Telviva unveils Viva digital agent for South African businesses
Telviva, which operates in cloud unified communications, has introduced the Viva digital agent for handling voice and text inquiries from business clients in South Africa. The solution was developed and is hosted locally, according to a TimesLIVE article marked as sponsored by Telviva.
According to Telviva CEO David Meintjes, Viva is designed to understand natural language, use a company’s internal knowledge sources and transfer an inquiry to an employee when necessary. He said the digital agent differs from traditional chatbots through greater flexibility and simplified handover of a dialogue to a human.
Four levels of integration
Telviva offers Viva in four versions. The basic Viva Starter version answers incoming calls around the clock, checks employee availability and directs callers to the appropriate person or department. According to the company, Viva Business processes text inquiries in WhatsApp and web chat using information from the company website or an uploaded FAQ document.
Viva Professional can connect to the knowledge base of a CRM system so that the digital agent and employees provide customers with consistent answers. The most advanced version, Viva Enterprise, provides integration with CRM or ERP systems for real-time inquiries, including account balances, order status or contract end dates.
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Quality control and data protection
Telviva said it assesses the agent’s work by the accuracy of identifying the user’s intent, task completion success, the semantic quality of the response and response speed during voice interaction. The company uses an independent “LLM-as-a-Judge” tool to assess response quality.
The company also claims that Viva’s architecture complies with the requirements of South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act, POPIA: the infrastructure is located in local data centres, and clients’ personal data does not leave South Africa. For the financial sector, healthcare and the legal field, private cloud deployment options are available, according to the company.
Telviva positions the digital agent as a tool for handling repetitive inquiries. Reception staff, according to the company’s concept, can monitor the system’s work quality and take on complex inquiries requiring empathy and professional judgement.
