From the release of a highly-anticipated virtual assistant to insightful market research, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Microsoft Copilot for Service and Sales Are Now Generally Available
Microsoft Copilot for Service and Copilot for Sales are now generally available.
The Copilots support employees in completing various tasks in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Service and Sales.
Yet, the Copilots also integrate with various third-party CRM solutions, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk.
Across these platforms, the Copilot automates tasks to increase employee productivity and personalize customer conversations.
For instance, Service Copilot assists contact center teams by generating personalized customer replies via email, proactively serving agents with insights from knowledge bases, and summarizing contact center conversations.
There is also a free version that comes as a default within Dynamics 365 for Service and just offers the latter capability to give customers a taster of the Copilot’s benefits.
Meanwhile, Sales Copilot can also auto-generate email responses, which the sales rep may review, tweak, and send.
However, there are additional capabilities, too, such as the generation of pre-meeting customer briefs and customer opportunity sum-ups.
Further features stem from its tie-up with Teams and Outlook. For instance, via Teams, it can offer real-time suggested responses during sales meetings, and – in Outlook – it enables the auto-generation of customer communication and automatically updates CRM records. (Read on…).
Say Hello to Rufus: Amazon’s New Chatbot
E-commerce juggernaut Amazon has announced its latest foray into the virtual assistant space with the launch of shopping assistant Rufus.
It may sound like the name of a particularly fluffy puppy, but Rufus promises to transform customers’ experiences by answering questions on shopping needs, products, and comparisons.
The tool will be integrated into Amazon’s existing customer portals, and equipped with knowledge and data on its full catalog of products.
Moreover, Rufus will have access to customer reviews and community Q&As, allowing it to make informed recommendations to shoppers.
All these capabilities are on display in the video below.
Powered by generative AI, Amazon describes Rufus as an “expert shopping assistant” that will enhance the shopping experience by making it easier for customers to locate the best possible products to fulfill their needs.
Initially being introduced within the Amazon mobile app in beta for a selection of US customers, the plan is to release the assistant in waves – making it available to all US shoppers in the next few weeks. (Read on…).
Webex Contact Center with AI Assistant Available Soon in Beta
Cisco has revealed that several of the solutions and features released at WebexOne are now – or soon to be – available generally or in beta.
A number of the Webex Contact Center with AI Assistant features are soon to be made available in beta, helping to reduce agent workloads and improve customer experience (CX).
These include ending customer repetition and waiting, automatic customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores and topic analytics, and agent burnout detection.
Further availability has been announced relating to the Webex Customer Experience Essentials, Webex Connect, Webex Suite, Webex Go, Sovereign Controls, Webex Control Hub,
WebexOne took place between October 24 – 26, 2023, in Anaheim, California, focusing on the latest breakthroughs in audio and video intelligence and innovations to hybrid work and customer experience.
Javed Khan, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Collaboration, announced the new availability in a recent Webex blog post:
At WebexOne, we announced Webex Contact Center with AI Assistant, and thanks to the power of the Webex Platform, we can reimagine customer experiences with our latest AI capabilities.
“Many of these features will help solve common CX challenges, like never making a customer wait and never making a customer repeat themselves.
“This enables businesses to give customers the feeling of having a personal concierge.” (Read on…).
Gartner: Customer Service Leaders Have Three Priorities to Improve CX In 2024
Gartner has revealed that customer service leaders will prioritize customer journey analytics, self-service, and generative-AI-powered agent-assist in 2024.
In doing so, the research firm shared the results of a survey of 246 customer service and support leaders conducted in October last year.
Commenting on the findings, Kim Hedlin, Senior Principal of Research in the Gartner Customer Service & Support Practice, stated: “Advances in GenAI (generative AI) and shifting customer preferences are pushing service and support leaders to reimagine what’s possible for their organization in 2024.
Leaders are focused on how they can leverage technology to accomplish their top priorities, including improving customer experience and optimizing their operations.
Each priority seemingly blends into the next. Indeed, service operations may use customer journey analytics to spot customer experience pain points that increase contact volumes.
From there, they can remove some of those pain points with targeted self-service applications.
When that’s not possible, they may improve upon the pain points with improved agent guidance. (Read on…).
