IVR, Bots and Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

At a Glance

IVR, Bots and Conversational AI for the contact center

Design using comprehensive out-of-the-box toolkit

IVR, Bots and Conversational AI for the contact center

Transfer freely between live agents, IVR and bots

IVR, Bots and Conversational AI for the contact center

Integrate external services

Automate with IVR, Bots and Conversational AI

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) allows users to create automated applications and connect to external automated services to handle a variety of tasks for voice and text sessions, from the simple and repetitive to the more complex.

Automation allows you to do more with the call center resources you have, making the best use of agents’ time by reserving them for higher value tasks and more personalised service.

With SCC, users can:

All automated applications and integrations can be set up within SCC by non-technical personnel, in a fraction of the time of conventional programming methods, by using Softdial Scripter™, SCC’s fully featured workflow design application.

Comprehensive IVR software toolkit

Scripter offers a comprehensive toolkit for creating IVR call center process flows, or ‘scripts’, from the simple to the complex. With these tools, scripts can:

  • take user input (DTMF or voice)
  • interact with a database or CRM
  • play recorded or Text to Speech output
  • perform session control, e.g. transfer to a live agent
  • record a customer voicemail.

 

By combining these building blocks, IVR scripting can be designed to:

  • block or unblock a customer’s credit card in case of fraud and then send them an SMS to confirm the status change.
  • handle an inbound or outbound call in its entirety (where local regulations permit)
  • validate and route an incoming call to a queue or a blended live agent
  • accept transfers from live agents to handle parts of an inbound or outbound call
  • handle sessions on other media channels such as email and text messaging using SCC’s Text to Speech/ Speech Recognition features.

 

Agent transfer to IVR system

Call center agents can transfer calls to the IVR phone system mid-conversation to take some of the strain of repetitive tasks, or handle a particular process, for example:

  • to present mandatory terms of business and capture an ‘accept’ response
  • to take payment details for PCI compliance where sensitive customer information, e.g. account passwords, must not be revealed to the agent handling the call.

On completion, the IVR application can then pass the call back to the original agent.

Designing IVR flow

IVR logic flows can be designed using the drag-and-drop tool within Softdial Scripter™. To create a flow (script), the user simply drags appropriate logic blocks, or ‘steps’, onto the design area and connects them together.

The diagram is an IVR call center script example, using a few standard steps from over 50 provided.

This example script can be assembled and tested in 15 to 20 mins by a relatively inexperienced user.

Sample IVR Script designed in Softdial Scripter™

When activated, this script will:

  1. Play an introductory greeting to the caller, requesting them to enter an account number
  2. Capture the account number and save it to a script variable field, or exit on fail
  3. Perform a database lookup based on the account number captured
  4. If lookup fails, play a prompt requesting the user to re-enter the account number
  5. If successful, re-queue the call to a live agent, attaching the account data to the session
  6. End the IVR call transaction for the IVR application.

 

Complete solution for bots

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) provides a complete solution for bots for any type of text media – chat, SMS, email, WhatsApp, etc.

There are two main types of text bot:

  1. rules-based – can only respond to very specific commands. If the customer doesn’t use recognised commands or words, the bot doesn’t understand and cannot respond
  2. AI-powered – uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide the best response.

Both kinds of bots are supported by SCC, and depending on the complexity involved, can be either:

  • entirely composed within Scripter, or
  • third party products, integrated using Scripter.

 

Creating a text bot script

With Scripter, users can design text bots to handle a wide variety of customer service activities, e.g. delivery confirmations, health centre enquiries, product maintenance requests and information, timetable requests.

Scripter enables access to any external system or information source, to collect data to help make decisions and improve the bot dialog.

The image shows an example of a simple Weather Bot script.

When activated, this script:

  1. asks the customer for their nearest town
  2. executes a custom step to retrieve current weather from openweathermap.org
  3. advises the customer of weather status, description and temperature.

To help understand customer intention, Scripter contains a Text Processing Library, including a Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine.

Read more about Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Bots.

An example of a simple Weather Bot script

A simple Weather Bot script

Integrating external bot and conversational AI services

Scripter users are not limited to what the tool itself provides. To take the customer conversation as far as it can go without involving an agent, Scripter allows easy integration with external bot and conversational AI engines.

In this case, Scripter acts as an intermediary for all text communication between the customer and the external service, for example:

1. customer sends text

2. Scripter passes customer text to the external service for processing

3. the service may respond in a variety of ways, e.g.

  • with a response to pass to the customer
  • with an instruction to Scripter to pass the text communication to a live agent, for instance because the customer requested it, or because the service interprets that otherwise the customer may sign off.

When a session is transferred from a bot or live agent to another live agent, all session history is also made available, removing the need to re-establish who the customer is.

See also this example use case.

Watch Sytel’s Pre-Sales Manager, Patrick Bosworth, talk about using SCC’s automated services and how to integrate with 3rd party applications.
Softdial Contact Center™ version 11 - Bot and AI Support

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What We Offer

Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) - multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.

Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.

All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.

Flexible Contact Center Software

Softdial Contact Center™ - rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale
  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

    CCaaS for subscribers - global service​, with no upfront costs

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

  • Contact Center Platform – Enterprise

    High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid

Blended Media Desktop

Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace

Work Anywhere

Browser-based tools, no software installation required

Customise, Localise, White Label

Design all user interfaces to individual requirements

Integration via APIs

‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps

World Class Development

Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries

Capabilities

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.

All Media Channels

Voice, chat, email, social, etc - fully integrated and blended

Agent Multi-Tasking

Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel

Dynamic Workforce Management

Automated, ‘best available’ decisions to manage agents and balance work load, across all media channels

Predictive Dialing

Best-of-breed performance under compliance

Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and 'best-available' decisions to drive great customer service

Agent Scripts

Help agents achieve and maintain excellence

Voice and Screen Recording

See and hear exactly how agents are interacting

Analytics and Data Feeds

Measure and evaluate performance at every level

IVR, Bots & Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

Customer Journey Tracking

Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations

Modules

Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance

Softdial One™

Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators

Softdial Scripter™

Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications

Sytel AI Dialer™

Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules

Softdial Pathfinder™

Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection

Softdial Media Server™

Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls

Softdial Reporter™ 5

Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels

Softdial Publisher™

Comprehensive data output to build your own reports

Softdial Recording Monitor™

Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards

Softdial Campaign Manager™

Automation to optimise any outreach strategy

Softdial Repository™

Central storage and configuration of common resources

Sytel Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer

Solutions

Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications

By Business Type

Enterprise

A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale

Small/ Medium Business

Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves

By Industry

Customer Service

Connect quickly to well equipped agents

Market Research

Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration

Debt Collection

Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app

Sales & Telemarketing

Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing

Healthcare

Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care