Virtual Agent: Definition, Benefits, and Use Cases (2024)

Virtual agents work as customer service representatives, personal assistants, and more.

Let’s take a look at the common types of virtual agents:

Virtual voice agents assist your customers by interacting with human-like speech. Think of popular voice assistants such as Siri or Alexa. A virtual voice agent can handle customer calls in place of a contact center agent.

They can even be used to make outbound calls for things like payment notifications or appointment reminders.

A virtual voice agent simply asks the caller, “What can I help you with today?”.

Thanks to natural language understanding (NLU), virtual agents interpret speech and find solutions. If a call seems too complex, the virtual agent will rightly escalate the call to a human representative.

Intelligent IVR agents do much more than traditional interactive voice response. They take incoming calls and route them to the quickest solution. Callers get to avoid the monotony of listening to recorded menu messages and pressing buttons to make a selection.

Intelligent IVR doesn’t necessarily have the chops of a virtual voice agent. However, it still improves customer service. Customers also get faster call routing since they can simply state what problem they want to solve or what department they want to connect with.

An end-to-end virtual voice agent solution is one in which the vendor provides full service. They handle implementation, onboarding, monitoring, maintenance, and other processes. You work with the service provider to integrate virtual voice agents into whatever systems and business tools you desire.

For example, you could integrate virtual agents into payroll and other HR components. Employees who have questions about pay or benefits can get human-like answers 24/7.

Integrated virtual agents are built-in to enterprise tools such as cloud contact center solutions. Many of these virtual agents offer powerful capabilities that far exceed one-size-fits-all offerings. These AI-powered agents are bespoke for the apps you use.

For example, RingCX’s no-code virtual agents powered by Google Dialogflow allow companies to create voice and digital channel bots that deliver comprehensive customer support 24/7.

These virtual agents are able to handle routine customer questions, freeing up time for your team to answer more complex queries.

Virtual agents make it simple for your customers to get answers to questions. However, there’s little that’s straightforward about the technology behind them.

Machine learning enables large language models (LLMs) and other cutting-edge technologies to evolve.

Decades of AI development and huge advancements in NLP have narrowed the boundary between humans and machines.

Don’t worry about virtual agents taking over just yet. There are plenty of lackluster options out there. Others are chatbots or IVRs masquerading as virtual agents.

For these AI embodiments to work properly, they must be fed huge volumes of data and be built for purpose. If you want virtual omnichannel customer support agents, then you need a fully integrated platform like RingCX.

NLU is the technology that powers the ability of virtual agents to understand what customers and team members are saying.

A natural language understanding model gathers data and improves over time as long as the training data is high quality. Poor-quality training data can prove to be just as problematic as a limited amount of training data.

Virtual agents use conversational AI to convey understanding and useful information to users. Whether it's your customers or your team members, AI provides human-like responses with audible speech.

RingSense AI is available across the RingCentral platform, improves customer experiences and unlocks customer insights. It also provides AI-powered coaching tips that help your team deliver consistent, successful pitches, boosting your win rate.

Not all human voice communication is based on the words we speak. Live sentiment analysis is a must for virtual agents to dig deeper and understand the true meaning and motivation of each speaker.

For example, the phrase “that sounds okay.” could mean the customer is happy, content, or disappointed. It depends on the inflection of their voice and the context surrounding the response. Effective virtual agents can parse these details and make inferences.

Sentiment analysis provided by RingCentral enables users to detect the tone of conversations and identify any opportunities or issues and respond accordingly.

Virtual agents can be set up to take care of tasks such as payment processing or call summaries. Task automation saves your team time by deflecting calls from live agents and offering customers rapid service.

RingSense AI’s conversation intelligence reduces after-call work by up to 20% with post-call transcriptions and real-time AI summaries that enable agents to follow up on tasks more effectively.

You want a virtual agent that can meet your customers on multiple channels, including live chat and phone calls. Such agents require the ability to read and write in human-like language. Omnichannel virtual agents help relieve your support reps and meet your customers on their preferred channels.

Platforms like RingCentral also enable your team to work from a single pane of glass when deploying, implementing, and interacting with virtual agents, improving their effectiveness.

Many virtual agent solutions can integrate with other tools in your tech stack. Connecting to business applications allows the AI to gather and analyze data that helps you gain new insights. Additionally, virtual agent integrations can improve performance and productivity.

For example, you can integrate RingCentral with your CRM or ticketing system. Once the data is connected, our AI-powered virtual agent accesses customer records. The agent uses this information to handle calls more efficiently, providing 24/7 customer support.

All of these can be answered by a virtual agent in real time. Conversational AI allows the responses to feel more natural. This means that routine queries no longer require one of your team to write an email response or engage in a lengthy phone conversation.

Instead, they’re resolved through the virtual agent. Customers go away happy, and employees have more time to deal with in-depth questions.

Just like customer service, an IT helpdesk will have to deal with lots of routine requests. Password resets, software updates, and basic troubleshooting can all be handled through messaging a virtual agent.

Even for more complicated questions, a basic chatbot or AI-powered agent can take details and create a ticket. Once again, this improves customer satisfaction due to fast responses and frees up your IT staff from having to work on these mundane tasks.