Intelligent automated agent and interactive voice response for a contact center

A system for a contact center, the system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• memory, wherein the memory stores instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
• run an interactive voice response (IVR) node configured to engage in an interaction with a customer of the contact center by presenting set scripts to the customer and receiving corresponding responses from the customer;
• run an intelligent automated agent configured to communicate with the IVR node, the automated agent comprising an artificial intelligence engine;
• run a routing server node configured to identify an appropriate live agent from a pool of live agents;
• run a call server node configured to communicate with the automated agent for routing a first portion of the interaction with corresponding responses to the automated agent at a request of the customer, the call server node being further configured to communicate with an agent device associated with the identified live agent for further routing a second portion of the interaction with corresponding responses to the agent device;
• an electronic switch coupled to the processor and configured to deliver the interaction to the automated agent and to the agent device;
• and
• a non-transitory storage device coupled to the processor and configured to store customer profile data built from previous interactions between the customer and the contact center, wherein the instructions further cause the processor to:
• invoke the automated agent to retrieve a profile of the customer from the customer profile data during the first portion of the interaction and update the retrieved profile on the storage device to reflect the interaction, and
• invoke the artificial intelligence engine to learn knowledge from the first portion of the interaction and apply the learned knowledge to future interactions between the customer and the contact center.