Use this article to enable the Virtual Agent–Voice feature by integrating Webex Contact Center with cloud-based AI services.
The Virtual Agent–Voice (VAV) is a self-service capability in Webex Contact Center that helps you to integrate the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform with cloud-based AI services. VAV supports human-like interactions that provide intelligent and automated assistance to callers. The VAV capability enables callers to resolve issues quickly and more efficiently in the IVR flow, and reduces the calls directed toward human agents.
VAV uses technologies such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), and text-to-speech (TTS) to understand a caller’s intent and provide personalized and relevant voice responses.
VAV offers the following benefits:
-
Ability to respond quickly to caller's queries in real-time.
-
Ability to route a caller to a live agent if the virtual agent can’t handle the conversation.
Webex Contact Center uses the Contact Center AI (CCAI) services through the service provider-specific integration connector. Customers can use AI services to design virtual agents and create complex IVR call flows.
|
Webex Contact Center currently supports the following integration:
Google Dialogflow CX
Dialogflow CX agent is a virtual agent that handles concurrent conversations with your end users. It is a natural language understanding module that understands the nuances of human language. You can design and build agent bots to handle the types of conversations required for your system. For more information about CX, see the Google documentation.
The conversation between the virtual agent and the caller appears on the Transcript widget of the Agent Desktop.
The conversation appears on the Transcript widget only if the 'Agent Says' fulfillment response is set in Dialogflow CX. |
Prerequisites
To integrate with the VAV provider, complete the following tasks:
-
Configure the service provider-specific Integration Connector, such as the Google CCAI connector in Control Hub. For more information, see the Configure Google CCAI Connector topic in the Set Up Integration Connectors for Webex Contact Center article.
-
Create the Contact Center AI (CCAI) feature in Control Hub. For more information, see the Create a Contact Center AI configuration article. The system generates the CCAI config ID that you can use in the Flow Control configurations.
The partial response feature engages a caller during a call by playing an interim message while the webhook response takes time to process the request in the background. In Dialogflow CX, the webhook request typically takes longer to receive the response. If there is no interim response to the caller during the processing of the request, the caller is kept completely silent and there is a possibility of the caller hanging up the call. To prevent this, you can configure the partial response to inform the caller that their request is still being processed.
-
For more information about Partial Response, see the Partial Response for streaming API documentation.
-
For more information about Webhooks, see the Webhooks documentation.
|
1 |
In the Dialogflow CX console, choose the project and the agent. |
||
2 |
In the CX agent screen, go to the Build tab, and then choose the required flow and the required page (Start/End Flow/End Session) in this flow in which a fulfillment is needed from the contact center application. The selected page details appear.
|
||
3 |
Under the Routes section, define a route and conditions that satisfy the custom exit criteria for triggering the transition. |
||
4 |
In this route, under Fulfillment section, click Add dialogue option and choose Custom payload.
|
||
5 |
Add the custom payload of type
|
||
6 |
Choose Page in the Transition section to set the transition to the same page when the flow resumes. |
||
7 |
Create an event handler and provide the event name in the flow builder application. For more information, see https://cloud.google.com/dialogflow/cx/docs/reference/rest/v3/EventHandler. |
The Virtual Agent V2 activity provides a real-time conversational experience for your contacts. You can add the Virtual Agent V2 activity to the call flow to handle speech-based AI-enabled conversations. When a caller speaks, the system matches the speech to the best intent in the virtual agent. Further, it assists the caller as part of the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) experience.
OutcomesIndicates the output paths for the activity that occurs based on the outcome of the conversation between the virtual agent and the caller.
-
Handled– The outcome is triggered when the virtual agent execution is completed.
-
Escalated– The outcome is triggered when the call is required to be escalated to the human agent.
Indicates the output path of the activity for any error that occurs during the conversation between the virtual agent and the caller.
Errored– The flow takes this path in any error scenarios.
Before you begin
In the Management Portal, complete the following tasks:
-
Configure the entry point. For more information, see Entry Point and Queues.
-
Choose the flow in routing strategy. For more information, see Viewing, Creating, Deleting and Modifying Routing Strategies.
1 |
From the Management Portal navigation bar, choose . |
||||||||||||
2 |
Click New. |
||||||||||||
3 |
In the Flow Name field, enter a unique name. |
||||||||||||
4 |
Click Start Building Flow. The Flow Designer window appears. |
||||||||||||
5 |
Drag and drop the Virtual Agent V2 activity from the Activity Library to the main flow canvas. |
||||||||||||
6 |
In General Settings, perform the following actions:
|
||||||||||||
7 |
In the Conversational Experience settings, choose the Contact Center AI Config name from the Contact Center AI Config drop-down list. The Contact Center AI Config is populated based on the CCAI feature that is configured on Control Hub. If you want to override the default input language and output voice for VAV, include the Set Variable activities before the Virtual Agent V2 activity in flow. For custom input language, configure the Set Variable activity as follows:
For custom output voice, configure the Set Variable activity as follows:
For more information about the supported voices and languages in CX, see Supported voices and languages. |
||||||||||||
8 |
In the State Event settings, enter the custom event name and the data in the Event Name - Event Data columns. The State Event is a mechanism to trigger the event handler that is configured on the agent bot. In the agent bot, you can configure how the event must be handled.
You can specify the event name and the data in the form of static value or expression. For expressions, use this syntax: Event Name: Event Data: |
||||||||||||
9 |
In Advanced Settings, perform the following actions:
|
||||||||||||
10 |
In Activity Output Variables, you can view the list of variables that stores the output status of the event that occurs during the conversation between the virtual agent and the caller.
|