The world of communication is far more complex and demanding than it once was. Whether they’re communicating with each other, or connecting with customers, today’s employees need more intuitive and immersive solutions to support better outcomes and greater productivity.
Genesys, one of the market leaders in customer experience, is a pioneer in supporting both cloud and on-premises customer experience solutions. In recent years, the company has made considerable strides in its strategy of building new and improved customer experience offerings for a diverse customer base of more than 11,000 companies across 100 countries.
I was keen to catch up on what Genesys has been doing lately, so I spoke to Brendan Dykes, the Product marketing manager and senior director of solutions for Genesys. Brendan has been working with Genesys for more than 12 years now and has a long history in the communication environment. He told me all about the steps that Genesys is taking towards new products, services, and opportunities.
What Has Been Happening for Genesys Lately?
To start our discussion, I asked Dykes to tell me about the biggest things that have been happening for the Genesys brand over the last five years or so. He told me that it’s only been about seven years that Genesys has been an independent company, branching away from Alcatel Lucent into a privately held organisation.
“We moved away from being a player in the digital transformation area with Alcatel, to be a company that provides the core customer experience solutions for many digital transformation strategies.”
According to Brendan, Genesys started in voice, and the company isn’t ignoring that area now. “I think that voice is going to become even more important in the coming years, particularly with the rise of smart assistants. However, we also know that people don’t want to use just one channel when they’re communicating; they want numerous options.”
A couple of years ago, Genesys’ acquisition of Interactive Intelligence allowed it to build a more comprehensive cloud experience, which enables it to provide a more diverse range of solutions for customers.
“Now we have one of the fastest growing public cloud products of all time – outgrowing countless other competitors”
Are You Developing New Products Faster on the Cloud?
Brendan told me that one of the things that makes Genesys stand out is that it is offering both the functionality and the scalability that their customers need. With PureCloud, Genesys can provide all the state-of-the-art features that its customers are looking for, along with the flexible roadmap they need. “We can also support the people that still want an on-premise solution through enabling them to consume the latest functionality through Genesys Cloud platform in an integrated fashion. It’s the best of both worlds.”
Genesys isn’t just rolling out the latest solutions as quickly as possible with its cloud offering; it’s making sure that it has a wide range of options for its customers to choose from. Genesys has no problem keeping its PureCloud product up-to-date through the Genesys Cloud platform and offering customers the excellent scalability they need. At the same time, the freedom of the cloud means that Genesys can continue to provide solutions for on-premises customers, while also investing in R&D developments and new, disruptive solutions like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
Genesys is introducing a new world where digital, AI, and the cloud can converge to provide a more personalised user and customer experience. “We have made significant investments in AI technologies. We’re looking at how we can make sure that agents know when to communicate with a customer, how to engage that customer, and where to pursue the conversation.
“Data is the biggest asset in the world right now, more valuable than gold or oil”
Genesys’ AI management capabilities, for instance, make it easier for companies to more seamlessly orchestrate their native and third-party AI applications, so that everything can work together without friction to provide agents with more in-depth insights, and customers with more personalised experiences.
What Can We Expect from Genesys Going Forward?
Brendan told me that Genesys is constantly developing and releasing new things. “We’ve got a product that can engage with a customer if they are about to move towards or away from a transaction. Our solution allows businesses to better engage with consumers and offer them a more personalised service through engaging with them at the right time and offer them the relevant information.”
Genesys is also investing in solutions that make sure that conversations happen between the right customers and agents. Brendan told me that the company is interested in moving away from traditional routing strategies, and into a granular model called predictive routing, where AI technologies understands the nature of the customer’s query and is able to direct it to the most relevant agent for a desired outcome.
Genesys is also taking steps at figuring out how it may be possible to assist an agent with a transaction or conversation in real time, by listening in and offering support. “I think this will be really interesting. It’s one of the tools that could revolutionise the way that companies make the most out of their staff.”
As businesses have adopted a growing number of AI point solutions to solve specific challenges within their contact centres, often the true potential of AI is not realised because of disconnected data. To this end. Genesys has introduced new orchestration capabilities, that make it possible for multiple native and third-party AI applications to work together seamlessly in real-time. This enables Genesys customers to leverage all relevant data throughout the customer’s entire journey to orchestrate, measure and optimise processes at every touchpoint.
According to Dykes, Genesys is also about building on the intelligence that you already have with “augmented” intelligence, where employees have insight into the customer journey and help them with providing a hyper personalised customer experience. “If an end customer starts a conversation with a chat or voice bot, our AI solutions can detect when an escalation to a human agent is needed. All of the context from the interaction with a bot is passed to an agent best matched to handle the query.”
“It’s like giving the average person an iron man suit and turning them into a superhero. We’re giving people those extra powers to make them even more effective in the workplace”
As we move forward into 2020, customer experience technology looks like it’s going to get very interesting. What contact centre software vendors like Genesys do next with AI is sure to captivate our attention more and more.
