Determined to further drive innovation in the contact center space, Avaya recently acquired its 600th patent in Avaya’s range of contact center solutions. This particular patent is for artificial intelligence innovation. Today the organization boasts over 4,400 CCaaS, UCaaS, and CPaaS patents, a number they say will continue to rise.
Anthony Bartolo, Executive Vice President, and Chief Product Officer, Avaya, talked about the company’s range of patents and what it will mean for customers who want to extend more service capabilities to their customers. This patent has plenty of other implications, including lending more self-service options.
The technology might even assist agents in detecting things like customer sentiment. Agents utilizing Avaya’s CCaaS technology can even learn from each customer interaction with its post-call analytics offering. And then there were chatbots, another essential part of CX. Most customers now expect to have access to this technology, and chatbots help to lighten the burden agents feel.
If you want to do things like verifying dates of birth, letting customers answer security questions, or for other routing purposes, chatbots and virtual agents are a good first-line defense. “Chatbot socialization technology,” as Bartolo called it – uses artificial intelligence to realize virtual agents. It can interact across voice, text, as well as chat channels to respond to customer inquiries and requests.
Advanced AI capabilities like the ones listed above, Bartolo contests, considerably enhance CX. He also said with Avaya OneCloud CCaaS – organizations can provide more seamless, predictive, and personalized customer, along with employee experiences. These advances in personalization, the ability to anticipate and address customer needs before they have to ask, and more agile and informed agents create what Bartolo describes as the “context center.”
“People want relevant and customized experiences and that is what a context center can provide. And this new patent could mean faster access to relevant information and programming virtual agents to pair with other interactive agents during client communications for a much more rewarding engagement”
Avaya recently announced the expansion of an existing relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that will enable Avaya customers to leverage AWS AI services and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to drive new kinds of customer and employee experiences. The company just also expanded its integration with Google Cloud to deliver more advanced virtual agents. Bartolo said that both Google and AWS remain principal members of Avaya’s A.I.Connect vision.
Last year, Avaya earned another distinction as a recognized leader. In the Aragon Research Globe for Intelligent Contact Center 2020 report, Avaya was named a pioneer in intelligent contact center technology, one with extensive AI capabilities. This includes both native and AI capabilities formed as a result of integrations like Google Contact Center AI.
With customer service rates hitting record numbers last year, 2021 could be on track to break more records than 2020. Moving forward, UC and CC tools are likely to be the answer to troubles like a drop off in employee productivity, experienced by companies today.
Research from Avant Research and Analytics found that the growth of UC and UCaaS increased at a rate of 86 percent during the pandemic, mostly for the sake of ensuring business continuity. Certain industries benefited from UC more than others, according to the report, the healthcare and medical sectors had the highest rate of growth. Synergy Research Group also found that the UCaaS market in 2020 had an annual growth rate of 29 percent, a sign that a heavier reliance on UC during and after the pandemic could be in order.
