The best virtual assistants and what are they even? Virtual assistant – the profession of the future
And a reliable accountant for our fictitious company. The business is back on its feet, in some places it has begun to grow, new clients arrive, there is a mountain of work, we return home late and irregularly, on weekends we amuse ourselves by completing tasks that were not completed during the work week. 1024 cups of espresso and a couple of sleepless nights later, voices in my head begin to whisper the magic word “delegation”. Having overcome difficult moral contradictions, about which Maxim Ilyakhov wrote well, the entrepreneur begins to look for a person who will help him break out of the routine. This person could be a secretary, personal assistant or business assistant.
The market offers a bunch of options, starting with web services and ending with full-time employees. We have done a little research and want to talk about popular options that will suit Moscow entrepreneurs ranging from micro to medium-sized businesses. Let's try to be objective and not pull the blanket on the Button, although this is not easy.
Online service exchanges
The Internet has given the temporarily unemployed, students, people without experience and opponents of the office lifestyle the opportunity to become “freelance general professionals” or simply earn extra money in their free time.Virtual assistant
Stylish, fashionable, youth outsourcing has penetrated into all areas, the topic of this post is no exception. For relatively little money, you can get a virtual secretary or an entire front office that will work with correspondence, take calls, search and structure the necessary information and carry out simple mechanical tasks without taking up your office space (if any).Virtual assistant services, like YourBees or Assistant, can take on slightly more complex tasks. These guys will book a hotel, order flowers for the woman they love, organize a holiday, and help find employees, suppliers, contractors and even real estate. It was not possible to find a clear boundary of the virtual assistant’s competencies - he will take on any legal assignments that do not require leaving the office. If you can’t do it yourself, he’ll help you find a contractor.
Another type of virtual assistant is a concierge service. Essentially, this is a premium virtual assistant that will be 146% more courteous, polite and diligent. Such services, as a rule, come in addition to elite brands like Vertu, Visa cards of the Gold level and higher, or membership in closed luxury clubs, so not everyone will be able to receive Holy Communion. We have never encountered such phenomena face to face, but they say that the quality is at the highest level. Maybe you have had such an experience?
Who is it suitable for?
Virtual secretaries and assistants will save you from the daily struggle with routine and free up time for thoughts about taking over the world. The entrepreneur does not have to think about who to entrust this or that task to. Disadvantages: you will have to work with different employees (although there are assistants at the dedicated and elite levels) who will not be immersed in the specifics of the business. But such an assistant will never get sick or give up everything for a trip to an exotic country.What is the price
- From 5,000 rubles per month for a virtual secretary;
- from 500 rubles per hour of virtual assistant work;
- concierge service is priceless.
Links
Virtual secretary/office: secretservice.ru, matrixoffice.ru, callcenter24.ru.Remote secretary
It is incredibly difficult to select new epithets for a category that you are describing for the third time. A remote secretary has the same pros and cons as a remote accountant or lawyer. The advantages are a more personal approach than virtual assistants and a lower cost compared to a full-time employee. The disadvantages are also obvious: not the highest motivation, the impossibility of physical influence. And he won’t bring tea.On the other hand, the secretarial profession does not require the same level of knowledge, skills and abilities that are required by an accountant and lawyer. You can hire an acquaintance, a neighbor's daughter, or a second great-nephew. The main thing is responsibility and discipline. It is advisable to enter into a civil law agreement to avoid legal battles.
Who is it suitable for?
For those who need a personal approach. Theoretically, when a business has an office with a reception, a remote employee will be able to level up to a full-time employee. In this case, the entrepreneur will not have to re-introduce the person to the inner workings of his company.What is the price
10,000-30,000 rubles per month.Employee on staff
Office secretary is a category overgrown with a bunch of clichés and stereotypes. According to humorous jokes, the duties of the secretary include coating the horn plates with paints and varnishes, transporting tonic drinks and hunting for the hand, heart and wallet of the boss. In his free time from these important activities, the secretary is engaged in sorting mail, receiving calls and visitors, purchasing office supplies and sorting out those tasks that the manager does not like.If a secretary works hard and does more than is expected of him, there is a chance to earn the “personal assistant” or “business assistant” achievement. This person is needed not only and not so much for shifting pieces of paper and pressing buttons on the coffee machine. This is the same healthy head on which you can shift problems with the patient, a second memory and a third hand for an entrepreneur.
