noHold’s Artificial Intelligence Solution Enters the Financial Services Industry with 292 Banks Worldwide

July 30, 2019, MILPITAS, CA – noHold has partnered with one of the longest standing financial institutions in the United States, and now almost 300 banks around the US are utilizing noHold’s Virtual Assistant technology to help their clients.

The Virtual Assistant supports customers of various banks that have questions about their services. For example, the Virtual Assistant can answer questions about refinancing, escrow, property taxes, etc. The unique aspect of the Virtual Assistant is its ability to provide customer specific data through an API connection. This includes answering questions such as, “What is my interest rate?”, “How much is my monthly payment?”, or “What is my principle balance remaining?”

On average, the Virtual Assistant helps over 5000 customers per month, and yields an answer rate of 90%. For questions the Virtual Assistant is not familiar with, an option for escalating to a live agent is provided.

“In the FinTech space, security is paramount. In the last 24 months, noHold has focused on getting security and compliance accreditations ranging from SOC2 to GDPR. Responsible personal information management is not only a legal responsibility, but a social one as well,” said Diego Ventura, CEO of noHold, Inc.

noHold is Hosting an Artificial Intelligence Symposium this Summer in Italy

June 27, 2019, MILPITAS, CA – noHold is excited to be traveling across the world to host its first AI Symposium. This exclusive three-day event will take place from July 17th to the 19th in Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy.

Since 1999, noHold Inc. has successfully provided Artificial Intelligence solutions to businesses. As pioneers in this space, noHold experts will be sharing best practices in AI-based Virtual Assistants for the enterprise. During this event, attendees will explore how innovations in AI can benefit the enterprise, network with experienced Virtual Assistant professionals, as well as Fortune 100 companies that are using Virtual Assistants today. Some of the presentation topics will include strategies on building and deploying a world class Virtual Assistant, ensuring that security and compliance standards are implemented, strategic UI/UX design, and so much more. For more details on the symposium’s agenda, please click here.

Attendees can expect to:

• Receive personalized training and best practices by noHold experts
• Maximize your knowledge of the SICURA platform including not-yet-released technologies from noHold
• Experience an in-depth analysis of available AI technology through SICURA at no extra cost
• Learn how to maximize your virtual assistant’s ROI
• Build relationships with their colleagues in an idyllic setting

noHold’s CEO and founder, Diego Ventura, adds, “We are excited to share the experience we have accumulated over the past 20 years in this space with our customers and partners. It will be nice to do it in a global context and in the backdrop of Venice, one of the most unique capitals of the world.”

noHold, Inc. Implements a Virtual Assistant to Support HR Department of a Fortune 500 Corporation

April 30, 2019, MILPITAS, CA – noHold is excited to announce that a multinational manufacturing company has brought the power of automation into their HR department - a HR Virtual Assistant to answer employee questions. This Fortune 500 corporation manufactures goods and offers engineering services for a variety of industrial, commercial, and consumer markets. With over 75,000+ employees and more than 200 manufacturing sites worldwide, noHold is very pleased to be helping provide support for their internal departments.

The HR Virtual Assistant is a 24/7, AI-based tool that employees can leverage as a first line of defense when they have a question that would typically be directed to HR. This helps alleviate some of the repetitiveness that can congest the HR Department. For example, the Virtual Assistant is answering questions about company policies and benefits, employee training, business travel, and much more. If an employee is not able to get the answer they need, the Virtual Assistant makes it easy to escalate to a live person by providing the user with the appropriate contact information.

The Virtual Assistant only took two weeks to build and deploy. noHold provides metrics that are collected daily, making it easy to consistently improve the Virtual Assistant based on user input. Since adding or removing content based on those metrics can be done immediately, and without the need of savvy programmers, this company was able to expand the knowledge of their Virtual Assistant quickly. The Virtual Assistant is now helping employees not only with HR questions, but also IT, finance, and general facility related questions.

Diego Ventura, CEO and Founder of noHold, said, “The first version of the Virtual Assistant is now live. Plans for the future include the integration with back-office systems to personalize the experience. Employees will not only be able to ask ‘What holidays does the company observer?’, but also ‘How many PTO days do I have left?’”

