SOLUTION GUIDE

Five9 Intelligent Virtual

Agent Solution Guide
How to automate customer care with
AI-powered self-service
 Consumer Demand Drives
Contact Centers to Invest
in Automation
As a contact center manager (and a consumer), you Donna Fluss, “A remarkable thing is happening in the
understand how our relationship with technology has realm of customer service: After years of rejecting self-
changed. From the moment we open our eyes until the service, customers are changing their tune. Consumers
minute our heads hit the pillow, we are now glued to our of all ages are showing a preference for self-service
smart devices— and we increasingly interact with them solutions over talking to agents or using chat boxes,
through voice. We’ve become accustomed to speaking provided they do their jobs well.”3
to our smartphones and smart speakers in a natural
At the same time that customers are showing an
and conversational manner. We’ve also come to expect
increased preference for self-service through voice
them to understand us with great accuracy and help
interfaces, overall consumer demand is increasing.
us navigate the complexities of our day.
There are now more consumers purchasing more
Adoption is astonishing. Already one in four US adults goods and services than ever before, which is driving
now owns a smart speaker, and more than half of those an increase in service volume. And with more devices
who own them use voice commands at least once a day.1 at their disposal, consumers expect service across
more channels.
As consumers become accustomed to getting
As consumers become help from their personal virtual agents, they now
accustomed to getting help increasingly prefer to have self-service options when
contacting a business for service. In a Capgemini study,
from their personal virtual nearly 70% of respondents said they will progressively
replace visits to a store or bank with their voice agent
assistants, they now within three years’ time.2 According to industry analyst
increasingly prefer to have
self-service options when
contacting a business
for service.

1
“The Smart Audio Report,” National Public Radio and Edison
Research, 2020.
2
“Smart Talk: How organizations and consumers are embracing
voice and chat assistants,” Capgemini, 2019.
3
”IVAs Can Remake the Self-Service Landscape,”
DMG Consulting, 2018.

Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 2

 What Are Intelligent
Virtual Agents?
Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are automated, Virtual Agents Are Employed Like
self-service applications that you can offer to your Human Agents
customers. They offer capabilities that are similar
to human service and support agents – they Just like a team of outsourced contact center agents,
IVAs can perform just never rest or take a vacation – and they’re you purchase IVAs and pay for them for as long as you
substantially cheaper. need them, on a monthly basis.
all kinds of tasks to care
for customers. Virtual Agents Have Skills
For example, they can understand human speech in
over 100 languages and respond using text-to-speech
(TTS) that is almost indistinguishable from a human Agent Skills:
agent. IVAs can be configured with very basic skills –
• IVR • PCI-Payments
the most basic agent might simply answer the phone,
• Speech Recognition • HIPAA-Compliance
ask the caller if she wants to maintain her place in
• Natural Language • Intelligent Callbacks
queue, and schedule a callback. An advanced IVA might
Processing • BroadWorks Integration
have the skills to understand human speech in multiple
• Text-to-Speech • Workflows
languages; determine intent using natural language
• Voice Biometrics • Dialer
processing; process PCI-compliant payments; and
• Sentiment Analysis • Remote Data
respond in multiple languages over the phone, via
• SMS Connectivity
chat, or messaging channels.
• In-App Chat

Virtual Agents Can Automate Things

They can perform all kinds of tasks to care for
customers. They can make appointments, reset
passwords, look up orders, survey customers, process
payments, and answer all kinds of questions – over the
phone, chat, or messaging channels. Dial this number to listen
to our text-to-speech voices:
+1-256-305-6049

Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 3

 Upgrade from IVR to IVA for More
Conversational Self-Service
We offer an easy-to-use, visual, IVR builder as How Does it Work?
part of the Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center.
IVR enables human-computer interaction for Using our code-free, visual builder, you can drag
inbound and autodial campaign calls. and drop components to create your IVA, or customize
one of the prebuilt IVA templates. Then, configure the
Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent is more powerful than Five9 Transfer Module to pass incoming calls and
the previous generation of technology, enabling calls caller data to a virtual agent.
to be transferred to intelligent virtual agents that
use the latest speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and The virtual agent can then offer a wide variety of
natural language processing from Google, IBM Watson, self-service capabilities, using speech recognition and
and other cloud-based conversational AI providers. text-to-speech in hundreds of languages and a wide
This enables Five9 customers to easily build and deploy variety of voices. What’s even more powerful is that,
self-service applications that automate many more as described in the next section, your virtual agents
VIDEO of the routine and repetitive tasks that are traditionally will be able to respond to open ended prompts like
handled by live agents. “How can I help you today?” using natural language
processing. This makes the user experience more

Check out this video conversational while enabling you to automate tasks
that were previously too cumbersome to be handled
on delivering a more using speech recognition.

human experience with

Five9 IVAs.
By 2024, 40% of enterprise
applications will have
embedded conversational
AI, up from less than
5% in 2020.4

