Auckland, New Zealand: IBM artificial intelligence partner SPACETIME today announced the release of a new “plug and play” avatar-based virtual assistant (chatbot). Powered by IBM is world-leading Watson artificial intelligence, the solution allows customers to select an avatar of their choice, ranging from simple animated cartoon characters right through to hyper-realistic digital humans. The company says avatars make chatbots far more engaging and helps companies represent their brand to customers better.

SPACETIME says its Intelligent Avatars can be easily embedded on a customer’s web page and interact with existing content or even retrofitted to existing text-based chatbots. They can also seamlessly integrate with CRM and ERP systems for highly personalised customer experiences like product recommendations or order histories. To further enhance the customer experience, the avatars use machine learning to respond to user emotions and sentiment dynamically. This emotional responsiveness provides a much richer and authentic experience than using text-based chatbots.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Lorn Davis, VP of Corporate and Product Strategy at Facteus

According to Gartner, self-service is becoming the norm as customers increasingly expect an effortless experience. Organisations are turning to voice and other AI-powered technologies to give customers what they want and achieve higher operational efficiency. The trend of customers assigning their endless digital activities to virtual assistants, chatbots and other self-service tools will grow over the next ten years.

The SPACETIME Intelligent Avatar solution is available now for around the same price as a typical text-based chatbot.

SPACETIME was founded in 2017 to help New Zealand businesses and government apply AI technologies for improved products, services and experiences. We take a design thinking approach to create innovative solutions that combine user needs with business objectives. These solutions, such as intelligent virtual agents, document OCR, and natural language search, allow businesses to automate and scale processes, ultimately saving money and providing better team and customer experiences.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Maggie Lower, Chief Marketing Officer at Hootsuite