Next IT Corp., the Spokane maker of Web site customer-service software known for its answer-giving avatars, is on a growth spurt, having added five clients and 30 new employees so far this year, and also has changed the way it sells its product, likely boosting long-term revenue, says company CEO Fred Brown.

The company, which currently employs about 150 people, developed software it calls ActiveAgent, which enables its clients' customers to interact with a "virtual assistant" online to get answers to their questions. Among such assistants have been "Sergeant Star" on a U.S. Army Web site, "Jenn," who assists visitors to the Alaska Airlines site, and Spike, a bulldog that helps potential students navigate Gonzaga University's site.

Brown, who founded the company in 2002, says Next IT now has 13 companies that subscribe to its ActiveAgent software with ongoing contracts and has 50 more potential clients in various stages of the purchasing process.

Next IT recently began selling such subscriptions, which include enhancement of the conversational interface the virtual assistants have with clients' customers, and departed from its previous strategy of selling a license and maintenance agreement, says Brown. What that means for Next IT is less revenue upfront, but more revenue in the long term, he says.

"Now we have revenue from last year in the bank for next year," Brown says. "That gives us a built-in growth engine."

Among the clients Next IT has landed this year is Hartford, Conn.,-based insurance giant Aetna Inc., which now provides an ActiveAgent avatar named "Ann" on its secure member Web site. Aetna recently issued a press release singing the praises of Ann. It said that the insurer's customers are having about 2,500 chat sessions with the virtual assistant each day, which has resulted in a 29 percent reduction in calls to Aetna's customer-service help desk.

"That's unheard of," says Brown. "Call centers fight for a 0.5 percent improvement."

He says he believes that changing customer behavior to such a degree will have a huge impact on the competitive world of business.

Brown declines to disclose the names of prospective customers, saying, "We're restricted by contracts from talking about it." He adds, "They don't want to let their competition know what they're working on to differentiate how they support and sell their services."

Brown says Next IT received a lot of help from Spokane-area angel investors earlier in its life, but hasn't needed that help recently. He declines to disclose the company's annual sales, but says, "Our revenue is growing."

The increase in employment there this year reversed a downsizing the company endured back in 2008.

"Due to the recession, we had to grow a little leaner," says company spokeswoman Jennifer Snell. "Now we're growing, and continuing to bring on more people."

Brown says Next IT's employees are mostly young, smart, creative people from a variety of academic disciplines. They're "a bit geeky. They've got to believe in the future, in change, and in technology," he says.

A majority of the new hires now spend their time tweaking clients' personalized ActiveAgent software so their virtual assistants can provide more help to their customers, Brown says.

"We've got lots of work to do. We can just keep making them better," he says.

Alaska Airlines' virtual assistant, "Jenn," has a pleasing voice and upbeat personality. When customers type questions about the airline's service that she doesn't understand, she replies with her own questions to get enough information to pull an answer from her database.

When a visitor to the U.S. Army's Web site decides to interact with its virtual assistant, "Sergeant Star," the human emulation is lowered to the ground on a rope from a helicopter, which then flies away. In a very soldierly fashion, Sergeant Star asks for the user's name, then verbally answers any questions typed into a box. A Web page corresponding to the answer also pops up to give the user more information.

Brown says Sergeant Star is now on Facebook, and the technology will soon be in place for inquirers to send him text messages on their cell phones and receive texted replies from him.

"As the world changes, technology has to adapt to the changing generations," Brown says. "What I want and what kids want are two different things."

On the other hand, Brown says, older, less computer-literate customers also appreciate the simple, fast interface they get with a virtual assistant.

Next IT likes to use testimonials from the Fortune 500 companies it works with to supply virtual assistants. Unlike Aetna, most have been tight-lipped, though, Brown says, because "the success they're having with our software has created a competitive advantage for them."

Brown says that Next IT is careful to avoid a common trap among technology companies to over-promise, and instead strives to build trust by delivering on every promise to a client.

He says he developed the ethical standards practiced by Next IT partly through the influence of former Gonzaga University President Robert Spitzer, while Brown was a civil engineering student there, and partly through his years of calf-roping, both in his native Alberta, Canada, and in the U.S.

"Out on the rodeo trail, you do what you say and you treat people the way you'd like to be treated," he says. Brown still enjoys calf-roping, and participates in rodeos from South Dakota to Oregon.

"When I'm back in New York, they think it's unique to meet a software guy that's a cowboy. It's always fun to be different," he says with a grin.

Brown, who before he founded Next IT also launched and later sold LineSoft Corp., has high hopes for the future of the virtual assistant company.

Brown believes conversational interface such as ActiveAgent is the next generation of how humans will interact with computers. "We're not going to ever give a computer intuition or feelings or a human spirit. A computer can't replace that. We're not teaching the computer how to reason, we're teaching it how to help you tell it what you need."

Brown foresees virtual assistants helping people with every facet of life—with televisions, phones, appliances, and automobiles. He wants Next IT to be involved in all these technological advances.

"If we get a piece of that, we'll be huge," he says.