About noHold, Inc.

noHold is a privately held company established in 1999 and is headquartered in Milpitas, CA, USA (Silicon Valley). noHold is the acknowledged leader in Web based Self-service solutions with a mission to deliver real answers to real questions – real fast. Simple to use, easy to implement and as close to human as you can get, noHold turns automated customer support into cognitive customer interactions. noHold customers include Cisco, Dell, McAfee and a host of industry leaders. More information can be found at http://www.nohold.com.

noHold update: Conversational Interaction Conference, Advisors, and AI Symposium in Italy

2019 is turning out to be an exciting year for noHold. Here are just a few of the events that have already happened this quarter.

1. In March, noHold sponsored a local conference, Conversational Interactions 2019. There, Diego Ventura, noHold's Founder and  CEO, had the opportunity to join the keynote panel discussion regarding best practices for building a Virtual Assistant, as well as speak about noHold's newest technology, NLP2X is a talk titled Using Conversational AI to get the most out of your Enterprise Database.
2. Gonzaga University became a new client, providing its students and staff with noHold's AI technology to augment the way technical support is handled on campus.
3. In addition, we announced a new advisor, Joseph Pinto, to noHold's Board.
4. We are also very excited to be gearing up for our first AI Symposium which will take place July 2019 in Italy! For more details on the AI Symposium, please follow this link: http://www.nohold.com/aiyouwillneverforget/

We look forward to sharing more updates with you related to Virtual Assistants and AI in the future. 

www.nohold.com

Educational Institutions Leverage noHold's Artificial Intelligence to Improve Students' Experience

Just last year, noHold announced that over 7,500 educational institutes are using noHold's Artificial Intelligence to help students and teachers. noHold realized that the Education Market (such as Colleges and Universities) is really benefit from implementing a Virtual Assistant for their Students and/or Faculty. 

Here is a 3 minute clip showing just how colleges can leverage this technology to benefit their students. 

Also, it is not just the students who can take advantage. I would like you to see how the help desk at a top University  benefits from a Virtual Assistant. This is a quick read and includes a short case study: http://www.nohold.com/edu-datasheet.pdf.  I'm interested in your feedback - let me know what you think.
www.nohold.com

AI World Conference & Expo 2018

AI World is getting closer. Next week, thousands of attendees will gather to learn how to use Artificial Intelligence to build a competitive advantage. noHold's CEO, Diego Ventura, will be speaking at the conference about automating customer service and technical support in call centers. Below is a short message from Diego: 

Hope to see you there!
www.nohold.com

Virtual Assistants: 5 things to consider when choosing the right technology

The Virtual Assistant (VA) market has grown exponentially in the past two years. This is an exciting time in the industry. Technology is improving daily and new methodologies for providing Artificial Intelligence are sprouting everywhere.

This brings a renewed need for identifying the right components of a VA technology. The following list was created based on the 17 years of experience noHold has in the AI and Virtual Assistant space.

Customer Experience

Addressing customer need is paramount. The people who purchase and use your product must be considered with the utmost importance. When choosing a VA technology, ensure a history of success by looking at long term customers. The amount of time that a customer has used a given technology not only indicates the customer’s appreciation of the experience, but also reflects the positive experiences gained by the ultimate end users - your customers. The more long term customers a VA provider has, the more likely they are to consider the customer first.

The second part of customer experience is to learn and cater specifically to your user base. This means utilizing methodologies like journey mapping to understand pain points for users and identification of where a VA can help. The user interface must also be flexible and meet the requirements of your users. That means mobile first, intuitive placement, clear position statements, and meeting the customer where they are - your website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

Scalability

You need a VA technology that is scalable. Handling hundreds or thousands of knowledge artifacts is imperative. Look for a provider that offers multiple import options and an easy-to-use set of authoring and editing tools so administrators can make modifications. Your ability to act fast on the content and information gleaned from the VA will ensure a higher degree of success.

The underlying resources need to respond to demand of the users - for example, automatically scaling with traffic spikes when a new product is released - is quite important too. Cloud hosting means your platform responds to demand without the need for human intervention. When your servers are in the cloud, you do not have to worry about planning and modifying systems to accommodate varying usage rates.

