Amazon Alexa for Business vs. Verint Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA)

Virtual assistants at work are still new features and have a lot to improve. 
The more features we have, the more we want new features. 
In small environments we have "noise" between virtual assistants, making use inappropriate. 
But in more distributed environments it is very good.
We still have a lot to learn (both, us and our Alexas). 

The IVA is very well suited to handle routine questions and basic actions that would typically require customer support. It may be a little more challenged handling edge cases but in those instances we have found it provides an easy transfer to a live agent

Incentivized

• Communication between people on the team.
• Interactive personal assistant.
• Better workspace management.

• Use of Acknowledgment base and AI engines.
• F&Q.
• Automate process such as consults, modifications and cancel reservations.
• Execute triggers for notify customer reservations.

Incentivized

• Could have a feature for group chats.
• Alexa has some problems hearing nearby voices.
• Website suggestions are irrelevant sometimes (should have user evaluation functionality for the answer, improving accuracy).

• There is minimal documentation around what we can and can't do for IVA
• IVA seems to be a newer product so this is difficult when trying to implement new things
• IVA has a lot of non-Verint friendly terms (Think Prompt, vs. answer or Intent/Alternate vs. context).

Incentivized

While I enjoy the IVA product, there is still some fine-tuning of the platform that can be done. There are some nuances to the Verint platform, which can make it difficult to start quickly. We thought business users would be able to easily manage the work needed within the IVA platform for our business; however, with how complex we want to make the experience, that was not possible. We quickly realized we needed more support than just our business users, who were not familiar with how to add API information into a conversation flow. This is why we expanded to others within our business to support the tool.

Incentivized

It is well suited for employees with technical experience

Incentivized

We looked at two other alternatives: Google Nest and Apple. But Alexa already has popular devices that many people on the team already had in their homes. And it would be easier to integrate into the professional environment. The cost of Amazon products is also much lower, which makes the product more competitive.

Verint Intelligent Virtual Assistant had more features and functionality than the Genesys product as well as customization and further options for internal system integration to our existing on-prem systems. In addition, we also had a rapport with other Verint products and were more familiar with their AI capabilities, making them the obvious choice.

Incentivized

• Difficulties with technology integration.
• Identify all possible uses.
• We still lost a lot of time making new settings.

• Human agent hours operations
• More interactions will be attended by AI agents
• Reducing human agent licensing costs
• Attending more interaction in less time

Incentivized