It can be a strange experience. Go into most shops in most virtual worlds and there is no one ether - at least apart from other shoppers. The same goes for most of the big corporate presences as well. If a visitor has a question who do they ask?
Many shops will have a simple "greeter" script, which justs says a sentence as they arrive (and the smarter ones will not repeat the same sentence when you pop back 5 minutes later). Many will have "contact me" devices which let you page the shop owner - if they are on-line, or even awake! A few have basic "guides" which will take you on a tour of the shop. However very few, if any, have started to implement true virtual assistants using artificial intelligence and chatbot technology.
We've been developing chatbots for over 10 years. We wrote our first one in Javascript, and hav etaken part in global competitions such as Chatterbox Challenge. We believe that there is real potential to use virtual characters to provide staff for your virtual presence 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Whilst our most simple chatbots can be completely managed in world, our main chatbots use web server based software to manage the conversation, and only exhange the simple question and answer data with the in-world character. This has the added advantages that we can access the multitude of web services ot help build replies, and use the same chatbot engine to drive chatbots in multiple worlds, on the web, and even on mobile phones. This can give your customers a consistent experience across mutiple platforms.
Our Discourse conversational engine allows you to:
- Define conversational responses using an extended version of the AIML artificial intelligence mark-up language (an XML based markup)
- Send instructions to an in-world bot to give things to users, or to take them to places in the world
- Store users data and responss from visit to visit
- Access a wide variety of web services, including Google, Amazon, RSS feeds, library systems
- View logs and update cases using a web based management tool
- Integrate with web based avatar and text to speech packages
- Generate XML output to intergace to AJAX based forms embedded in web pages
In the world the chatbot can be as simple as a static or animated image on a virtual screen, or an autonomous bot that can move aroudn the world, following the visotr as they move about the store - or patrolling your area looking for the next visitor. In a world like Second Life we can even adjust what the chatbot says based on how long the users has been in-world!
Read more about our chatbots in Second Life.
You can talk to Halo, our most accomplished chatbot, either at our offices in Second Life, or on our chatbot website.
If you want to know more about how virtual characters can help your visitors interact with you within a virtual world just contact us.
Again this "interact" tag also applies to your in-world presence as well. Once you've built it you need to work at getting the rest of the virtual world to interact with your presence, your brand and you.
