Pegasystems launched a Bot that Turns Apps into Smart Chat Assistants

Pega makes bots smarter and more intuitive to use while enabling a continuous experience from channel to channel.

Pegasystems Inc.’s global survey on Artificial Intelligence(AI) revealed that 20% of consumers prefer chat-based customer service, while 80% still want a live human typing on the other end.

Pegasystems is the software company empowering customer engagement at the world’s leading enterprises.  The company stated that the current chatbots and virtual assistants don’t provide the human-like experiences they’ve been promised to deliver. Responding to this industry need, Pegasystems launched Pega® Intelligent Virtual Assistant, an AI-powered bot that aims to extend any Pega enterprise application to any conversational interface.

The bot easily turns applications into smart assistants on any channel – from SMS and email to Facebook, Alexa, and Slack. Pega comes preconfigured to extend to Facebook Messenger, Alexa, and Google Home. Extenders can be built to other popular messaging apps such as WeChat and Skype, as well as business collaboration apps such as Slack and Yammer. The bots can be tested with an integrated simulator before it goes live, to ensure it responses just as intended.

“Pega makes bots smarter and more intuitive to use while enabling a continuous experience from channel to channel. We believe this model serves as a new roadmap for the future of bots and how organizations will interact with customers and employees,” commented Don Schuerman, CTO and Vice President, Product Marketing, Pegasystems.

Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Complex Data Analysis

• A banking bot alerts a customer checking her balance on Alexa to a suspicious charge, opens a charge dispute, and orders her a new card – all in the same session using natural language.
• For a mobile service provider, a bot helps subscribers on Facebook Messenger understand why they went over their data limit and suggests a plan better suited for their lifestyle.
• A company’s internal IT helpdesk bot aims to help an employee diagnose a laptop problem with a series of questions, opens a ticket with the IT staff, and connects the employee to a helpdesk staff member if the issue becomes overly complex.
• One feature of the Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant is the natural language processing (NLP) capabilities and text analytics that aim to allow users to engage in the same way that they normally speak or type.

The bot solution offers Predictive Analytics, NLP, and Unified Architecture

• AI with predictive analytics and decision making that senses user need and offer hyper-personalized experience with the right solution on time.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) and text analytics that makes it intuitive for people to engage in the same way that they normally speak or type.
• A unified architecture that enables people to seamlessly move from one channel to the next – including from a bot to a human agent if needed – and pick up exactly where they left off.
• A code-free development environment that makes it easy for any business user to configure, simulate, and manage the bot to achieve their business goals.
• Case Management and Business Process Management (BPM) that drive work behind the scenes to make conversational UX (user experiences) more useful, practical, and functional.

Pegasystems was founded in 1983 and went public in 1996. It has made four value-added acquisitions of companies namely, Firefly Software, Antenna Software, Chordiant Software and the recent one being  Open Span. OpenSpan is a privately held software provider of robotic process automation (RPA)  and workforce analytics software. It was acquired for $52.3M in 2016.