Outsell Releases iGent for Web Visitors' Questions

Outsell, LLC, Minneapolis, has released iGent, an Internet communications application that functions as an intelligent, 24/7 virtual agent on a company's Web site. It can be used to qualify and route customers, answer questions, serve as overload backup and guide customers through decision-making. Unique for today's chat technology, the application uses a neural network environment based on natural language recognition. This allows the virtual agent to handle multiple concepts simultaneously, which better accommodates human thought processes and greatly increases a company's ability to service customers.

"We believe this is the next level of knowledge representation exchange for the Internet," said Judson Bemis, Jr., chairman and CEO of Outsell. "iGent is where chat technology will go, and we are way ahead of the curve, with the most human-like interface on the market. This can revolutionize Internet customer service the way robotics revolutionized the automobile industry."

iGent is integrated into Outsell's popular Internet chat software application Digital Dialogue, a proprietary, browser-based, java-scripted application that allows direct, real-time interaction between shoppers visiting a company's Web site and the company's customer service agent.

As a virtual agent, iGent can respond to customer inquiries on a 24/7 basis, efficiently and consistently. A company using both Digital Dialogue and iGent can provide customers with live and virtual agents as appropriate. IGent can even refer customers to a live agent as needed.

"The potential for iGent is immense because it addresses the next major issue of the Internet, improved customer service," said Bemis. "Internet shoppers want immediate answers to their questions. When they don't get them, they move on. But companies aren't catching up with their shoppers -- 42% of companies don't respond to email questions within four days and shopping cart abandonment runs at 66%! iGent can solve both of these problems across a wide range of industries."

In order to create an efficient and flexible virtual agent, Outsell engineers chose the neural network environment because it accommodates the randomness of human behavior. The neural environment allows iGent to track the path and context of a conversation, and be "trained" so that it can answer more and more sophisticated questions and problems. And because neural technology doesn't require writing code, ramp-up times are measured in weeks and changes are measured in minutes.

The neural environment utilizes open scripting, peer-to-peer connectivity and Meta-browsing to quickly and easily create, customize, train and duplicate iGents. A company also has the option of having one uniform iGent that is the same for every Web site visitor, or iGents with different "personalities" that provide different responses of similar content. In either case, iGents can be centrally updated and trained.

Outsell, LLC (www.outsell.com) is an application development company that builds communications solutions for better e-commerce.

A live demo of iGent can be viewed at www.outsell.com.

Contact Bill Milon of Outsell, LLC, 612-378-4700, billcm@outsell.com.