Glossary–Nuance omni-channel customer engagement

A

Active authentication

The authentication system prompts the speaker for a preset phrase that is used to match to a voiceprint on file.

Agent connect

A capability of the Proactive Notifications platform that first places a call into the client's contact center and connects with an agent before placing a call to a customer, allowing the agent to be on the call when the customer answers.

Analytic AI

Artificial intelligence for analytics classifies items of interest, clustering to determine what’s prevalent, recognizes patterns to discover correlations and retrieves information to derive useful knowledge. Analytic AI delivers valuable insights into consumer preferences, behavior, sentiment and intents that can be used to deliver differentiated experiences throughout the customer lifecycle.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A technology that allows machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence such as recognizing human speech and language, interpret the meaning of words and data, and apply context and reasoning to each interaction.

Asynchronous messaging

Contextual customer engagement capability that allows consumers to engage with the brand through messaging channels at any time from where ever they are.

Automated guides

A feature of Nuance Virtual Assistant and Live Chat that takes site visitors through a product selection cycle, for faster routing or as a tutorial to educate your customers on key tools and features.

Automated password reset

Enables customers to simply and securely reset password and PINs just by using their voice.

Automatic speech recognition

A technology that increases the efficiency of customer self-service applications by allowing users to speak entries rather than punching numbers on a keypad.

B

Big data

Structured and unstructured data that can be mined for information for the purpose of deriving business insights.

Biometric authentication

A security process that verifies a user by their unique characteristics such as voice and facial recognition, as well as fingerprint, retinal, and behavioral verification.

Biometric face authentication

A security process in which a user can use their camera to take a picture that can be compared with a face on file to identify who they are.

Biometric fingerprint

A security process in which a user can use their unique fingerprint to authenticate themselves.

Business intelligence

The result of insights gathered from data science and analysis, and typically presented in laymen's terms.

C

Call steering

Utilizing Natural Language Understanding (NLU), call steering allows users to speak freely to indicate what they want to accomplish and then routes them quickly to the right destination.

Call transfer

A key outcome of a proactive notification application using interactive voice messaging where the customer is transferred into the client's contact center, either at their request or automatically after they have answered the call.

Caller authentication

Validating the identity of a caller using their voice by either actively authenticating the caller with a vocal password or by passively listening to the caller while they are talking with a contact center agent.

Chatbot

A conversational self-service tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can have an automated conversation with a customer in any digital channel; capability to utilize the learnings from past conversations to continuously improve the engagement.

Contact pacing

A capability of the Proactive Notification platform that automatically adjusts the pace of outbound attempts to contact customers based on a continuously calculated estimate of the client's capacity to handle any inbound calls stimulated by the outbound campaign.

Conversational AI

Artificial intelligence for conversation is the building block that enables organizations to deliver omni-channel experiences that originate in or through the channel or device of a consumer’s choosing and navigate seamlessly across channels to achieve their desired outcome.

Conversational IVR

An interactive voice response (IVR) system that enables human-like interactions and allows individuals to speak freely to self-serve and successfully resolve issues within the IVR.

Conversational text

A solution implemented on the Nuance Proactive Notification platform that uses Nina to automatically respond to customers in a conversation conducted over SMS.

Cross-channel insights

The result of taking data and using analytics tools and processes to derive information from multi-channel customer interactions.

Customer engagement

Developing ongoing and loyal relationships with your customers by positively interacting with them when they need it most.

Customer experience

The interactions a company has with customers throughout the customer journey and the touchpoints along the way.

Customer service messaging

Nuance's capability to engage your customers on their terms across mobile messaging channels – SMS, branded and messaging apps–with a seamless customer experience.

D

Daily record processes (DRP)

A statistic tracked by the Proactive Notifications platform that counts the customer records in which a Proactive Notifications application attempted at least once in a 24-hour period.

Daily analysis

The process of inspecting, cleansing and modeling big data with the goal of discovering useful information and patterns to support decision-making.

Data science

The process and people necessary to derive understanding, significance and form from big data, business intelligence and analytics.

