21/07-11   -   Press releases

Tool calculating savings through application of virtual agent in a customer contact centre welcomed by Chatbots.org

Chatbots.org, leading chatbot business and research community, has praised an innovative chatbot business case calculator developed by Daden Limited, which helps organisations to understand potential savings generated by chatbot use.

A chatbot is an artificial intelligence computer application that can act as a first line of support, providing instant responses to questions without the need for staff intervention, reducing pressure on resources. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they can collect information, provide links to pages and answer queries using natural language conversation, allowing human staff to focus on more complex inquiries.

Research has shown that the average cost-per-contact using a virtual agent instead of a human contact centre agent is under €0.68, compared to over €3.98 for live text-chat or over €4.54 for a telephone contact – an almost 84% reduction in costs. Clients often want to know what the actual benefits and savings would be for their own business, however, before committing.

David Burden, Daden’s MD, said of the new chatbot tool, “We developed the calculator to let businesses rapidly see what the costs would be for a chatbot within their business, and what the potential savings would be by diverting calls that would otherwise be handled by the contact centre – whether as voice calls or live chat."

The chatbot business case calculator allows users to enter a number of different parameters about their business and the chatbot, from the number of staff currently handling inquiries and the number of FAQ to be handled, to the amount of authoring and testing the client wishes to undertake themselves. The calculator also captures the level of integration needed into back-end systems, so that the chatbot can provide answers from existing sources such as RSS feeds, web services or corporate applications and databases.

David ends by saying, “With organisations such as CCM Benchmark predicting that virtual agent implementations will be a ‘critical component in customer services and even the main point of contact in 2014’, our aim is to help companies use virtual agents to improve their services and reduce their costs. We believe that the chatbot business calculator will help companies to quickly work out not only the typical costs involved in a chatbot project, but also see the potential savings that can result within their organisation."

Chatbots.org is an industry catalyst (IC), a business and research community, representing the chat bot industry and actively pushing progress in the field. With roots going back to 2004, officially founded in 2008, Chatbots.org serves to confirm beliefs that the virtual assistant industry is really taking off.

The community is very pleased with having tools like the Chatbot Business Case Calculator available, says futurist Erwin Van Lun, CEO & Founder of Chatbots.org. All predictions so far indicate a steep rise in adoption of this technology and these calculations will remove emotional barriers for potential buyers.

Van Lun adds, “We are entering a new phase of chatbot adoption. After years of chat bot experience, we can now prove that all organizations can save significantly on customer contact while prevailing, or even improving, the customer contact quality by using virtual agent technology."

The chatbot business case calculator is accessible through the Daden website. More information about chatbots is also available via the Chatbots.org website at:
http://www.chatbots.org/chatbot

About Chatbots.org
Chatbots.org is the leading business & research community working on humanlike conversation artificial intelligence, such as virtual assistants, virtual agents, virtual humans, chat bots and avatars. With more than 11,000 members it helps to advance the industry for all involved with virtual humans.

To register today, please visit:
www.chatbots.org

For media contact, please contact:
Erwin Van Lun, CEO & founder
Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel: +31 621 567 657
Sydney, Australia Tel: +61 28007 4744
Email: erwinvl(AT)chatbots.org
Blackthorn House
Northminster Business Park
York, YO26 6QW
United Kingdom

About Daden
Daden Limited specialise in built environment visualisations, immersive training and learning systems, visual analytics, creating interactive virtual personalities (chatbots) and web and real world integration. Working in OpenSim, Second Life and other virtual worlds, Daden offer consulting advice, design and build services. Their virtual world and chatbot based solutions help organisations enhance and improve their business. Clients range from the private sector to central and local government, education, public safety, health and care within the UK and abroad.

For more information about Daden, or to view the Chatbot Business Case Calculator, please visit:
http://www.daden.co.uk