to learn on her own, becoming more precise with every interaction.Through the platform, Stefanini has increased its efficiency in business customer service call centers

- Works in cloud, on-premise, or hybrid

- Integration with various call center ticket tools, allowing opening, closing, and accounting for the process without any human intervention

- Multichannel operation and integration with web channels, mobile and social media, such as Facebook and Messenger

- Completely customizable interface










and IT operation for all of its clients. This is the result of investment in the first set of technologies developed in the company’s laboratories, and many more are in development. Intended for use in retail, finance, telecommunications, and health, Sophie is integrated with next-generation technologies and was developed in-house as well as with international

partners like Nuance, a world leader in voice processing. Sophie’s capabilities continue to be enhanced by the R&D team and with new, emerging technologies and capabilities at Stefanini’s research and development laboratory globally. The focus of this work has been to bring competitive advantages to our customer base and unique differentiators to the virtual assistant market.

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LESSONS LEARNED IN IMPLEMENTING AI












While AI brings very attractive benefits to enterprises and can bring a robust value proposition augmenting human labor, thinking about where to start can be a daunting task. In this digital transformation era, enterprises can’t afford not to think about ways to explore the potential of AI technologies and what it means to their business. Contrary to popular belief, today the reach of AI technology extends beyond tech companies to automotive, entertainment, healthcare, and others, where they are deploying AI to optimize operations and create new net revenue as well as new business models. To accomplish desired business goals and see results, enterprises need to leverage lessons from leading-edge enterprises that have adapted AI technologies in the early stage and have been successful.

SELECT OPPORTUNITIES AND USE CASES THAT ARE SPECIFIC TO YOUR BUSINESS. Identifying and selecting the specific business use that is applicable to AI is critical. This has a consequential and far-reaching impact, as the AI field is vast, and having a good handle on the categories, use cases, and the AI technology selected can potentially set up your journey with the correct foundational elements. In addition, identifying the ROI of the AI solution and balancing the outcome with investments is an exercise that should be considered up front.

START SMALL.As enterprises identify use cases and AI platforms, it is important that they look at prototyping and building POCs with some definite measurable results in a small, controllable, phased method. Making a decision to do a big-bang approach is risky, and it may be difficult to reverse the course after substantial investment.

AI SYSTEMS ARE NOT PLUG-AND-PLAY.While the right AI solutions will be great accelerators for the digital transformation journey of implementing AI, careful planning is needed to ensure success. AI is not something that enterprises can buy off the shelf but a solution that has to be incorporated into a digital transformation journey. AI solutions need to be trained, and appropriate data structures must be built. Although various learning models exist, they need to be instructed to ramp up knowledge and expertise. It is critical the learning is geared toward the context of the business, discipline, or vertical to build the digital expert knowledge worker with human decision-making ability. Sustainable AI solutions need to be trained initially and improved over time to guarantee increased accuracy, value, and effectiveness over a long period of time.

DATA IS KING.Al systems thrive on data, whether structured or unstructured. Identifying relevant data and data sources, as well as having clean data, ensures training AI solutions are effective and help with the self-learning process. As the old saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out” is even more momentous for AI-based solutions. Having quality data for digital knowledge workers to make them smarter will allow them to act and respond with human-like thinking and decision making.










A FINAL WORD The battleground of artificial intelligence in conversational platforms, and the most visible result, is the exponential growth of new solutions and virtual assistants in the market today. There was a shift in the tectonic plates (core foundation) of business and IT services at the turn of this century with the offshore wave (labor arbitrage). We are now in the midst of the next big tectonic shift via automation arbitrage, a term Gartner is using to describe the recalibration of human labor to drive business outcomes. The disruption of artificial intelligence and related technologies (RPA, chatbots, machine learning, and cognitive) is here, and more is on the way. The pressure for change is increasing from various directions. Enterprises are taking notice and starting to consider approaches to digital transformation, taking into account AI technologies and solutions. This trend will accelerate as enterprises look to radically improve operations, drive efficiencies, deliver better customer experiences, and create new net revenue producing business models.

Stefanini is not a new player in this battlefield: understanding this trend has allowed us to start investing early (since 2012) in cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, and intelligent automation solutions while positioning Stefanini uniquely in the market. The maturity of these solutions and experience has positioned Stefanini to find customer partners that provide guidance and assist with digital transformation consulting and implementation to drive business value. Stefanini will continue to invest, lead, and remain agile as technology continues to disrupt the market and industry. Headquarters

North America - Southfield, MI, USAT 800-522-4451 | 248-357-2866Global - Sao Paulo, BrazilT +55 11 3039-2000EMEA - Brussels, BelgiumT +32 2 620 20 20

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