Deep learning

Supervised or unsupervised, deep learning is an application of machine learning in which complex algorithms, neural networks and multiple layers of processing and analysis enable machines to learn with little or no human supervision.

Deep neural networks (DNN)

Systems inspired by the layers of neurons in the human brain and nervous system capable of solving problems where the methods for doing so are not known.

Digital collections

The process of collecting upcoming or late payments from customers by notifying them through digital channels –SMS, email, push notifications – so businesses can collect more while spending less.

Digital engagement

Engaging with customers seamlessly using virtual assistants and live agents through multiple digital channels such as web, apps, messaging and IoT devices.

Do not call (DNC)

An acronym for the federal do not call list managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

F

Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA)

A federal law governing collection agencies, debt buyers and collection attorneys that seeks to constrain a variety of practices deemed to be abusive in the process of collecting debts.

Fraud alert

Communication to the agent and fraud team when a fraudulent activity is identified.

H

Hosted IVR

A cloud-based conversational IVR that enables businesses to lower costs while benefiting from continuous innovation.

Human-assistance virtual assistant (HAVA)

A technology that allows the virtual assistant to seamlessly pull in a human agent in case it has a low confidence or does not know the answer to a customer's question; the feedback from the human agent is logged for continuous intent and dialog learning.

I

Individual deaccessioning

A capability of the Proactive Notification platform that tracks individual customers responses to previous contact attempts and uses this information to automatically adjust the strategy to increase the likelihood of successful engagement in the current attempt.

Intelligent assistant

A conversational self-service tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can have an automated conversation with a customer in any digital channel; capability to utilize the learnings from past conversations to continuously improve the engagement.

Interactive voice response (IVR)

A telephony technology that automates phone-based interactions by allowing users to interact with a computer through the use of voice or dual-tone-multi-frequency (DTMF) input tones via the keypad.

IVR to digital

Optimizes the IVR experience by helping targeted callers move seamlessly from traditional phone calls to a digital experience such as a virtual assistant or live chat.

L

Live chat

Allows customers to chat with a human agent within digital channels, such as website, app, messaging and more.

M

Machine learning

An application of AI centered around the idea that through access to data, machines can discover patterns, learn and progressively improve without being explicitly programmed.

Message on demand

A cloud-based application that lets you quickly create, modify and deploy messages–for outage, emergency, and other alerts–across channels.

Message retrieval

Also known as alert retrieval AR, message retrieval is the process of accessing a personalized voice message that was staged on the Proactive Notifications platform when a customer was not immediately engaged by an outbound communication.

Minutes of use (MOU)

A statistic tracked by the Proactive Notification platform that counts the minutes of platform time that were used in attempts to reach customers by a Proactive Notifications application.

Multi-channel

The blending of channels that are used within a campaign where the product or brand lies at the core of the marketing efforts.

Multi-modal biometric authentication

Biometric authentication via more than one modality including; voice, facial, fingerprint, retinal, and behavioral biometrics.

Multimedia content

A feature of Nuance Virtual Assistant and Live Chat that gives the ability to present videos, offers and other multimedia content to consumers either as part of a conversation with a virtual assistant or human agent or standalone, for example on the website; enables a truly personalized online customer service experience.

N

Natural language processing (NLP)

A branch of computer science focused on discovering patterns in large bodies of written or spoken language data, usually through the application of machine learning.

Natural language understanding (NLU)

Used to determine the meaning of text, often in conjunction with dialog to understand the broader context of a request, resolve ambiguity and classify user intents.

O

Omni-channel

The immersion of channels that are used within a campaign or customer engagement where the customer lies at the core of the brands' efforts.

Omni-channel customer experience

Transforming customer service into an experience consumers love through customer engagement solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

On-demand service

Cloud-based infrastructure that hosts technologies and platforms to reduce the costs to businesses, increase efficiency and enhance responsiveness.

P

Passive authentication

The authentication system listens in the background of a conversation and matches the speaker to a voiceprint on file.

Payment collections

The action of collecting late and upcoming payments from your customers.

Payment reminder

An outbound reminder sent via voice, text, email and push notifications to customers reminding them of upcoming and late payments.

