technologyreseller.co.uk 31 of benefits, but having ways, in the background, to connect to CRM systems and to ticket systems so that a process is digitalised and automated adds even more value,” he says. “With QL-IT (an NFON Gold partner and IT managed services provider), we have created a single number for inbound calls and a smart AI voicebot that identifies the caller’s need and either forwards the call, creates a ticket in the ticketing system used by QL-IT or, if something’s very urgent, sends an email to key people in the company so that they can deal with it directly. Instead of having just a cloud telephony system, you can add voicebots to integrate it into that wider infrastructure.” In addition to its voicebots and chatbots, botario provides a Live Chat feature, similar to the one NFON already provides in its contact centre solution CC Hub, that links to a company’s CRM system and enables a user to switch from a bot to a live agent and then back again as part of the same workflow – a capability that Hendriks says is vital for end user acceptance of AI bots. “In January, I did a talk at a university in Dortmund and as part of my research I came across a study showing that people feel pretty comfortable with AI chat and voicebots as long as, first, you make it clear that they are interacting with AI and not a human being, and, second, that you always give them the option to switch to a real person.” It is safe to assume that NFON will make sure it does. If it doesn’t, you can always give them feedback via Nia. www.nfon.com hallucination. They can click on the link provided and verify that the answer is consistent with information included in the source material,” explains Hendriks. He adds that Nia and the rolling introduction of AI-powered enhancements to NFON’s telephony products, starting with the transcription (and emailing) of voice mail messages, are obvious first applications of AI technology that as well as providing a practical benefit for customers help to advertise botario’s capabilities. Future developments, he suggests, will be influenced to an extent by user comments and requests submitted via Nia’s feedback button. “My team is really happy we now have Nia out there because, with this feedback button, our hope is that before we invest a lot of resources into cool, new features, we can see how people are using Nia and let their feedback dictate what we choose to do next,” he says. Building blocks In this context, Hendriks points out that the real magic of botario lies in the ease with which workflows can be created for internal purposes and for partnergenerated projects. “As developers, we can do a lot through scripting – all you need is proficiency in Python coding. But the goal of botario is also to have ready-to-use building blocks that let you build your flow with a low code, no code approach. The more projects we do in collaboration with the botario team, the more knowledge we gain about the needs of different customers and partners. This helps us identify and create building blocks we might have missed and make them available as an out-of-the-box solution.” He adds that these building blocks make it easier to move beyond knowledge retrieval to process automation. “Knowledge retrieval has a lot Tim Hendriks, Head of the AI core team at NFON AG, is part of the company’s recently formed AI & Innovation organisation, set up last year to enhance NFON telephony products with AI and create bespoke solutions for partners and end user customers. The new department, incorporating NFON’s previous AI Competence Centre, boasts additional resource and capacity and the ability to draw on AI skills and workflow automation tools gained through NFON’s acquisition of botari, a developer of voicebots and chatbots linking LLMs and corporate data sources. Fruitful collaboration The first product of this collaboration is the generative AI chatbot Nia, powered by botari, now deployed on NFON’s website, partner portal and internally. This provides users with quick answers to written questions about NFON and its products, freeing them from having to source the information themselves. “The obvious way to use Nia is as an alternative to documentation,” explains Hendriks. “Why navigate your way through the website to the technical documentation section, select the product you want to know something about and then the specific aspect you’re interested in, for example Call Forwarding, when you can ask Nia and get an answer in seconds? Already, with Nia version one, people recognise that it saves time, because instead of clicking five or six times, they just need to type one message and press enter.” For transparency and reassurance, NFON provides links to the source of any information, from static technical manuals to ever changing real-time data sources such as status updates for NFON’s Cloudya telephony platform. “We always want to tell the user where each piece of information comes from, so that they can confirm that it’s not an Following cloud telephony company NFON’s launch of an intelligent assistant, NIA, and the introduction of a two-pronged business transformation strategy based on growth in its cloud PBX business and in its AI capabilities (see Technology Reseller Issue 80 for more details), James Goulding spoke to Tim Hendriks of the NFON AI & Innovation organisation about how the company plans to develop its AI offering From knowledge retrieval to process automation AI
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