Administrators

Your customers come first and your platform administrators are just as important. They need tools and processes that enable them to quickly, accurately, and easily author new content, check reports, or deploy a new VA. Look for a technology that enables your people to become administrators, reducing any reliance on the vendor for providing content to your users. Look for a vendor who has SLAs in place that address customer questions within the same business day and who provides training certification for your employees, as well as continuing education services.

Reporting

Your VA must capture KPIs. Not to be confused with personally identifiable information (PII), but rather the type of experiences users have with the VA. You want to be able to identify with only a few clicks the top questions for a given day / week / month. You should be able to measure the number of answers the VA was able to provide, as well as the number that it couldn’t. You should be able to track clicking behavior to understand the information most interesting to your users.

Processes should be in place to move knowledge gaps through content drafts and ultimately approved solutions. Processes should be in place to track escalations - those users who couldn’t find an answer through the VA. These processes are important to help administrators as well as the overall customer experience. It is important to frame your VA as an entity that is in continually growing.

Compliance

Look for VA technology that meets a variety of compliance standards; like SOC 2, GDPR, and WCAG. Your users are concerned with security, privacy, and accessibility. Make sure you choose a VA provider that also prioritizes these things. The technology you choose should be low-risk for security vulnerabilities and should be protecting any user PII that is inadvertently collected. And if collected by design, for example to integrate with a CRM, the data should be collected with transparency to the user and transmitted securely. Your VA should follow guidelines that make it safe to use all over the world. And it should be accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they can see the screen.

For more a personal assessment visit www.nohold.com and contact us.

Use the Power of AI and your Best and Brightest Employees to Engage with your Customers

I am excited to share a guest blog post from noHold's very own Program Manager, Francesco Ventura.

Use the Power of AI and your Best and Brightest Employees to Engage with your Customers

Customer Engagement

Some see it as a trendy differentiator, others see it as a necessary business investment. Still others believe customer engagement is a way to deflect calls to your call center. In my view, it is a mix of all three and serves both businesses and consumers equally.

At its core, customer engagement opens the lines of communication between businesses and the folks who buy their products. The benefits are obvious:

• Better brand management
• Better understanding of customer needs
• Better access to relevant support and customer service

Top Customer Engagement Tools

Social media, live chat, and traditional phone & email support are the most common customer engagement tools used today. Businesses are investing in these technologies because they want their customers to feel valued and they need ways to communicate with them.

But because these tools need human involvement from both customer and business, they are often costly alternatives to self-service. What's more, the tools listed above do not usually exist on their own - they are usually part of a wider customer engagement net that includes options to utilize each tool.

Virtual Assistants Provide Engagement Too

I don't just mean in the interactive and diagnostic way they interact with customers, but in their ability to act as the personal assistant to get customers where they want to go. We call it the concierge approach. The virtual assistant is positioned ahead of other options on your website, like chat or email. Customers begin interacting with it and the concierge will provide one of three outcomes:

1. The customer will be guided to an answer immediately
2. The customer will be asked to provide additional information which leads to an answer
3. The customer will be guided to the most appropriate contact channel

Our experience has demonstrated that the concierge can answer about 80% of the questions that come in to other channels, like social, chat, and phone & email.

We realize however that there will always be a need for the human touch at some point. In the concierge scenario, that would come when the concierge doesn't have an answer, or when the best option is to transfer to a live agent (e.g., refund requests). And with noHold's APIs, we've been able to connect to a wide range of 3rd-party platforms: CRM, Chat, Social, and even the call center. This ability makes the transition seamless to the customer. Best of all, they need only one browser window open - no ping-ponging them from page to page, form to form, or queue to queue.

We believe the utilization of a concierge to handle those 80% of questions frees up your employees to perform better on the live contacts that do come in - less of a need to hurry the customer off the phone, more ability to deep dive into a problem, higher customer satisfaction, lower agent stress.

