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August 09, 2012

Nuance Debuts Nina, Virtual Assistant for Mobile Customer Service Apps

By Jyothi Shanbhag
TMCnet Contributor

Nuance Communications (News - Alert) Inc., a supplier of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world, has rolled out company’s much awaited virtual assistant for mobile customer service apps, Nina.

The virtual assistant, Nina brings together the Nuance speech recognition, Text-to-Speech (TTS), voice biometrics, and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology hosted in the cloud, offering an interactive user experience that not only understands what is said, but can identify who is saying it.

The new solution is supported with an open software development kit (SDK) for rapid integration of virtual assistant capabilities into existing mobile applications. In addition, Nina is the first to allow organizations to brand their own virtual assistant persona, including the visual appearance and implementation of optional custom TTS voices.

"Nina is a watershed innovation for the automated customer service industry, not only because it brings the virtual assistant directly into an app, but because it raises the bar through its level of interactive dialog and language understanding," said Robert Weideman, executive vice president and general manager of the Nuance Enterprise Division.

Recently, USAA, a well-known financial services provider, adopted the virtual assistant for use within its popular mobile app. Officials at USAA said they plan to launch this service to all USAA members early next year.

“Nina provides our customers a major competitive differentiator by enabling more successful self-service through their mobile apps,” Weideman added. “We are especially pleased to further our partnership with USAA, a company known for its innovation and approach to delivering a premier mobile customer service experience to its members."

The company is currently offering the Nina Virtual Assistant SDK and cloud service in the U.S., U.K. and Australian English, with additional languages to be made available later this year.

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Edited by Braden Becker