Datacom, one of Australasia’s leading IT service providers, is proud to announce that ‘Alex’, the Intelligent Assistant implemented for partner IP Australia, has been recognised with an award at the 4th Annual Intelligent Assistant Awards in San Francisco.

Stacey Tomasoni, Director, Datacom Connect, said the award was validation of Datacom’s expertise in customer experience and Intelligent Assistant integration, as well as Datacom’s successful partnership with Australian Government agency IP Australia and technology partner, Nuance.

“We are very pleased that the industry-leading work we have been doing in Intelligent Assistant integration has been recognised internationally,” Stacey said. “We have worked closely with IP Australia on the highly successful implementation of Alex in order to enhance their customer experience offering.”

“While the AI technology is truly innovative, it’s really about how we can expand the customer experience and put the customer first. Through continually refining this approach, the experience Alex provides goes from strength to strength.”

Launched in May 2016, ‘Alex’ engages customers directly on IP Australia’s website and Facebook page, providing answers to questions and continuously learning from customer queries. Datacom worked closely with IP Australia to design the conversation strategy, website and web-chat integration, alongside the core content that underpins Alex’s answers.

As the Australian Government’s first integrated Intelligent Assistant and web-chat digital experience, Alex has had a significant impact on IP Australia’s digital engagement strategy. In 2013, only 12% of the agency’s 800,000 customer interactions a year utilised digital channels and this has grown to its current level of 99.6% digital adoption. To date, Alex has supported over 50,000 customer interactions and assisted in maintaining IP Australia’s customer service satisfaction ratings at over 84%.

Patricia Kelly, Director General of IP Australia, said “Alex was developed as a result of feedback from our customers and as part of our plan to continuously improve our online content. Given the high volume of enquiries and the opportunity for a high volume of IP self-filers, especially in trade marks, a virtual assistant in this area was ideal in assisting them to navigate Australia’s IP system. It’s important that we can as an agency deliver on our customers’ wants and needs.”

Further optimisations to Alex include the introduction of Nuance Nina Coach in July 2017, a first for Asia Pacific. Nina Coach, known to IP Australia as Alex Coach, moves Alex into the next generation of Human-Assisted Virtual Assistants powered by Artificial Intelligence, enabling Alex to seamlessly bring in a customer service representative to assist with tricky questions. This action is recorded, analysed, and folded back into Nina’s semantic brain, making the NLU technology smarter and more accurate over time, so the virtual assistant knows the answer on its own moving forward.

“IP Australia’s Alex is continually evolving to have meaningful conversations with customers, this award is a testament to IP Australia’s commitment to providing the very best in digital customer service. Leveraging human assisted virtual agents, IP Australia can draw upon the most advanced natural language processing and machine learning intelligence available to improve resolution rates with customers even further, while getting smarter and more efficient over time,” said Robert Schwarz, managing director, Nuance, Australia and New Zealand.

“Competition for the Intelligent Assistants Awards was fierce this year,” said Dan Miller, Lead Analyst at Opus Research, originator of the IAA’s. “Datacom’s deployment at IP Australia distinguished itself by demonstrating how a virtual agent can support the broader digital transformation initiatives of one of the most well-respected IP-related government agencies in the world.”

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For more information on the benefits of an Intelligent Assistant, click here


For more information on IP Australia, click here
For more information on Nuance, click here
For more information on Opus Research, click here