An assistant with the prefix “personal” is designed to fulfill the whims of an entrepreneur - order something somewhere, collect information, make an appointment, run and bring it (the clinical case is perfectly described in the first person). A “business class” assistant is, in fact, a miniature executive director who often knows more about the company’s operating activities than the business owner. He helps organize business processes, can independently communicate with clients and suppliers, and sometimes even make decisions and give advice to his boss.
This profession is not taught at university, so it is unlikely that you will be able to find a solution out of the box. If the level of an accountant and lawyer can be assessed at least by professional qualities, then choosing a personal assistant or business assistant requires a completely different approach. When selecting assistants for Button, we use tasks that help assess their horizons, erudition, mobility, ability to interact with people and work with new information. Simply put, you need to look for a person who loves and knows how to learn and is ready to work without job descriptions. This is the case when a person must organize the work of his manager, and not vice versa.
Who is it suitable for?
The purpose of this category is clear without further ado. The need for such employees appears among owners of “adult” medium-sized businesses and top managers of large companies. In large intergalactic corporations, this role is performed by several people, or even a couple of departments: office managers, call center, secretariat and others like them.What is the price
30,000-50,000 rubles per month for a secretary assistant;40,000-80,000 rubles per month for a personal assistant/business assistant;
100,000 and above for a dude of the “let a pink pony fly to me on a rainbow Falcon 9 right now” class.
Links
Search for relevant queries on HeadHunter, SuperJob.What place does the Button occupy?
A business assistant in Knopka is the main person in the team from the client’s point of view - it is the business assistant who communicates with the entrepreneur, accepts tasks, transfers them to a button accountant or lawyer, or solves them independently. The client may forget the name of the service, the address of our website, or the color of ButtonCat, but he always knows his business assistant by name. The business assistant, in turn, knows everything about the affairs of each client.As development progressed, we rethought the role of the business assistant several times. At first he was perceived as a personal assistant, then as a secretary, but later, when our guys improved a lot, we realized that they were doing an excellent job with the tasks that a business assistant usually performs. Of course, a push-button assistant can still book a flight, find a good restaurant in an unfamiliar city, or sign up for a pedicure, but it can do more.
Working in a team with an accountant and lawyer, our business assistant will help build business processes right up to the launch of a new project or direction. We hire real superheroes, they constantly study, work with different businesses and, sometimes, know what you don’t expect from them. It’s unlikely that it will be possible to list everything without inflating the post into an unreadable footcloth, but you can read about a couple of real examples
In yet another attempt to implement ideas from science fiction films, tech giants, one after another, began working on virtual assistants. At the Google I/O 2016 conference the company presented Google Assistant, as well as an analogue of Amazon Echo - the home voice assistant Google Home.
The latest major company to enter the virtual assistant race. Let's figure out what competitors it has (including among startups).
First, let's remember what Google Now is.
Google Voice Search/Google Now
Peculiarities: Fast. Extremely accurate when creating routes. It frightens you with its knowledge of your flights, bookings and other details. with some third-party applications: manage notes, messages and music playback.
Flaws: Sometimes you get bored with excessive initiative (for example, it shows the results of games of teams that are not interesting to you, or routes to home from famous places). Useless when controlling a smart home. Work on integration with third-party applications seems to have stalled.
Humanity Level: Null. Not conducive to communication. It doesn't even have a name other than Google.
Summary: Google's vast reserves of personal data and access to a search engine should, in theory, make Google an industry leader, but the company has yet to even figure out how to leverage its advantages and create an assistant that can understand the user. Today, Google Now and voice search compete on equal terms with Siri, but have not yet reached a new level of development.
