Nuance Introduces Customer Service App Assistant, 'Nina'

There's a customer service rep living inside your phone. A very, very small one. Or there could be, thanks to new technology from speech application experts at Nuance Communications, famous for building Apple's (News - Alert) personal voice assistant Siri.

Last week, Nuance announced the creation of “Nina,” a natural human language input software designed to understand customers' questions about their accounts. Think of Nina as Siri's cousin who lives inside your credit card app instead of your iPhone (News - Alert), according to CNN Money.

Nina can be used by companies wishing to create a customer service app for smartphones, and customized in any way they require. She's a bit like an artificial intelligence IVR that talks back. For example, via an app for your bank, you could ask Nina to “check my balance” or “pay my bill,” allowing it to handle the same types of functions you might have once accomplished by other self-service methods.

Nina is extensively customizable to work with any app that has customer service features, and it's available on multiple platforms, including Apple's iOS, Google's (News - Alert) Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone, reported CNN.

And if you need a real person? The app can “call” a live, human agent and provide that person with the background deals of the transaction already in progress. Nina will also be accompanied by an analytics function that will help the companies implementing it better understand how their customers are using it.

Better than continually “pressing one” and “pressing two,” right?

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