Also, the concierge is collecting and grouping user phrases in real time. Those data points represent actionable behavior metrics - areas where content may be needed, processes improved, feedback provided, or completely unknown issues are discovered. Indeed those grouped data points need to be reviewed and acted upon by humans. Imagine a team of highly knowledgeable customer engagement reps who get user input real time, in a secure platform environment.

The Action Plan

Create a virtual assistant based on your most common contact topics. Don't know what they are, read about EZintel and the ability to quickly gain insight into your customers' needs. Position your virtual assistant prominently on your website and other online channels. Review data collected by the virtual assistant and take action on it - create content, modify processes, listen to your customers. Empower your employees to make immediate changes in the virtual assistant platform.

If you want to learn more about the virtual assistant's role in customer engagement, please reach out.

One year ago today: Forbes Article Published on Albert in the House

In light of it being Flashback Friday,  I wanted to share a blogpost noHold wrote a year from today on how Artificial Intelligence is being used to help citizen around the US gain clarity on Presidential Executive Orders. Because, let's face it, some of those documents are rather lengthy and can be confusing to non-politicians. noHold wanted to give individuals a way to receive non-biased answers to their questions about these policies. 

noHold accomplished this by create Virtual Assistants (Albert) for a handful of Executive Orders signed by various Presidents. Citizens curious about these Executives Orders are able to ask questions to the Virtual Assistant such as "What is this about?" or "Who does this effect?"

When noHold was creating these Presidential Virtual Assistants, publications such as Forbes and The Next Web contacted noHolds's CEO, Diego Ventura, to write articles on the idea. 

Josiah Motley from The Next Web wrote, "Now there’s an AI available to everyone that can answer these questions for you. And while anything can have bias, even an AI with bad programming, using this new service from noHold is a great way to get straight-to-the-point answers and facts without having to sacrifice hours of your day digging through articles and government PDFs."

It was a great moment for noHold to be able to contribute to the community. I will end it with a quote from Diego, "We felt it was our civic duty to take our expertise in Artificial Intelligence and use it to empower people with uncensored knowledge that can be used to benefit the country."

www.nohold.com

What Changes Have Happened To noHold.com?

I wanted to do a quick share about the redesign we have done to the noHold website. Our talented Web Master has now created a website that is easy to navigate. To most, Artificial Intelligence can be an intimidating topic because of its complexity and broadness. noHold.com explains how our AI platform works, and demonstrates the necessity of AI for any type of business! 

On the website you can find information on our patented technology (outlined above), view case studies and statistics we have gathered from being a part of the industry for two decades, customer testimonials, press releases, and articles written by publications such as Forbes, Business Insider, Popular Science, etc. 

To check out the latest on our website visit www.nohold.com. Feel free to check out our social media and leave us a comment on there as well. 

Twitter- @noholdai

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/nohold-inc-/ 

7,500 Educational Institutions use noHold's AI-based Virtual Assistant to Help Students and Teachers

August 28, 2018, MILPITAS, CA – noHold, Inc. has partnered with leaders in the training space to create a Virtual Assistant now used by more than 7,500 educational institutions.

The Virtual Assistant specializes in supporting teachers to create and administer classes, as well as answer student questions like “How do I sign up for the class?”, “Where can I find the syllabus?”, and “What are the pre-requisites for this class?”

The Virtual Assistant is able to answer these types of questions because:

·        It is built to understand plain English through a powerful Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine.

·        It is able to conduct a dialog with end users to confirm uncertain intents through an Inference Engine that serves as a Dialog Manager.

·        It is able to tap into its own repository of information that has grown organically based on the audience’s interests.

It took about six calendar weeks to build the Virtual Assistant, four for implementation and two for testing. The team included a Subject Matter Expert, a Knowledge Base Specialist and a part-time Manager for a total of 200 hours.

Three weeks after deployment, the Virtual Assistant is consistently helping thousands of students and teachers a month, and has an answer rate of 87%. Questions that cannot be handled automatically by the Virtual Assistant are promptly escalated to call center agents. The content of the exchange is also passed along, so that agents don’t have to ask the same questions and users don't have to repeat themselves.

The next version of the Virtual Assistant will be trained to answer IT type questions which will help faculty and students with computer, security and networking issues.