And now - about competitors.
Apple Siri
What: A voice assistant that can talk to the user and give proactive recommendations. Activated by long pressing the Home button on the iPad. Assistant support has recently appeared on Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Peculiarities: Easy to use on iOS devices. Understands natural speech. Knowledgeable about news, weather, sports, movies, routes and local businesses. Can tell you what to watch on TV. Able to interact with some elements of a “smart home”.
Flaws: Cannot interact with most other applications and services. Works slower than some competitors.
Humanity Level: He is not able to maintain a full conversation, but at certain moments he demonstrates his own wisdom. The female voice sounds relatively human.
Flaws: It feels great on Windows - a platform that is least interesting to developers, and, perhaps, to users. Using the assistant on Android and iOS is more difficult and has fewer functions.
Humanity Level: Loves jokes, especially banal ones. Has a long list of witty answers to common questions at the ready. Can read passages from Shakespeare.
Summary: After years of being in the shadows of Siri and Google, Cortana has become a much more interesting chatbot. Microsoft wants to make its voice assistant the underlying intelligence for all other bots, able to manage your travels, meetings, to-do lists and other things, as well as increase integration with other Microsoft products, such as Office. The company's goal is to create a new shell for computing technologies in the post-PC era, but it's too early to judge whether it will succeed or not.
Facebook M
What: Partly managed, partly by people, and still in development. M will be a text-based assistant in the Facebook Messenger environment.
Peculiarities: Will try to do everything you ask.
Flaws: It is not yet a finished product, and will not be for a long time. Available only to a small number of users in San Francisco.
Humanity Level: Extremely high, since people will be involved in shaping the answers to questions. According to Wired, the company hopes that over time M will learn from these operators and be able to work more independently.
Summary: At this point, M is little more than just an idea. But given Facebook's interest in chatbots in general, it wouldn't be surprising if M ends up being super-intelligent.
X.ai
What: One of the few virtual assistants that has only one function. It works only through e-mail, where it can make appointments at your request.
Peculiarities: Knows your schedule and preferences, negotiates with other participants for you.
Peculiarities: Viv promises that their product will be able to understand complex questions such as: “Will the temperature near the Golden Gate Bridge be above 20 degrees the day after tomorrow after 5 pm?” Work is underway to ensure compatibility with third-party applications.
Flaws: So far, other than prepared presentations, there is no evidence that everything works exactly as stated.
Humanity Level: Visual aids and specific answers are valued more than detailed descriptions. The presence of wit is questionable.
Flaws: Integration options with third-party applications are limited, and it is impossible to open the service directly on iOS or Android. Requests that the assistant cannot recognize are redirected to Ask.com.
Humanity Level: He is not inclined to have long conversations, but he knows how to answer additional questions.
Summary: It appears that Hound's mobile apps really only exist to showcase the capabilities of the Houndify service (adding voice assistant functionality to any app - editor's note), which SoundHound plans to sell to other companies. If everything works out, we won’t even know that we are using it.
Ozlo
What: AI, whose main function at the moment is to search for cafes, bars and restaurants. Available to a limited number of users.
Peculiarities: Finds and combines data from multiple sources, including Yelp and Foursquare, and then presents everything in the form of convenient cards. Tries to communicate by asking and answering follow-up questions, such as “what places are open now?” or “what’s on their menu?”
Flaws: Limited features unless Ozlo creators add new features. AI relies heavily on users to train.
Humanity Level: Avoids unnecessary pleasantries, only briefly greets by name.
Summary: Ozlo would be no different from many other chatbots if it did not have the prospect of creating something more. The ability to combine data from multiple sources into a single result is unique, but it remains to be seen whether developers will be able to realize the full potential they claim. In the meantime, Ozlo's business plan is limited to just the app, and there may be problems collecting the data necessary for training.
SpeakToIt Assistant.ai
What: One of many copies of Siri. In the app store, searching for Siri brings up many similar programs, such as Voice Commands, Voice Secretary and Assistant.
