The Key Differentiator Between Ellie™ and Other Third-Party AI Automated Solutions

Guest Blog by Kevin Beale, Amtelco’s VP for Software, Research & Development

Ellie™ is Amtelco’s AI-driven intelligent virtual agent which is based on our Intelligent Series (IS) call center platform and leverages our IS scripting engine. One of the keys to Ellie is that it is part of our core IS platform. This fully integrated AI solution offers significant benefits. In this post, I offer a closer look at this key benefit and why it’s important.

Flexible Call Routing

Automation doesn’t have to be an all or nothing choice. With Amtelco’s fully integrated solution, callers can be routed into Ellie based on certain conditions or selections. Many call centers are faced with peaks in call traffic that can be difficult to staff for. These peaks can be handled by offering callers the choice to speak to the automated agent rather than wait for a live agent. Callers can also be directed to automation based on call traffic thresholds being met for the number of active calls or the time callers are waiting to be answered.

Enhanced Navigation Menus

IS and Genesis have long had Navigation Menus that are basic IVR (interactive voice response) call trees. Ellie provides an enhanced caller experience. Ellie offers a multitude of different sounding voices, multi-lingual capabilities, and can use scripting for this interaction. Ellie can process requests from the caller and can change clients and initiate the script in the selected client.

Conversational Mode

Amtelco’s IS Scripting is powerful and flexible. It guides agents through any type of call flow, by providing the agents with the questions to ask the caller, allowing the agents to type in the responses from the caller, providing enhanced navigation and logic, interacting with third party systems via API’s, and initiating advanced dispatching scenarios. Scripted call flows are generally very structured, reducing agent training time and errors. Live agents can deviate from the structured script and make the call flow more natural, and so can Ellie!

Ellie operates in what we call conversational mode which provides a more natural interaction. Callers can ask natural questions, provide information in an order, and carry on a conversation with Ellie with the script as the general guide. For example, a caller can provide a description such as “I have a water leak with water leaking all over my basement”. Ellie will process this without having to add scripting logic and can automatically determine if the call is an emergency and if an on-call plumber needs to be reached.

Post-Call Surveys

Callers may start with a live agent and then benefit from being transferred into Ellie. One of the primary opportunities with this is to offer a caller an option to take a post-call survey. As the live agent is concluding the call, they can be prompted to ask the caller if they want to take a quick survey, or the script could be set to automatically transfer callers into the survey. The survey questions can be scripted like other Ellie call flows. The responses can be saved into the message, into a separate database, into a CRM package via an API integration, etc.

Transfer to Live Agent

One of the key benefits of Ellie being part of the core IS platform is that callers interacting with Ellie can request to speak to a live agent at any point during the call. Callers who may be struggling providing required information can also be directed to a live agent. As a caller is being transferred to a live agent, notes about the call popup to the live agent so they know why the caller is coming to them.

The same script that Ellie was running is also presented to the live agent, at the exact location in the script, to ensure all of the information provided by the caller up to that point is available, and the live agent can proceed from there.

Automated Outbound Calls

Amtelco’s IS Scripting can initiate automated outbound calls. These calls can be initiated based on a new message being taken that requires immediate dispatching, or can be scheduled. The automated outbound calls can be initiated from a live agent interaction or an automated Ellie interaction. With Ellie, these outbound calls can be scripted to control the outbound interaction, just like Ellie can control inbound call interaction. This offers many opportunities, including:

• Automated Overhead Paging – The ability to control what will be announced on the overhead page, and a variety of very natural human-sounding voices is especially useful in a healthcare setting.
• Automated Dispatching – As a message is taken, an automated outbound call can be generated. Ellie enables choosing the voice and scripting the interaction with the called party. For example, if a call is taken that requires an on-call resource to be paged, Ellie can generate a call to the on-call resource and can script the interaction with the resource. This provides the opportunity to play the message to the resource, ask the resource to confirm receipt of the message, or provide other feedback on their availability.
• Appointment Reminders – Amtelco’s IS can initiate automated appointment reminder notifications. These reminders can include email, SMS texting, and automated phone calls. For the automated calls, Ellie can script the interaction with the called party. This scripted interaction can play information about the upcoming appointment, and can ask the called party to confirm receipt of the message. With an API integration with appointment scheduling software, the script could ask the caller if they want to confirm the appointment, cancel the appointment, or reschedule.

Appointment Scheduling

Amtelco has an established appointment scheduling integration with EMR platforms such as Epic. This integration enables scripting the process for live agents and Ellie to lookup a patient, locate any pending appointments for a patient, confirm an appointment, or cancel an appointment.  Ellie uses an impressive appointment scheduling script that integrates with Epic software to allow searching, confirming, and cancelling appointments.

Directory Assistance

One of the great opportunities with Ellie is to automate Directory Assistance calls. These calls are generally very straight forward and don’t require a lot of human hand holding. The caller says who they want to locate, Ellie finds the person in the Amtelco IS Directory, and offers the opportunity to transfer to the person or leave them a message. These are many applications for this, including:

• Healthcare patient information calls. Ellie allows callers to say the room number if they know it, or say the patients name. Ellie will locate the patient, determine if they are available for contact, and offer options to connect with the patient or the assigned nursing station.
• Employee locator calls. Ellie allows callers to say an employee name or other information about the employee. Ellie will locate the employee, determine if they are available for contact, and offer options to connect with the employee.
• On-call schedule resource locator. On-call schedules are a very powerful module within the Amtelco IS platform. Any number of schedules can be created. Within each schedule, any number of shifts can be created with multiple resources covering each shift. Ellie allows callers to ask to get in touch with whomever is covering a certain schedule or shift. Ellie will announce who is covering and their availability status, and offer options to connect with the resource.

AI Script Interaction

Amtelco’s IS Scripting is AI enabled. Ellie utilizes the AI integration to drive the automated call flows. AI also can benefit live agent interactions.

• Retrieving information from an IS Info Page or other external resource and making it available to the script. This can be used by Ellie to allow the caller to ask company information without having to script it. Ellie knows the information and can provide it at any point in the call flow.
• Asking AI to perform functions as part of Ellie or a live agent call flow. This can be used with a live agent or Ellie script to interact with and obtain information or other resources from AI during the call. For example, a typical live agent script might have advanced “if/or” case branch logic to determine if a call is an emergency or not. With AI, the script can ask AI to make that determination, eliminating the need for the advanced scripting logic.

The sky is the limit! The key is that this element opens any script to interact with AI.

Multi-lingual

Ellie supports all of the major languages of the world. This is significant because many call centers and healthcare organizations utilize language translating services. And, even if they do use translation services, it is often a big challenge figure out which language a caller is speaking in order to determine which translator to transfer the caller to. Ellie can figure out the language, and then get the call to the best resource.

Automated Analytics

Amtelco’s Active Insights is a great solution to automate the process of recording, transcribing, and analyzing calls. The automated analytics can be applied to live agent calls and Ellie automated calls. Active Insights can automatically transcribe call recordings into text and can break up the transcription into what the agent says and the caller says. Once the call is transcribed into text, AI can analyze the conversation to evaluate how the agent handles the call, generate a summary of the call, and determine the caller sentiment. AI does this by following the instructions or context that you provide it.

For example, you can ask AI to generate a warning if the caller has become agitated or angry. This can alert the agent, and the call center supervisor that this call may be in trouble. AI can also generate a summary of each call that can be provided to the call center client. This summary can provide insights about opportunities for new services or enhancements to policies, based on the caller interaction.

Are you ready to learn more about Ellie? Contact us today, and request a demo.