Jabber, Virtual Personalities Team for Customer Service

Denver-based extensible IM developer Jabber Inc. said it is partnering with Malibu, Calif.-based Virtual Personalities to offer automated customer-service platforms that both improve customer relationship management (CRM) and cut costs.

Both companies will create a knowledge-based system for automated IM response for customer service applications. Enterprises that license the Jabber platform will now be able to offer an automated IM-based presence capable of handling many customer service questions in real time.

Because Jabber’s IM system is extensible, the CRM solution can be directly built into the enterprise portal, and can be customized with branding and integrated with existing CRM databases as well.

Jabber’s WebClient beats at the heart of the new product. WebClient lets enterprises and Internet portals to bring real-time communications to their end users without requiring them to install client side software on their PCs. Last month, Jabber expanded the capabilities of its WebClient last month; it now lets both Web portals and enterprises enable text chat and conferencing into offerings.

When a company embeds a Virtual Personalities-based automated presence behind the Jabber client, customers can access automated responses that can answer frequently asked questions, and direct queries to the most appropriate resource.

A demonstration of the Jabber WebClient embedded in a portal with both Virtual Personalities automated assistance and presence enabled live assistance is available at a special Web site.

This deal is an extension of one signed between the two companies last March. That pact, described as a co-marketing agreement, said that companies licensing the Jabber IM platform could include Verbot technology.

Bob Woods is the managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.