Peculiarities: Not much different from Siri, but can learn custom commands to activate a list of functions.
Flaws: Not as useful as the built-in assistant on your smartphone, and not as convenient.
Humanity Level: It sounds rather unnatural, but portrays himself as a human assistant whose gender and appearance can be changed.
Summary: Some of these Siri clones look like a relic of the past, when not all iPhone models could work with Apple's proprietary assistant and needed to be replaced. In any case, it seems that their creators realize that such an approach will not achieve success. For example, SpeakToIt moved to create a set of tools that other developers could use to make their own chatbots.
Assistant is your virtual assistant. He knows the answers to all questions and carries out any commands.
Decor
The application is designed in Material Design style. When first launched, the user is asked to select a background color, as well as customize the appearance of their virtual assistant. It can be a woman or a man, young or an older character, with any appearance - in a suit/T-shirt, with a hairstyle, and so on.
Peculiarities
You can activate the assistant in different ways. You can click on the keyboard or speaker icon in the main menu of the application. You can use the status bar. You can use a widget. You can shake the device (the shaking strength can be adjusted separately). Can be activated by voice.
Characteristic
Weather. “Should I take an umbrella today or not?” In response to this question, the Assistant will display a weather forecast and comment on the data.
Applications. The assistant will launch any application at your command. And if it suddenly isn’t on your device, the assistant will offer to install it from PlayMarket.
Translator. The assistant knows all the languages of the world and can translate words, phrases, sentences and even entire texts. You can start the translation with the word: “Translate into English...”.
Directory. The assistant will answer any question and even provide relevant sources on the Internet.
Telephone. The assistant will automatically dial the number from your address book. YOU can also dictate the number yourself.
Virtualdigitalassistant is a web service and/or application for smartphones and personal computers that takes on the functions of a personal secretary to optimize daily activities. It is capable of planning a schedule, reminding about business and meetings, searching for information necessary for the owner: selecting places of recreation and entertainment, searching and online booking tickets, ordering a taxi. It is also an electronic interlocutor that responds to voice calls. Heself-learns, adapting to the individual characteristics of a particular person, provides information, taking into account the context - the user’s location, the scope of his interests, and habits.
This is the fundamental difference between virtual digital assistants and personal assistants of previous generations. The latter regularly perform the function of organizers, planning the day and reminding about meetings. But they won’t cancel, say, a meeting in Hong Kong if the owner’s flight is delayed and he is actually in Moscow. Virtual digital assistants take this into account as they are closely tied to location-based services. In addition, they use all layers of information about the user available to them.
Virtual digital assistant: history of creation
The independent non-profit research institute SRI International (California, USA), known as a former division of Stanford University, which previously implemented such technological innovations as the computer mouse and the prototype of the Internet, joined the efforts of researchers in 2005 with an ambitious goal: to create a digital assistant capable of cognition , training and systematization. The project was called CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) and was part of the PAL (Personalized Assistant that Learns) program - creating artificial intelligence for the needs of the military.
Thus, initially it was a defense order. Researchers put forward ideas and presented prototypes of virtual assistants that meet the goal of unprecedented feedback between the user and the service. Finally, in 2009, the completion of work on the CALO project was officially announced. $150,000,000 was invested in it, and the US Army received a digital assistant that can parse mail, report on the contents of emails, and create schedules for meetings.
Siri: the ultimate virtual digital assistant
Siri, a personal scheduling service for smartphones, is designed for the masses. Siri converts a voice or text message into a search query. According to the given parameters, it searches for places of recreation and entertainment, services located near the point where the user is located, and also performs many other functions of a personal secretary - and sometimes does this with unobtrusive humor embedded in it by the developers. If you ask Siri to find an Italian restaurant with a romantic setting, it will do so by determining the user's location and will return a list of nearby restaurants that have the phrase "romantic setting" in their reviews.
