In response to COVID-19, Google Cloud announced last week that it had launched a new rapid-deploy chatbot for organizations dealing with an influx of around the clock queries. As COVID-19 continues to spread across the planet, citizens have turned to governments, healthcare providers, and other businesses with questions about their health and wellness. These individuals also crave accurate information about their finances, leading to an unprecedented demand that’s put a strain on customer support resources.
“Many organizations have told us that they’re struggling to respond to customers effectively during this critical time,” Google Cloud wrote in a recent blog post. Google’s new rapid-response chatbot is a bot with a mission of helping companies of all sizes “Quickly scale customer service response with the help of artificial intelligence,” a spokesperson shared with UC Today.
Google Cloud’s spokesperson said its rapid-response virtual agent will give businesses and public health organizations the ability to provide 24/7 conversational support. The chatbot solution is currently available across voice, chat, as well as social channels in the 23 languages DialogFlow supports including English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Japanese.
To ensure swift deployment, Google Cloud said it’s working with contact center providers 8×8, Avaya, Cisco, Five9, Genesys, Mitel, Twilio, and Vonage. The mega-brand is even working with system integrators Accenture, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Infosys, and others to support a variety of end-users.
Google Cloud’s new bot was built with the help of Contact Center AI and lets businesses deploy automatic responses to common questions. “Enterprises can even provide the latest guidance from public health bodies like the World Health Organization,” Google’s spokesperson told me.
And some organizations are already taking advantage of Google Cloud’s new virtual agent. Secretary, Digital Transformation and Administration, Oklahoma State University of Pennsylvania, David Ostrowe, said the University found the deployment process to be simple, and a collaborative effort from concept to launch, adding:
“We’ve seen a lot of people looking for an authoritative source for information, and the fact that we can now scale up to meet this demand helps us disseminate accurate information more quickly to fight the spread of COVID-19”
Available for chat and voice, Google Cloud’s new virtual agent further integrates with Dialogflow Messenger, a solution that extends a customizable chat dialog for agents that can be embedded in a company’s website to greet customers upon landing on the site.
Verily, in conjunction with Google Cloud, launched the Pathfinder virtual agent template for health systems and hospitals. It lets you create chat or voice bots that answer questions about COVID-19 symptoms and provide the latest guidance from public health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian, said this is all to help the businesses and organizations most impacted by the novel coronavirus pandemic, adding, “Our goal is to help people stay safe, informed, and connected during these extraordinary times.” Virtual agents are likely to see an increase in usage during the COVID-19 period, and tracking that usage will be key to understanding how to best deploy virtual agents in the future.
