The Human Digital Assistant
by Jonty Pearce
www.callcentrehelper.com

Forget outsourcing, could the next step in call centres be agents replaced by talking 3D computer simulation?

Well we never thought that cartoons could be replaced with computer CGI characters such as in the films Shrek and Finding Nemo.

Perhaps one of the most striking products in the show was a major move forward in avatar technology. Moving much further forward than many of the avatars that we have seen (read our recent article on avatars) the Human Digital Assistant was a good 3-D representation of a lady, with reasonably good text to speech.

They were showing an example of how the service could be used on the website of a well known retailer. The product has been developed by an Italian development company called H-care, based close to Venice.

It is early days for the product, but they have already signed up a major deal with Telecom Italia. There are no customers in the UK so far, but it can’t be long before someone will be trialing it.