Nuance Says “Text Me”; Amps Up Customer Self-Service with Asynchronous Messaging for SMS, In-App and Social Messaging Bots and Platforms

BURLINGTON, Mass., June 07, 2017 -- Nuance Communications, Inc., (NASDAQ:NUAN) today announced virtual assistant and asynchronous chat innovations have been added to the Nuance Digital Engagement Platform – innovations that make it possible and practical for enterprises to engage with their customers using app messaging and SMS.

Nearly every demographic, and particularly millennials, have embraced texting and messaging as the preferred way to connect with friends and family. And while for some time the possibility has existed for enterprises to leverage messaging for customer engagement, it is precisely that popularity that has blocked its adoption by enterprises.  The volume of messages could be millions a day, which can require significant investments in agents and infrastructure to meet customer expectations of timely and accurate service.

While many enterprises can reasonably manage massive volumes of web and mobile live chat, the always-on nature of messaging presents new challenges as enterprises are likely not prepared to handle this emerging customer service platform without hiring more agents or extending call center hours.  Even though enterprises have seen significant self-service benefits from speech recognition, natural language understanding, and other advancements in AI in many channels, messaging hasn’t yet broadly benefitted from these advancements.

Nuance overcomes the volume and expectation barrier for message-based customer engagement in three ways, including Virtual Messaging, Live Messaging and Asynchronous (or Offline) Messaging. Nuance’s Nina intelligent virtual assistant leverages Nuance’s unparalleled conversational, cognitive and human-assisted AI capabilities to deliver superior, multi-channel, automated customer service experiences for the consumers. Nina provides an innovative blend of automated and live chat assistance, which delivers unmatched levels of customer satisfaction, and cost savings for the enterprise.

“Messaging has become a natural way to engage with a brand today, and it’s easy to do from devices and platforms that we’re all on daily,” said Robert Weideman, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Division, Nuance. “But engagement via messaging can present a real challenge to an organization in terms of providing a conversational experience, and getting the customer to an ultimate resolution of their query or issue. Asynchronous messaging allows us to deliver that simple and contextual engagement capability for organizations, independent of traditional customer service channels, meeting the consumer where they are, when they want, and without the need for the consumer to spend time calling into the contact center.”

While Nuance has long supported SMS, in-app messaging, and Facebook Messenger, enhancing Nuance messaging capabilities with the ability to handle asynchronous communications for automated and human-assisted conversations makes Nuance unique in providing solutions that overcome both the volume challenge and customer expectation barriers. Adding asynchronous messaging capabilities creates a more natural way for customers to communicate with the enterprise and receive the information they want. Further, enabling asynchronous messaging allows Nuance to optimize the experience when inviting a customer from an offline channel or when moving them from a voice to a digital channel. Customers receive an immediate response, addressing their demand for instant, always-on service, but at the same time they are able to answer at any time, immediately or later, with the conversation kept in context. Enterprises can also more effectively triage, respond to, and queue incoming customer conversations, answering, on average, 80% of incoming queries via a virtual assistant, and routing any remaining conversations to be triaged and routed to the appropriate team to be addressed efficiently.

Nuance is a recognized leader in providing automated and intelligent AI-powered customer engagement solutions to large enterprises around the world. There are over 6,500 enterprises using Nuance’s self-service technologies, processing an estimated 14 billion transactions each year. Nuance has over 700 professional services team members who integrate the Company’s customer service solutions deeply within the back-office systems of many of the leading telecommunications and financial institutions around the world, as well as leading healthcare, travel, and government organizations. In a single platform, Nuance is the only vendor to combine the tooling, intelligence and analytics of natural language processing (NLP) and cognitive technologies, as well as integrated security, to deliver automated and assisted solutions targeted to Enterprise needs.

For more information about asynchronous messaging, please visit here.

Additionally, Nuance will host a Webinar on the topic of asynchronous messaging on Thursday, June 8^th, at 8am PT/ 11am ET. To register, go here.

About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world.  Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications.  For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Trademark reference: Nuance and the Nuance logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Nuance Communications, Inc.
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