Yesterday an update for iZ, our first WLA was uploaded and applied.
The agent now writes in red color! :D
Now, seriously, we've made some improvements. One good thing about internet is that you can get early feedback from the users. We received bad feedback from one of the mayor national newspapers, in part due to the previous spanish WLA, Robin, who was a complete failure and a bad start.
The negative feedback argumented that the agent could not find proposals, and as we've noticed, having a so large initial help/salutation most users don't read it and don't know the don't start searching proposals.
So, what I've done is modify the "catch-all" conversation pattern (called if the agent doesn't have an answer), and make a "silent call" to the proposal search system. If what the user has typed is recognized as a valid keyword and there are proposals related, user is sent to search mode automatically and the proposals start to show.
Now searching is quite easier, because you can start a conversation and type "vivienda" (housing), and the agent will find more than 35 related proposals as if you first had typed "buscar" (search) or some similar pattern.
It is great to be able to improve you agent capabilities so easily, in part due to a correct programming (the whole search system is very extensible and works in multiple steps, so can be adapted to different situations) but in part too because this is like a web portal (which you can update anytime) and not like a desktop application (in which a change means new update or redistributable, which not all users will apply).