“There are several advantages related to deploying a Virtual Assistant. It can help the school reduce support costs, it is available 24/7, it can help new agents at the call center, and it can diligently capture the voice of the customer. More than 7,500 schools can now enjoy these benefits," said Diego Ventura, CEO and Founder of noHold, Inc.

10 Tips on Increasing Customer Adoption of a Virtual Assistant

A while back, noHold published the infographic below titled, "Guidelines to Driving Self-Service Adoption." Artificial Intelligence, more specifically Virtual Assistants, have continued to gain popularity since this infographic was released, but these tips and tricks still apply today. 

We have come up with a few more ideas to increase adoption in addition to the ones mentioned in the infographic above. 

1. Add your Virtual Assistant to your community forum page. This is a great way for companies to quickly go live with a Virtual Assistant, and capture data from users that can improve the Virtual Assistant. It is also just another great channel to reach customers that are looking for answers.  
2. Pre-empt the live chat with your Virtual Assistant. Some of our clients have positioned their Virtual Assistants to be leveraged before a live agent is pulled in. To read more about pre-empting live chat with a Virtual Assistant, visit noHold.com.
3. Creating a more conversational experience between end users and Artificial Intelligence. Virtual Assistants should be able to handle multi-turn interactions, just like the nature flow of a conversation between humans. 

With almost two decades of experience in the Virtual Assistant industry, these are just some of the tips and tricks we have found worked for our clients to help increase customer adoption. If you would like more information on noHold's Virtual Assistant technology, feel free to contact us via our website, www.nohold.com.

noHold Launches Module 1000 as the Latest Component of its AI Platform, SICURA®

June 28, 2018, MILPITAS, CA – noHold is excited to announce the availability of Module 1000, the latest component to its AI platform, SICURA®. This feature provides a way for companies with thousands of products to create Virtual Assistants in a scalable and cost efficient way.

noHold works with companies that have portfolios counting thousands of products. One of the challenges they face when managing so many products is how to deliver world-class support for each customer regardless of the product they purchased, all while being mindful of resources and budget.

noHold's Module 1000 addresses this challenge by providing companies with a platform that makes creating a Virtual Assistant for thousands of products simple and fast. Module 1000 is able to accomplish this by leveraging existing documents to create the content for the Virtual Assistants. These documents can be product manuals, logged session scripts from live interactions, etc.

The advantages of Module 1000 include:

• Scalability. Can handle an unlimited number of products.
•  Quick implementation time. Virtual Assistants are ready to go live within days, and start answering questions while capturing customer behavior metrics.
• Cost reduction. Manages customer interactions automatically without the need for human intervention.
•  Ability to leverage existing content. No need to create new documents.

Diego Ventura, CEO of noHold, adds, “When dealing with thousands of product lines, possibly in multiple languages, it is key to be able to capitalize on existing content. It is unrealistic to create specialized content for each of the thousand products, just to make sure it works for the Virtual Assistant. We have been focusing on making this a reality, and Module 1000 represents a first important step in that direction.”

noHold's Artificial Intelligence Alleviates Live Chat Shortcomings

May 31, 2018, MILPITAS, CA – noHold is introducing a Virtual Assistant specialized in pre-empting the Live Chat channel. Throughout the years, various companies have come to noHold looking for a solution to solve some of the concerns related to Live Chat. Here is a list of the three most common issues:

• Misdirected Chats- about 60% of live chat sessions end up being irrelevant to the live agents' scope of knowledge. For example, live agents that handle pre-sales questions receiving end users asking for support. 
• Ghost Chats- An end user clicks on the Chat button, but then never interacts with the live Agent. This accounts for about 20% of all sessions.
• Pre-Chat Questionnaires- often live chat agents ask end users a number of questions to pre-qualify them. This process can be automated.

noHold now offers a Virtual Assistant specialized in pre-empting the Live Chat channel.  The Virtual Assistant is conversational and helps companies reduce misdirected and ghost chats, while capturing key pre-qualifying information from the end user.

