noHold Knighted

Just a few weeks ago, Diego Ventura, the founder and CEO of noHold, Inc. was awarded by the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, the special honor of the Order of the Star of Italy. This honor is given to Italians, both abroad and foreign, who promote friendly relations between Italy and other countries and create ties with Italy as well.

Diego was recognized for this award because of his technological contributions to the Italian Consulate in San Francisco. The SF Consulate is one of the first Consulates to utilize a Virtual Agent on their website. noHold was able to create a bilingual (English and Italian) Virtual Agent for people to find out quick answers to questions regarding citizenship, visas, travel to Italy, and more. You can check out the Virtual Agent by clicking here and interact with Federica yourself. 

"The average completion rate of an interaction with the Virtual Agent is 73%." With the amount of success the Italian Consulate is getting from the Virtual Agent, it is apparent that Virtual Agents can simply be used anywhere. If a Virtual Agent can streamline international affairs in multiple languages, the use of the Virtual Agent will only continue to spread to such places like doctor's offices, the DMV, etc.

I'll leave you with a link to the full Press Release of the SF Italian Consulate Virtual Agent and a special quote from Diego as well.

“The realization of this project could have not been possible without the vision of the past Consul General of Italy, Fabrizio Marcelli, who pioneered the technology and  the collaboration of the current Consul General, Mauro Battocchi, who embraced it.  Special thanks also to the implementation internationals teams including Andrea Sahli, Alessio Cei and Stefano Mancini."

Have a great week!