Telviva brings intelligent digital agent Viva to South African businesses
Telviva, a leader in cloud-based unified communications, has announced the launch of Viva, an intelligent voice and text-based digital agent solution designed to make enterprise-grade artificial intelligence (AI) practical, affordable, and accessible for South African businesses.
Built and hosted locally, Viva marks the next chapter in Telviva’s journey of enabling quality business conversations by transforming how companies route interactions and unlock organisational knowledge.
Telviva CEO, David Meintjes. (Telviva) According to Telviva CEO David Meintjes, the launch addresses a critical market need: moving past traditional, rigid chatbots to deliver integrated, autonomous customer experiences without losing the crucial human touch.
“A chatbot operates mostly in a rigid, predefined structure that mostly results in a poor customer experience; a digital agent is dynamic and easier to manage and makes the transition to a human when needed easier,” says Meintjes.
“It was vital for us to develop an agent that understands natural language while connecting deeply to real business knowledge sources. This enables Viva to resolve customer queries end to end, without human intervention, while ensuring a seamless handoff to a human agent the moment a query requires it.”
A core philosophy behind Viva is the evolution of traditional workplace roles. Meintjes explains that the conventional role of the front-line receptionist is fundamentally shifting into that of a Customer Experience (CX) Influencer.
By allowing the digital agent to handle repetitive routing and baseline queries, the receptionist steps into the role of “human in the loop” and focuses on the customer experience, which is a higher-value, strategic role.
“Not only do they handle complex human interactions that require deep empathy and judgement, but they also act as the quality controller of the digital agent itself.
“They review and assess the context of engagements, optimising the customer experience and ensuring the AI continuously aligns with the company’s service standards,” Meintjes explains.
“Our philosophy is digital when you want it, human when you need it. We are layering intelligence onto a reliable infrastructure that we have spent two decades building, giving businesses a practical and scalable approach to enterprise-grade AI.”
Recognising that no two businesses are at the same point in their digital adoption, Telviva has structured its Digital Agent solution into four scalable tiers. This allows companies to start with core routing or static knowledge bases and seamlessly grow into full system integration:
Telviva evaluates digital agent performance by focusing on task success, context, and user experience through four core metrics:
Together, these metrics provide a comprehensive, real-world view of agent effectiveness.
While global AI tools are often built for global markets, Viva is tailored specifically for the local operational landscape. It natively manages Voice and WhatsApp for Business — South Africa’s de facto business communication channels — and is offered at a predictable, fixed monthly fee for unlimited simultaneous interactions. This removes the budget volatility often associated with AI consumption models. Learn more about our Digital Agent tiers.
Furthermore, it complies with local data protection requirements.
“Popia compliance is built into the architecture. All our infrastructure is hosted in local data centres, ensuring personally identifiable customer data never leaves South Africa.
“Enhanced private cloud deployment options are also available for highly regulated sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and legal,” says Meintjes.
Early implementations show that Viva can successfully resolve a significant level of inbound contact centre volume without human intervention. For businesses deploying the advanced integration tiers, this translates directly to reduced average handle times, higher first-contact resolution, and a rapid, measurable return on investment.
Within enterprise environments, front-line workers — such as traditional receptionists — are elevated to “Customer Experience Influencers” and human-in-the-loop quality controllers who govern the AI.
Rather than viewing human workforce evolution as a loss, society and enterprises must redefine human worth around high-empathy judgement, relational nuance, and strategic oversight.
The true test of this agentic era lies in whether organisations leverage automated efficiency to elevate human capability or allow total delegation to render human judgement passive and secondary.
Future differentiation as a business will lie in improving the customer experience, which requires a human in the loop when required.
The Telviva Digital Agents solution is structured into four scalable tiers because it recognises that no two businesses are the same. To discover which one best suits your business, contact Telviva today.