“The agents at your call center are the most sophisticated resource available to help customers better experience your product.  It is important to engage them only when absolutely necessary so that companies can reduce cost and improve customer satisfaction,” adds Diego Ventura, CEO and Founder of noHold.

noHold Does Mini Hackathon for Companies to Demonstrate How Quickly Creating a Virtual Assistant Can Be

Have you ever wondered how long a Virtual Assistant implementation would take? Like the saying goes, "time is money" and having a quick implementation is important for many companies. Now, the technology has advanced so far that the implementation of a well-structured, working Virtual Assistant can be live within a day!

Recently, noHold has been doing a "mini hackathon" approach with companies to demonstrate how quick it can be. We are able to go on campus, and create Virtual Assistants for them on the spot. How did we do it?

1. Take existing content from the website. For example manuals, FAQs, or even internal documents they were able to share. The point is to get content that is already available.
2. Make some changes to the formatting of the document to make it Albert compatible. (i.e. adding Headings)
3. Uploading the document to the SICURA QuickStart platform. This upload only takes a couple of minutes. Once complete, you can launch your very own Virtual Assistant.
4. Personalize the UI for each company such as adding color, logos, etc. 
5. Doing testing on the Virtual Assistant by asking it questions. This way you can identify an knowledge gaps or improvements to the content through the metrics. 

We were able to do these steps in person demonstrating to companies that creating a Virtual Assistant does not have to be confusing or lengthy process. Using Albert to create the Virtual Assistant requires no programming skills and can be done in a short amount of time. If you are interested in learning more about creating a bot, please contact us through the website: www.nohold.com

noHold Advances Machine to Human Interaction by Creating a More Conversational Experience

April 30, 2018, MILPITAS, CA - Last year, noHold was recognized by Gartner as a Cool Vendor in AI for Conversational Platforms. Today, noHold is excited to announce the SICURA® platform has new features that are changing the way Artificial Intelligence interacts with humans. The new generation of Virtual Assistants are designed to mimic the natural flow of a conversation.

To accomplish this goal, noHold enabled Virtual Assistants to be able to handle multi-turn interactions with expansions. Multi-turn interactions mean the back and forth that happens within a conversation. Expansions refer to the various ways conversation can turn. Below are examples of expansions.

• Opening: the Virtual Assistant can understand various greetings such as "how are you", "what is your name", etc. 
• Screen: the Virtual Assistant will be able to handle questions such as "what do you know about" as well as "do you know about routers?" 
• Closing: can determine various ending statements such as "bye" or "see ya." 
• Escape: when a user types "never mind" the Virtual Assistant will know that the end user wants to move on. 
• Repeat: the Virtual Assistant can repeat if end users ask things such as "can you say that again."
• Elicit: End users can elicit information from the Virtual Assistant. Agent: "What kind of router are you interested in?" User: "Well, what are my choices?"
• Paraphrase: End users can ask for more details. Agent: "Do you prefer a wired or wireless Router?" User: "What do you mean?"

Other features that help create a more dynamic Virtual Assistant include:

• Handling confirming questions
• Managing clarifying questions
• Change of subject
• Interruptions
• Inference
• Exception handling
• Context retention

"Incorporating these features into the SICURA® platform is important. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the average person has multiple interactions with AI daily. Providing end users with the most natural experience helps decrease frustration, and at the same time increase satisfaction," said Diego Ventura, CEO and Founder of noHold.

Industry Stats that Every Business Leader Needs to Know

For a while, Virtual Assistants have been making a significant impact on business strategy. The role they are playing has expanded beyond the typical customer support paradigm, and moved into many different business units. Analyst firms and publications are agreeing that business leaders need to have a strategy for incorporating Virtual Assistants, whether it be for support, pre- and post-sales, internally, customer experience, etc. 

One of the benefits of deploying a Virtual Assistant is the decrease in call center interactions. “Organizations report a reduction of up to 70 percent in call, chat and/or email inquiries after implementing a VCA, according to Gartner research. They also report increased customer satisfaction and a 33 percent saving per voice engagement.” (Gartner) noHold has also looked at similar analytics from a Telco customer of ours. Before the Virtual Assistant was implemented 65% of people who went to the 'contact us' page ended up calling the company. After the Virtual Assistant, that percentage went down to 30%. Over half the calls were handled by the Virtual Assistant, and at a fraction of the cost. 

