On the 27^th June, the 96^th Tech Day was held under the theme "Virtual assistants and the future", where it was presented what has been being developed by Altice PT and Altice Labs in the context of the market challenges related to virtual assistants.

In this 96^th Tech Day, Francisco Matos Chaves, from the Digital department of Altice PT, made a presentation on the technological evolution in waves, from the use of the keyboard and the advent of the digital economy, through the revolution of mobile devices until the emergence of living services , where a set of services communicate with each other through devices that can be installed in our homes, bodies, shops, workplaces, transportation, cities, or even used as payment. The chatbots have contributed to this evolutionary wave, with a degree of precision that is ever closer to human. The speaker also mentioned that it is important that companies focus on aspects that are relevant to their area of ​​business and that enhance the efficiency of processes. On the other hand, he left the advise to invest in projects with an open and multichannel approach.

In turn, João Pias, from Altice Labs' Network and Platform Services department, said that the very notion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving, no longer seen as just a machine capable of interacting with humans and to include systems capable of "feeling", substantiating, acting and adapting to new situations. In this perspective, and in general, the target functional areas of the virtual assistants will be sales, marketing and customer support services. Virtual assistant chatbots in corporate environments, social networks and new types of digital channels are seen in the future as ways to promote better interactions with users/customers, increasing involvement and reducing costs.

Jorge Monteiro, from Altice Labs’ Network and Platform Services, presented the BOT School project, a scalable and multichannel platform that allows any type of business to create, teach and manage its virtual assistants, with support in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU). This platform features an intuitive self-service interface where you can teach bots, do simulations and monitor your evolution.

In his presentation, João Carvalho, also from the Digital department of Altice PT, talked about some Sophia usage scenarios, whose campaigns have already allowed to withdraw some business indicators that can boost another type of business approach, noting that 6% of the traffic of MEO By simulator is generated by Sophia's microsite. As key takeaways, the speaker referred to the ability of MEO and Altice to offer users an innovative experience with a virtual assistant, the positive results obtained with the Sophia campaigns, and the importance of continuing the collaboration with Altice Labs in order to lead the experience with virtual assistants to a new level of sophistication and engagement.

Finally, Tiago Nolasco from Altice Labs' Network and Platform Services department, demonstrated the ease of integration of a chatbot in a web portal, through a practical and expedient example of initiating a Selfcare bot.

In the time reserved for Q&A, the audience had the opportunity to make several questions to the speakers, who dealt with a wide variety of topics, from the business model applicable to the bots service offering, discussing the value offer that the BOT School presents against the competition, to suggestions for new bot applications, or teaching students (bots) at the BOT School.