Virtual Agent Interface for Parallel Shopping Actions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional online shopping systems lack the ability to assist customers in multiple actions simultaneously, leading to tedious sequential processes, poor customer experience, and inefficiencies in locating products in brick-and-mortar stores, with no equivalent assistance from virtual agents.
Innovation Solution
A virtual agent system that processes user inputs such as voice, speech, facial expressions, and navigation patterns to identify desired actions, execute them, and provide personalized assistance, including context-based responses and transaction capabilities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If conventional online shopping systems process customer requests sequentially through multiple web pages, then system complexity is reduced, but customer service quality and shopping efficiency deteriorate due to tedious sequential processes and inability to handle multiple actions simultaneously
Solution Approach 1:
A virtual agent is introduced as an intermediary component that sits between the customer and the complex e-commerce system. The virtual agent receives natural language inputs from customers, interprets their intentions, and executes multiple actions simultaneously by coordinating with the underlying system components. This intermediary layer shields customers from system complexity while enabling parallel processing of multiple shopping tasks.
Solution Approach 2:
The virtual agent is designed as a universal interface that can handle multiple types of customer requests simultaneously - searching for products, checking prices, comparing items, adding to cart, and placing orders all through a single conversational interface. This multi-functional capability allows the system to process diverse actions in parallel rather than sequentially.
2Reliability
If customers interact with customer representatives for assistance, then service quality improves, but waiting time and time loss increase due to unavailability and long connection delays
Solution Approach 1:
The virtual agent enables customers to serve themselves by processing their requests automatically without requiring human customer representative intervention. The agent can independently handle product searches, price comparisons, and order placements, eliminating the need for customers to wait for representative availability while maintaining consistent service quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical system of human customer representatives with an automated virtual agent system. This substitution eliminates the limitations of human availability and response time, providing instant service to customers while reducing operational costs and improving scalability.
3Ease of manufacture
If brick and mortar stores use physical racks for product storage, then inventory management is simplified, but product location time and customer effort increase due to difficulty in locating products across scattered racks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a digital dimension to the physical store environment by implementing a virtual agent system that provides overlay information about product locations. The system uses multiple dimensions of information (GPS coordinates, store layout data, product database) to guide customers directly to products, transforming the traditional single-dimensional physical navigation into a multi-dimensional navigation system that includes digital guidance layers.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for executing actions based on user input is provided. The system comprises a virtual agent for a software application, wherein the virtual agent is configured to store a correlation between actions available in the software application. Further, the system associates one or more of the actions with one or more tags. The system receives at least an audio input from a user of the software application and uses the input to identify an action desired by the user to be performed among the actions. Further, the system executes one or more actions based on the desired action and the correlation between the actions available in the software application.