In April 2010, the project was bought by Apple. And starting with the iPhone 4S, the Siri app became standard software. Since then, the functionality and quality of speech recognition of this virtual digital assistant has improved markedly. Siri has learned to interact with a huge number of applications and services for an even more individual approach to the user. However, clearly not all of them are aware of the capabilities of a personal digital assistant. Two years after the launch of Siri on the iPhone 4S, it turned out that only 15.2% of Apple smartphone users had ever trieduse this service .
GoogleNow, Cortana and other competing assistants
On the Apple platform, Siri knows no competition. However, she is not the only one in the big digital world. Let's say there is a Rearden Personal Assistant - -a service from Rearden Commerce, launched in 2008 for corporate clients in the US and UK. It helps organize a business trip and order all related services, combining scattered information from the websites of travel companies, airports, restaurants, car rentals - and thus helping to plan your schedule and expenses. As befits a virtual assistant, the service takes into account the user’s location and, if necessary, makes changes to his schedule, independently notifying partners about the postponement of meetings.
There are also startup projects, in particular, the Russian ePythia, a geolocation service and task scheduler for smartphones. The service sends the user a reminder of the task when he finds himself in a certain place. The project was launched in 2010 and is now at the open beta testing stage.
However, the “big three” of virtual digital assistants have already been decided. This is in addition to Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Google's Google Now.
Cortana for Windows Phone was introduced in April 2014. In essence, it has the same functions as Siri: plans, reminds, sends messages, recognizes music, searches for nearby places. It also responds to voice and text messages. If you allow her, she will read email, messages on social networks, and your contact list in order to be as useful as possible. All information is stored by the virtual assistant in a notepad; it can be edited, leaving information about important places and people. The fundamental difference between Cortana and Siri is that the service can not only respond to requests, but also make calendar entries, formulate reminders, analyzing the history of user actions, that is, actually predict his requests.
Google's virtual assistant has gone even further in this direction, the service Google Now. Predictive search is his specialty. The company defines the app's strategy this way: Google Now finds the information you need before you even ask a question. To do this, the service uses all available capabilities: the history of requests, movements, virtual communication. This allows him, say, to offer the user a cozy cafe as soon as the thought of drinking coffee comes to him. Among the advantages of Google Now is a convenient interface from a set of cards that is easy to customize to suit your needs.
Virtual digital assistants, predictive search and the future of SEO
In the competition between virtual digital assistants, the winners are those that allow them to save more time - the main and most valuable resource of our time. Thus, predictive-oriented assistants , look more promising. Their chances of popularity are much higher, because with predictive search the user does not have to spend a single second formulating a query.
The concern associated with the intrusion of such a virtual assistant into a person’s private life is justified and understandable. However, saving time and effort is increasingly inclining people to delegate the authority to make everyday decisions to new services, voluntarily opening wide access to personal information for this purpose. Predictive search tool services take advantage of this opportunity, constantly increasing the number of applications and information sources used. It is in the emphasis on Today we see the potential for the development of virtual digital assistants.
For players -The industry cannot ignore this trend. The situation when it is no longer the person himself, but his virtual assistants who will send requests and make a choice in favor of this or that product or service, offering the user a ready-made solution, is not a very distant future. Therefore, it is important to understand the criteria by which these assistants select options. These criteria are not entirely clear yet, but it’s worth thinking about them and trying to find them now.
Today, voice assistants have become an integral part of life. Every day more and more people choose virtual assistants, replacing the mouse and keyboard. Artificial intelligence helps solve simple problems using voice input. After entering the information, the assistant recognizes the spoken speech and begins to function. Speak clearly and distinctly so that the assistant will correctly fulfill the request. He can suggest a route, news of the day, find music, show the weather, answer a simple question. The most common voice assistants for PCs: Cortana, Typle, Speaker, Ok Google, Gorynych, .