4
“Emerging Technologies: Research Roundup for
NLP and Conversational UI,” Gartner, Inc. 2021.
Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 4
 Natural Language Processing
Virtual agents that understand

Natural language processing makes it easier With NLP you’ll be able to do:
for your customers to get support through self-
service because the complexity of the interaction Intent Matching: This enables your virtual agent to
Eliminate complex can be dramatically simplified. It also increases determine what your customer wants. Intents are
the percentage of inquiries that can be created for anything a customer might request. For
IVR menus and go beyond automated, helping you reduce costs. NLP lets each intent you simply provide a set of examples for
speech-enabled, directed you eliminate complex IVR menus and go beyond how the customer might make the request. For example,
“I want to make an appointment” or “I want to cancel
speech-enabled, directed dialog systems. Five9
dialog systems. Intelligent Virtual Agent helps you embrace NLP
an appointment.” The virtual agent then matches user
requests against intents that it knows how to resolve
by packaging and integrating the most advanced (“Book Appointment” or “Cancel Appointment”). As
technologies from companies like Google customers use your virtual agents, you can incorporate
and IBM into Five9. what they’ve said into training examples that help
them get smarter over time.
Entity Extraction: This helps you extract important
information from what is said to your virtual agent
so that you are able to act on it. This information can
include system entities like dates, times, place names,
amounts, developer defined entities or temporal user
entities.
Watch a demo
Dialog Control: This allows you to control the
of Natural Language flow of the conversational experience between the
steering call. customer and the virtual agent so that you can optimize
the dialog to quickly and accurately collect the
information needed to respond to their request.

Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 5

Common Use Cases and
Cost Benefits

Natural Language Call Steering Insurance Enrollment

Many businesses use IVAs to steer calls to the correct An organization offers health benefit enrollment through
person or department (“Please tell me who you’d like to IVAs processing 350,000 calls per month. Automating
reach”). Calls can be routed quickly and easily without enrollment enables them to scale up during busy
requiring the caller to wait for a receptionist. open enrollment periods while lowering labor costs by
hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.

Appointment Scheduling
Customers, including health care providers, use
Virtual Concierge
IVAs to schedule appointments and send reminders. A major hotel chain allows consumers to manage
This improves the customer experience by allowing reservations through IVAs. It handles more than 600,000
customers to book appointments at any time of the day calls each month and improves the service experience
or evening. It also lowers the cost to serve by reducing by enabling travelers to make and change reservations
the need for more front office staff. more conveniently.

PCI-Compliant Payment Processing

A large state government organization uses IVAs to
process payments for all kinds of services, including
renewing drivers’ licenses and paying fees. The customer
handles up to 500,000 calls every month. By automating
payment processing, they have saved hundreds of
thousands of dollars each month in labor costs while
ensuring that payment processing complies with
PCI-DSS regulations.

Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 6

 Task Library
Things your virtual agent will be able to do

Appointment Maker Inbound Ticketing

For any business built around professional services, Running a service desk requires supreme organization.
management of appointments can be a burden. The Inbound Ticketing app makes it simple to quickly
Free up your staff and offer your clients a 24x7 hotline create a solution that enables customers to choose self-
Five9 Inference Studio to schedule their own appointments. This app can be service. When a human agent is required, a screen pop
integrated easily with any existing calendaring system. displays details of the account history and ticket status.
offers a suite of pre-packaged
self-service applications. Appointment Reminder Password Reset
You can use these applications No-shows are a real problem for professional practices. This app offers an ideal solution to a common and costly
as is, extend them, or build Minimize no-shows without diverting your staff from problem: users can reset their system passwords without
other duties by creating an automated reminder system. IT input. It’s all automated using biometric security to
your own from scratch. The app is easy to customize with your branded message authenticate each user by voiceprint, saving everybody
and integrate with your appointment system. time and frustration.

Card Payments Product Recall

Credit card payments are time consuming and expose Protect your brand by acting swiftly if a product
your business to potential violations. Eliminate that risk recall is required. Use the Product Recall app to set
with an automated PCI compliant task. The PCI Credit up campaigns to deal with a range of situations.
Card Payment task will allow customers to enter their Look up data or integrate with other systems to create
credit card details and payment amount. Then it will a ‘ready-to-go’ response. The assurance provided
process the payment, all over the phone, 24 hours a day. reflects well on the business in difficult times.

Collections QforMe
Get started with the Collections app to automate The QforMe app makes it easy to set up a service
the process of following up on outstanding accounts. that allows customers to receive a callback rather
Draw debtor details from a spreadsheet or, if you prefer, than waiting on hold. Customers are delighted to
integrate the solution with your billing system. This is receive this level of service; it’s a valuable part
an easy and economical way to manage debtors. of customer experience.

Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 7

Task Library
Order Lookup Snow Days
Provide customers with a 24-hour helpline to query order Use the Snow Days app to create any campaign where
status. You don’t have to roster more agents to work you need to quickly get a message out to a defined
around the clock. The Order Lookup application means group with a minimum of fuss. Don’t waste time fielding
you can quickly create and deploy a self-service system, calls; get the message out first.
providing greater customer service at minimal cost.
Subscription Lookup
Service Activation Offer customers a service to look up their membership
Easily create a customer service message to greet details. Establish an automated service to provide a 24×7
each new client with news of service activation, drawing helpline that simply queries records based on the
data from a spreadsheet or through simple integration. member number.

Outage Notification Subscription Reminder

Make prompt service outage calls by automating the Keep the customers you already have. Implement
process through simple customization within the Outage a reminder system to contact clients when membership
Notification app. It’s extremely easy to create a branded nears expiry. The Subscription Reminder app makes
message to enhance the customer experience. it easy to get started and to create the right messaging
to reflect your brand. Think laterally and create
another campaign to offer special deals on landmark
Smart Attendant
anniversaries.
Recognize customers with a personalized interaction,
not a tree of menu options, by referring to data you
already have. The Smart Attendant app makes it easy to
Support Ticket Update
integrate speech recognition and custom text-to-speech The Support Ticket Update app makes ticketing even
prompts based on location, preferences, and history. smarter by providing clients with updates via automated
outbound calls. It’s a simple, affordable way to keep
customers informed. Create and initiate multiple
Smart Router
campaigns, run from a spreadsheet, or integrate with
Call volumes vary with the day, time of day, seasons, other systems.
and holidays. Use the Smart Router app to route calls
based on a range of variables. This is the quick and
smart way to implement intelligent call routing and
Survey
enhance the customer experience. Add an extra level of customer care with outbound
surveys or present your employee satisfaction survey as
a handy telephone poll. Multiple pre-made templates
mean endless options for easy customization.

Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 8

 Task Library
Teleclock Service Outage
Learn more.
The Teleclock solution is the smart choice for a remote Make prompt service outage calls by automating the
timekeeping system. Field workers use a standard process through simple customization of the application.
Want to learn more about telephone to call in and clock on and off. Authentication It’s easy to create a branded message to enhance the
how our virtual agents can is by voice biometrics, yet this solution is inexpensive customer experience.
and easy to set up.
help you improve customer
service and support? Natural Language Call Steering
Text Alert Sign Up This is an inbound task that uses the caller’s spoken
A quick and easy way for your customers to sign up phrase to determine a transfer destination. The task
Visit our website or call us
to receive your important alerts. Paired with our Outage welcomes the caller and starts with the prompt “How
at +1-800-553-8159. Notification or Snow Day Apps (SMS and voice), the Sign can I help you today?” It provides a standard call
Up App maintains a list of all your customers who want steering data store for caller utterance and steering
to receive important messages. destination reports.

Track + Trace Salesforce Lookup

Track + Trace makes sense in a high volume call This is a pre-packaged integration with Salesforce.
environment. The Track + Trace app means you can It enables the virtual agent to read and write from the
quickly create a self-service option yet retain the ability Salesforce CRM.
to speak to an agent where necessary.
MS Dynamics Lookup
ZIP Code Router This is a pre-packaged integration with Microsoft
Promote a unified brand presence and deliver Dynamics. It enables the IVA to read and write from
personalized local service using the ZIP Code Router the Dynamics CRM.
app. It’s quick and simple to update the app to direct
calls based on a caller’s ZIP code. Enjoy the efficiency
of centralization.

Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 9

References
Page 1 Page 4
1 “The Smart Audio Report,” National Public 4 “Emerging Technologies: Research Roundup
Radio and Edison Research, 2020. https://www. for NLP and Conversational UI,” Gartner,
nationalpublicmedia.com/insights/reports/smart- Inc. 2021. https://www.gartner.com/
audio-report/#download document/3995389?ref=solrAll&refval=273924463
2 “Smart Talk: How organizations and consumers are
embracing voice and chat assistants,” Capgemini,
2019. https://www.capgemini.com/dk-en/news/
smart-talk-how-organizations-and-consumers-are-
embracing-voice-and-chat-assistants/
3 “IVAs Can Remake the Self-Service Landscape, DMG
Consulting,” 2018. https://www.dmgconsult.com/ivas-
can-remake-self-service-landscape/

Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent Solution Guide 10

North America Headquarters EMEA Regional Office Five9 and the Five9 logo are registered trademarks of Five9 and its
subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Other marks and
3001 Bishop Drive 29 Throgmorton Street
brands may be claimed as the property of others. The product plans,
Suite 350 London specifications, and descriptions herein are provided for information only
San Ramon, CA 94583 EC2N 2AT and subject to change without notice, and are provided without warranty
925.201.2000 United Kingdon of any kind, express or implied. Copyright © 2021 Five9, Inc.

LTAM Regional Office APAC Regional Office

Av. Roque Petroni Jr., 850 1 Market Street, Level 32
10º andar, Torre R. Jaceru Sydney NSW 2000
Jardim das Acacias – São Paulo – SP Australia
04707-000
Brazil