Random Access Navigation Standard Creates Personal Connections through Appointments with Facebook, Google, Amazon and More

TimeTrade, the leader in omnichannel intelligent appointment scheduling, announced its partnership with Assist, the leading automated assistant platform for messaging and voice, to give consumers new ways to engage with their favorite brands.

Assist developed a standard with Facebook, Amazon, and Google called Random Access Navigation (RAN), a new approach for building automated experiences for messaging and voice. Assist has now included standard support for the TimeTrade API available today to all customers.

TimeTrade and Assist have several mutual customers who have seen dramatically increased conversion rates – 10 percent and higher – versus any other channel to book in-store makeover appointments. The conversational interface makes the booking experience easy and instantaneous, with one click to book an appointment.

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TimeTrade’s partnership with Assist is the most recent development in its ongoing Connect Effect Partnership Program, a new initiative designed to optimize intelligent customer engagement through working with companies such as Google, Salesforce, IBM, and Microsoft to broaden the reach of TimeTrade’s industry-leading Appointments-as-a-Service platform.

The TimeTrade-Assist integration pairs TimeTrade’s intelligent appointment scheduling solution with Assist’s automated assistant platform providing connections to multiple platforms. These include the Facebook AI bot for retail and other customers, and offer capabilities for Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and soon Apple Business Chat (iMessage) interfaces.

“In the past, we’ve seen customers try out ‘bots’ – but without much success. With Assist, we’re seeing our customers succeed in the real world, and we’re excited to bring the benefits of intelligent appointment scheduling to Assist. With a focus on the use case for messaging and voice, and by applying NLP, machine learning, and a new way to think about messaging, this will truly save people time and make their lives simpler and better by helping them quickly and easily engage with one another. Combining TimeTrade’s intelligent appointment scheduling with Assist’s automated assistant platform will make it easy for customers to use bots to schedule live interactions at their convenience,” said Gary Ambrosino, CEO, TimeTrade.

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“We believe RAN offers more than one solution for the most common bot criticism: fixed decision trees. Partnering with the TimeTrade intelligent appointment scheduling solution enhances bots’ ability to deliver on their promise by giving people the ability to navigate in a way that lets them make real-time decisions according to their changing preferences,” said Shane Mac, CEO, Assist. “”

“The Assist integration is another example of our Connect Effect companies using TimeTrade’s intelligent appointment scheduling solution as an indispensable tool in helping them optimize intelligent customer engagement through all channels, now including automated assistants. We look forward to working with Assist to extend the impact of intelligent appointment scheduling,” said Ambrosino.

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