Cortana for Windows
Cortana is a voice assistant integrated into the operating system and created by Microsoft. The assistant is intended primarily for Windows, but also works as applications on the platforms iOS, Android, Xbox One, Microsoft Phone, Microsoft Band. Cortana will help systematize and plan your tasks and plans for a certain period, remind you to perform any actions, and provide information upon your request. It also has built-in functionality for answering common questions using Bing search. The functionality includes route planning, information about road conditions, which will help you not to be late. You can enter information using your voice and keyboard in text form. She keeps up the conversation: she sings songs, sends jokes - she is not without a sense of humor.
Features include such a function as predicting the user’s desires. If you give access to personal data, Microsoft's virtual assistant will “adapt” to you, constantly analyzing your actions: the places you like to be; your preferences in certain things; your long-term interests, hobbies and more.
The Cortana virtual assistant is tightly integrated with the operating system and can control Windows 10 and individual applications while you work: helps you read your emails, track your location, check your contacts, monitor your calendar, manage music and reminders, spanning multiple music apps and controlling audio according to user preferences.
It is possible to synchronize multiple devices. Cortana will stay up to date on multiple computers at the same time.
Alice Yandex (desktop version)
Alice– voice assistant, and . Alice can show the weather forecast, find information about public places, find music, convert currencies, do simple math calculations and can carry on a conversation. The program is very young and is being improved all the time. "Alice" allows you to conduct dialogue in text form and voice. Voice assistant Alice is able to understand the meaning of your phrases: “Where can I shop here?”, she understands: “Where are the shops here?”
Yandex search string or another name - Yandex.String located in the taskbar of the Windows operating system. The Yandex search bar can find information on the Internet that the user enters using voice or text. The user can specify a command to open any folder and document located on the computer. The program opens on a laptop computer by pressing the Lines button or hotkeys. In fact, this is a special case of Alice for PC. To save space on the 8 cm taskbar, the button is replaced with an icon with a microphone. Read more about ways to display the assistant on a PC in the article.
Typle - voice control of the computer
The program is developed for the Windows operating system. No knowledge of English is required here, there is no ability to work with the player and there is no perception of the text form. Due to the limited number of features, the program does not seem as efficient and functional to use. The assistant is limited in opening only utilities and Internet pages. The program understands external noises as commands to execute, which may cause the computer to not work correctly. The voice assistant quickly completes assigned tasks. After downloading the program, you can come up with a main statement that gives a signal to work.
Gorynych
Domestic development of a voice assistant for controlling PC operating systems Windows 7, XP, Vista. Size 30.4 MB. Language Russian and English. The idea is based on the Dragon Dictate application, which was created by Western specialists. The voice assistant performs all the average commands that its counterparts perform. Using voice, the user can open any folder on the computer. This function is similar to the function from the Typle program. A special feature of the Gorynych voice assistant is entering text into Word using your own voice. The disadvantage of this function is that the user’s speech must be free of defects and clear. Over time, the program remembers the voice of the computer owner and begins to execute commands faster.
Speaker - voice control of the computer
Speaker is a voice assistant and software that is used in the Windows operating system. The software differs from others in its wider functionality. The user can open and close various folders on the PC and take a photo of the screen. To work with Speaker you must have a stable Internet connection. The program is controlled using the keyboard, which is not always convenient. The voice function leaves much to be desired: speech processing takes 5 seconds, which is a long time. The program converts speech to text.
Ok Google for PC
Okay Google is a voice assistant and at the same time part of a search engine. The program has many functions: scheduling events (setting reminders), tracking mail, going to any website, searching for musical compositions, finding addresses of public places, etc. Feature of the program: after executing the command, the program supplements the information itself. The program has advantages: it is free and stable. Cons: detailed program settings. The assistant is built into the Google Chrome browser and is available for PC, Android, iOS.
Siri on computer
Siri is a voice assistant that works on Apple devices: iOS, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and laptops with macOS Sierra. On Apple gadgets, Siri is installed by default; all you need to do is activate it in the device settings.
Using the emulator you can install it on Windows 7-10, file size is 79 MB. The program converts human speech, subsequently giving the user recommendations. The American assistant can perform simple commands like others. “Understands” Russian speech very well. An Internet connection is required to operate.
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