Big CX News from AWS, Zoom, Salesforce & SugarCRM

Popular stories from the last week that you may have missed.

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Published: May 24, 2024

Rhys Fisher

This week in CX has seen the launch of an “AI Contact Center”, CCaaS success from Zoom, data-harnessing from Salesforce, and a significant acquisition in the CRM space.

Here are the extracts from some of our most popular news stories over the last seven days.

AWS and Korean Air Team Up to Build an “AI Contact Center”

Korean Air has revealed plans to create an AI-powered contact center (AICC) by leveraging Amazon Web Services’ tech infrastructure.

Announced at a company kickoff event in Seoul, Koren Air outlined improvements in personalization and efficiency as some of the key benefits that the AICC will bring to the company’s customer service offerings.

By incorporating Amazon’s innovative tech solutions, the Korean airline hopes to build a cloud-based intelligent customer service platform that utilizes AI advancements to power voice bots and chatbots that will handle customer queries.

The company has also confirmed that the new AI-powered contact center will incorporate direct customer interactions and utilize call log analysis in an aim to boost service quality.

Moreover, Koreain Air believes the AICC will enhance operational efficiency through cost reduction, centralization of management, and expansion of service channels—“surpassing” the service provided by traditional contact centers in the process.

Korean Air has earmarked September as the proposed date to consolidate its current call center infrastructure into a single AWS platform, with the company also unveiling plans to integrate machine learning and generative AI (GenAI) by February 2025 (Read on…).

Zoom Enjoys a Surge In CCaaS Sales, Credits New Bundling Strategy

Zoom continued its CCaaS momentum last quarter, enjoying a surge of six-figure contract wins.

Indeed, the tech giant secured 90 deals surpassing $100,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). That represents 246 percent year-over-year (YoY) growth in the metric.

Kelly Steckelberg, CFO at Zoom, credited the recently launched CCaaS packages as a significant driver. These bundles aim to help organizations spread CCaaS across the business at a more affordable rate.

Such a proposition has likely resonated with Zoom’s existing UCaaS base.

Nevertheless, Eric Yuan, Founder & CEO of Zoom, also noted that much of the new business comes from net new customers, with CCaaS becoming an enterprise door opener.

That has taken many by surprise, even Yuan himself. As the CEO stated during an earnings call: “When we started… we thought most of the deals would be with the existing Meeting and Phone customers. However, that’s not right.

Often, they are not Meeting or Phone customers. [Instead,] they are becoming “first” Zoom customers, deploying the Zoom Contact Center.

In addition, Yuan credited Zoom’s investment in channel partnerships and fast-paced innovation across the CCaaS platform (Read on…).

Salesforce Boosts Service Cloud Digital Engagement with Data-Harnessing Capabilities

Salesforce has revealed additional features for its Service Cloud Digital Engagement software.

With a promise to “drive growth” and “unlock new revenue opportunities,” Salesforce is equipping its customer engagement platform with enhanced data-harnessing capabilities.

Built on the company’s Einstein 1 Platform, these advancements will provide contact centers with the tools to consolidate unstructured conversational data from various digital channels, departments, and devices – all within a single platform.

Salesforce believes that the software’s new features will result in a deeper understanding of customer behavior and habits, allowing agents to deliver more valuable customer interactions.

Moreover, due to the software’s access to high-quality customer and enterprise data via Salesforce’s Data Cloud, Service Cloud Digital Engagement has the potential to enhance personalization and enable businesses to “forge even more meaningful conversations.”

Commenting on Service Cloud Digital Engagement’s new enhancements – Kishan Chetan, EVP & GM of Service Cloud – was clearly enthusiastic about the impact the solution could have on the company’s customer experience offerings:

As customers interact with companies across more touch points and channels, they are looking for more personalization and a higher-touch experience.

The company’s focus on data unification is part of a strategy to combat the issue of customer dissatisfaction in dealing with disparate departments (Read on…).

SugarCRM Snaps Up sales-i, Targets Revenue Optimization

SugarCRM has acquired sales-i, the revenue intelligence platform provider, for an undisclosed fee.

In doing so, the prominent CRM player pulls new capabilities that promise to enhance sales profitability and enable more intelligent account management.

After SugarCRM and sales-i first partnered in June last year, several customers will already have access to those capabilities.

These match “soft data” from SugarCRM – like: when did I last speak with this customer, and what did we talk about? – with “hard data” from sales-i, such as: what have we sold you, or what should we sell to you?

As Craig Charlton, CEO of SugarCRM, said when announcing the acquisition:

This combination delivers actionable, intelligent sales strategies that will improve revenue, maximize profitability, increase customer satisfaction, and produce more efficient salespeople.

To understand how the combination of soft and hard data will do this, first consider that sales-i pulls much of its “hard data” from the ERP system. Next, it applies machine learning to isolate associations between products based on previous sales patterns.

When a customer purchases a product, sales-i then calculates the probability of them ordering an associated offering (Read on…).

 

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