Gartner has made some positive predictions for the future of AI as well:

• According to Gartner, "25% of customer service and support operations will integrate virtual customer assistant (VCA) or chatbot technology across engagement channels by 2020."
• "By 2020, 30 percent of all B2B companies will employ AI to augment at least one of their primary sales processes."

Source: https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3858564

Interested in learning more about Virtual Assistant technology? Feel free to send an email through our contact page and I would be happy to help you out. 

Cheers!

www.nohold.com 

Learn How to Create an Alexa Skill or a Google Action in Minutes

noHold is proud to announce Diego Ventura, Founder and CEO of noHold, will be taking the stage at the 2018 Conversational Interactions conference hosted by AVIOS. This conference is all about connecting humans and machines. It will largely center around Natural Language Processing, Virtual Assistants (bots or digital assistants), and the various channels customer conversations can happen on. For more information about the conference, visit www.conversationalinteractions.com.

The event is being held close to noHold's headquarters in San Jose, California on February 5th and 6th. To catch Diego's presentation, be sure to be there on February 5th between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM PST. He will be talking about, "The Easiest Way to Create an Alexa Skill or Google Action." It was a great opportunity to be able to speak at the conference last year, and it is an honor to be invited back to present again.

It was a great opportunity to be able to speak at the conference last year, and it is an honor to be invited back to present again.

To register for the conference, click here.
Cheers
www.nohold.com

How to Leverage Artificial Intelligence as an Executive Assistant

Happy Friday! 

I wanted to share a webinar noHold sponsored last week with the American Society of Administrative Professionals (ASAP). It is a relatively short webinar (20 minutes) directed towards helping Executive Assistants improve processes by leveraging Artificial Intelligence. NO PROGRAMMING KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED! Just imagine being able to create a Virtual Assistant as your Assistant. By doing so, employees can access a link to Albert and ask questions on their own terms, 24/7. Questions such as "How do I submit a PTO?" or "Where is the toner for the printer?" and so on.

Click here to watch a recording of the webinar, Unlocking Emerging Technologies for Professional Gains.

If you are interested in learning more about Albert and signing up for an account, please visit http://www.albertai.com/assistants.html

Three "handouts" were made available which included templates on how to start organizing your content. 

Handout 1: https://www.asaporg.com/images/webinars/albert-for-events.pdf

Handout 2: https://www.asaporg.com/images/webinars/albert-for-policies.pdf

Handout 3: https://www.asaporg.com/images/webinars/albert-for-away.pdf

Andy Paul invites CEO of noHold to discuss Virtual Assistants from a Sales Perspective

Recently, Diego Ventura, CEO of noHold, was asked to guest star on the top-rated podcast, Accelerate!, hosted by Andy Paul. Andy is known as the go-to resource for the best sales advice online. Diego's 20+ years of experience in the AI space, gave him a unique perspective on sales. 

You can listen to the podcast at www.andypaul.com.

Some key takeaways include: 

• Diego says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is getting introductions to the right people (decision-makers). It is hard to do with email.
• Diego explains how a virtual agent or assistant differs from a knowledge base. A virtual assistant helps the user get to the most specific solution as quickly as possible within the framework of a dialog rather than a search.
• NoHold is partnering with companies like Google and Amazon to accomplish voice recognition and speech synthesis with natural language processing (NLP).
• Diego points out potential applications for online sales. Besides speech technology, it requires NLP-to-SQL (Structured Query Language) technology. This may be ready on some sites for 2017 Christmas shopping!
• Diego mentions two current noHold projects: a customer-facing application (the Sales Advisor), and an agent-facing application. Diego covers the details of the Sales Advisor and gives examples.
• Diego discusses levels of AI in virtual assistants. He gives examples of chatbots built from user documents, including executive orders from four U.S. presidents.
• Diego address the future of AI in sales and its impact. It is an excellent tool to augment sales capabilities. Diego gives an example for the enterprise, the Marketing Advisor, for augmented selling in groups of 500 SDRs.