Digital Engagement Blog

The Sami people, who live in the northern tips of Scandinavia and Russia, use at least 180 words related to snow and ice. And as many as 1,000 words for reindeer.  

What does this have to do with NLU?  Read on... 

Before we dive into these use cases, you might want to bookmark these recent posts that provide additional background info and perspective leading up to the NLU use case discussion: 

• This post about conversational interfaces discusses about good and bad use cases for conversational agents and speech IVRs.
• This NLU Cheat Sheet post is a great backgrounder to boost your general understanding of natural language.

Ready?  Let's dig into the best use cases for an NLU Router:

NLU is a hot topic these days as it it powering many conversational interfaces. 

So I asked our speech experts to help explain NLU.

But first to Breaking Headlines:

• Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
• Ban on Nude Dancing on Governor’s Desk
• Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
• Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
• Stolen Painting Found by Tree
• Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
• Local HS Dropouts Cut in Half
• Hospitals Are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

LOL.

These headlines show that language is complex, ambiguous, flexible, and subtle.

A contact center agent can understand the headlines but does a machine/computer/IVR/chatbot have any hope of understanding what is said?

NLU to the rescue!

One technology that can help is NLU.  It can understand the meaning of conversations, dialogs and spoken interactions. 

If it's not already, NLU should be in your customer engagement strategy toolbox.

In this NLU Cheat Sheet, we cover definitions and basics for NLU.

Conversational Interfaces

Conversational interfaces where called a break-through technology by MIT Technology Review.

Another article went on to say...

"We think the next era will belong to “the conversational layer” — both text- and voice-driven — that will use chat, messaging, or natural language interfaces to interact with people, brands, services, and bots." 

This conversation layer is powered by conversational or dialog agents. A dialog agent can -

• listen to what you say
• understand what you want and your intent, and
• take action
• respond to you