Avaya has released three generative AI (GenAI) solutions for its contact center customers in the build-up to GITEX Global 2023.
Each auto-generates new contact center workflows and insights from written prompts alone.
First is a journey map builder. The contact center team may describe their ideal customer journey, and the tool will plot out such a map – isolating how customers can use the Avaya Experience Platform to roll it out.
Next, the vendor has augmented the search functions across the Avaya Experience Platform so managers can quickly gain “specific, actionable insights” from their natural language requests.
Finally, there is a tool that pairs GenAI with Avaya Experience Platform analytics to provide general recommendations for improving various customer, agent, and business outcomes.
The features are only available via the cloud. However, Avaya’s on-premise customers may leverage these capabilities by working with the vendor in a hybrid mode.
Such a hybrid option is critical to the company’s “innovation without disruption” mantra.
For now, Avaya has not gone into much more detail about the three solutions. Yet, Nidal Abou-Ltaif, SVP & Global Head of Sales at Avaya, promised to reveal all at this week’s GITEX event.
“Up until now, AI in the contact center has typically been at the front end, usually answering routine questions from customers in the form of intelligent virtual assistants,” he said.
Today, we’re demonstrating how AI can also be extended right to the heart of the contact center, creating workflows, reports, and helping agents better serve their customers.
Abou-Ltaif and the Avaya team also note how the innovations will allow businesses to implement workflows and glean insight “with the stroke of a keyboard”.
The C-Suite Shake Up
To further push forward its innovation plans, Avaya has reportedly appointed Soren Abildgaard as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
Abildgaard will bring 20+ years of global software development experience to the company, having previously held senior roles at Contentful, Zendesk, and Adobe.
Yet, that’s not the only C-Suite change, with Marylou Maco moving into the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role.
Maco’s most recent experience came during a two-and-a-half-year stint at market rival Genesys as EVP of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations.
As such, Maco may bring insider knowledge that could greatly benefit Avaya’s go-forward strategy.
Currently, that very much revolves around being the contact center vendor that gives customers a choice between the cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments.
Unfortunately, Avaya is still very much known for the latter, and when companies migrate to the cloud, many select rival contact center providers.
That is the fault of Avaya’s former leadership team, which moved the company too slowly to CCaaS.
However, the growth of CCaaS is somewhat stalling – as per new Gartner research. That has allowed Avaya to cling onto much of its deep legacy base while it strives to establish itself as a CCaaS contender – by accelerating its cloud innovation cycle.
In doing so, Avaya hopes that when many of the global are eventually ready to move, many will stay.
Of course, market rivals will continue their attempts to lure them in. Yet, until now, Avaya’s deep customer base has remained remarkably loyal – even after last year’s bankruptcy fallout.
Indeed, the contact center stalwart recently claimed “positive business momentum” – a comment that many would have thought implausible just a few months ago.
