Customer Feedback Fridays - Avatars

With the excitement and buzz of Artificial Intelligence in business as well as digital personal assistant Siri, and IBM's super computer Watson, (not to forget the movie titled "Avatar") I thought it was a fitting time to resurrect the discussion about Avatars. What's an avatar you ask? It's one word used to describe a digital representation of a human, or a 3D cartoon. Sometimes it moves, responds based on sentiment, and sometimes it just smiles and stares.

Some of our customers have elected to use an avatar (in one form or another) as the 'face' of their Virtual Agent. In fact, noHold's technology is flexible enough to accommodate multiple options on the User Interface - for example: images (logos, pictures...); multiple panes (for promos, videos, etc.); 2D/3D avatar and more. In my blog post about flexibility, I mentioned that one customer has used the APIs to create their own UI. If you want to see some sample UI's, please visit www.nohold.com and type "Sample UI" into Ask Holmes - He will show you some great examples.

In 2011, we polled our customers and asked how they felt about Avatars. We received some great responses, and today since it's Customer Feedback Friday, I will share a feedback directly from one of noHold's customers about their take on Avatars.

Remember, the key is to take a look at your business (industry, target audience, key metrics..) and decide what experience will be the best for your customer, and use the metrics to make the best decision for your brand. In either case, we are happy to accommodate.

Happy Friday!

“Prior to a commitment to a 3D avatar we would likely A/B test with the standard avatar to understand the impact if any of using a 2D vs 3D representation. In the mindset of the customer they are more interested in a easy to use clean interface with rapid and relevant response/resolution. If a 3D vs 2D avatar were to prove more efficient in customer engagement with the virtual agent tool then it would likely take preference for the representation of the tool to the customer. However with that said more focus would likely be given to ensuring appropriate content is delivered to the customers query than whether the customer sees a 2D or 3D skinning of the tool.”