This week in CX, we have seen big CCaaS news from Zendesk and Genesys, a Microsoft rebranding, and a bold claim from Accenture.
Here are extracts from some of our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Zendesk Debuts a New CCaaS Platform, Wants to “Redefine” the Contact Center Landscape
Zendesk has unveiled a new CCaaS platform: Zendesk for Contact Center.
The announcement follows last month’s acquisition of Local Measure for a reported $100MN.
Local Measure is a close contact center partner of AWS. It offers a CCaaS platform known as “Local Measure Engage.”
While that acquisition is yet to close, Zendesk for Contact Center signals a relaunch of that product.
The CRM giant has especially high hopes for it, too. Indeed, Zendesk issued a press release suggesting it will advance the solution to “redefine the contact center landscape”.
That’s not necessarily from a capability perspective. After all, Local Measure offers many of the same capabilities as Amazon Connect, just pre-packaged.
Instead, Zendesk may aim to redefine the landscape by converging its contact center technologies (Read on…).
Genesys Introduces Its Biggest-Ever CCaaS Bundle, Emphasizes “Exceptional Value”
Genesys has launched its most comprehensive contact center bundle ever: Genesys Cloud CX 4.
Available from $240 per user per month, the offering includes all of Genesys’s core CCaaS solutions.
As such, customers may leverage its voice and digital channels, workforce engagement management (WEM), IVR, co-browsing, knowledge management, conversational analytics, proactivity tools, and other cornerstone capabilities.
Another bundle – Genesys Cloud CX 3 – offers all this at $155 per user per month.
However, CX 4 pulls in three additional features, aiming to help omnichannel contact centers inject AI into their service experiences “at the best value”.
On top of everything included in CX 3, CX 4 layers over the Genesys Cloud Agent Copilot, Customer Journey Management, and 30 AI Experience Tokens per named agent.
The Copilot assists live agents as they complete their everyday work. It suggests next-best-action recommendations, surfaces real-time insights, and automates post-contact processes (Read on…).
Microsoft Rebrands Its Contact Center Workspace, Stops Using the Term “Agent” for Live Reps
Microsoft is going cuckoo for Copilot, applying the term to some of its foremost contact center products.
First, its “Customer Service workspace” and “Contact Center workspace” solutions will now go under the name “Copilot Service workspace”.
Moreover, Microsoft will rename its “Customer Service admin center” and “Contact Center admin center” as the “Copilot Service admin center”.
The announcements spotlight how Copilot can assist contact center reps and admins in the flow of their work across the rebranded Microsoft solutions.
Additionally, for Microsoft, both moves represent a step toward creating the “autonomous contact center” – as the tech giant stressed in a company blog post.
In the blog, Jessica Li, Product Manager at Microsoft, explained: “To ensure our AI experiences align with Microsoft’s AI-first vision, we will differentiate our brand accordingly.
This approach provides a consistent yet distinct user experience and introduces Copilot-related features with appropriate branding and user onboarding.
By framing the “autonomous contact center”, Microsoft also underscores the advancement of its Copilot (Read on…).
Accenture Claims “Customer Service Is on the Brink”
A new report has claimed that “customer service is on the brink”.
Released by Accenture, the study surveyed over 7,000 customers, with the results making grim reading for the customer service and experience space.
Of those surveyed, 87 percent admitted that they were likely to avoid a company after just one bad experience.
Additionally, almost two-thirds of respondents stated that they had been frustrated or annoyed with at least one recent customer service interaction.
The findings have also further strengthened the long-running disconnect between customers and companies when it comes to the use of technology.
Indeed, just 18 percent of people believe technology has enhanced their customer service experiences, with one respondent claiming that it is “becoming more work to be a customer” and another saying that “getting a chatbot to work is like winning the lottery.”
That quote offers a reminder of the “customer service doom loops” chastised by former President Joe Biden last year (Read on…).