Predictive AI

Artificial intelligence for prediction can predict the next action, proactively engage with consumers in digital and voice channels, prevent fraud or up/cross-sell products and services.

Predictive dialer

An automated outbound dialing system that simultaneously makes multiple calls from a list of telephone numbers at pace based on a prediction of the answer rate and agent availability, detects when and by what a call is answered, and connects the live answers to the longest/soonest available agent while simultaneously delivering a screen of customer information pertinent to the intended recipient of the call.

Proactive notifications

Effectively reaching out to customers via voice, text, email, push and other notification channels while adhering to state and federal regulations. Proactive Notifications is also the product name of Nuance's outbound platform.

Promise to pay (PTP)

A commitment made by a customer past due to pay their bill by a future date, a key outcome in collections applications of proactive notifications.

Public security

Biometric authentication solutions for government, military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies that can accurately match an individual's identity with content captured through any type of audio channel against audio files using text-independent voice biometric algorithms.

R

Right party contract (RPC)

A key outcome in an attempt to reach a customer using proactive notifications that indicates the person answering an interactive voice message was the intended recipient.

S

Self-learning analytics

Data science models that are trained on what has happened, and use it to predict what will happen next using artificial intelligence.

Social media engagement

Nuance's capability to engage your customers in social networks for always-on customer services across the entire journey.

Speech recognition

The ability for a computer program to recognize a person's unique speech articulation – the way a person pronounces vowels and consonants.

Speech to text

The ability for a computer program to recognize a person's speech output and translate into text that can be leveraged as either actual text or a command.

Structured data

Data with a high degree of organization that can be simply searched for by a search operation.

T

Targeting engine

A technology that empowers your business to track all user behavior, demographic information, and other website variables, then easily identify optimal engagement opportunities, for example, a virtual assistant for simple tasks and a human-assisted engagement for more complex issues.

Telemarketing sales rule (TSR)

A regulation of the Federal Trade Commission implementing the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, governing the practices of telemarketing, including the requirement to honor consumer do not call requests.

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)

A federal law implemented by the Federal Communications Commission governing the use of automated dialing, texting, prerecorded voice messaging and faxing consumers. Violations are subject to penalties of $500-$1500 per call.

Text to speech (TTS)

A technology that creates an engaging and personalized user experience by converting text into a spoken voice output.

Transcription engine

A technology that automatically transcribes multi-speaker audio data with the high accuracy and turns pre-recorded or love audio streams into actionable data that can be used for a host of new applications.

U

Unstructured data

Data that does not have a pre-defined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner and may contain any combination of text, numbers, facts, dates.

V

Virtual assistant (VA)

Commonly known as virtual customer assistant (VCA), virtual digital assistant (VDA) or virtual personal assistant (VPA). A virtual assistant is a conversational self-service tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can have an automated conversation with a customer in any digital channel; capability to utilize the learnings from past conversations to continuously improve the engagement.

Vocal password

Users can simply and securely use a spoken passphrase to validate their identity by matching their voiceprint on file.

Voice authentication

A security process in which a user can use their unique voiceprint to authenticate who they are by matching the voiceprint on file.

Voice biometrics

A security authentication technology that compares a person's voice to a voiceprint on file to simply and securely verify one's identity.

Voice identification

Similar to voice authentication, voice identification is a security process in which a user can actively use their voice to authenticate by using a vocal password, or passively, by listening in the background while the user talks to a contact center agent.

Voice of customer (VOC) analytics

The process that automates the analysis of customer data to provide insights into what customers are saying about a business, product or service across all customer interactions.

Voice recognition

The ability for a computer program to recognize a person's unique voice signature and assist with identification.

Voice to text software

Technology that takes audio streams and recordings of multi-speaker conversations and returns the text transcript of the dialog.

Voiceprint

A mathematical representation of the speaker's voice using that can be compared to a secondary voiceprint to facilitate authentication.

Transcription engine

A technology that automatically transcribes multi-speaker audio data with the high accuracy and turns pre-recorded or love audio streams into actionable data that can be used for a host of new applications.