When radio first came to prominence, people thought it would replace newspapers.
When televisions first entered their homes, people thought that was the end of radios.
When streaming services rose to the fore, people thought televisions might fade away.
Instead, these media have all survived. Yet, they have – to a degree – nested into one another, borrowing aspects of other mediums.
For instance, some streaming services play live sports, televisions include radio channels, and radio channels often discuss what is in the papers. Each brings unique elements.
The same story applies to the contact center. Email was supposed to take over from voice. Live chat would replace email. Messaging apps would become the next live chat. Yet, each lives on.
Why? Because each offers something different.
In its latest release, Five9 has recognized this, incorporating other media elements into its new channel designs to offer customers “fluid experiences”.
Five9 Delivers New, Multimodal Experiences
Across Five9’s digital channels, customers can now send images, documents, videos, audio files, and links when speaking to an agent – whether human or a bot.
Customers can also add their location to give agents more context to solve their queries while allowing the company to access more data.
Also, businesses may build richer voice experiences through new multimodal innovation.
For instance, a customer could call an insurer with a claim. A live or virtual agent may send an SMS with a form to show a list of available appointments.
Each innovation helps businesses design more fluid experiences. They can blend the best aspects of various media and – in some cases – leverage collaborative intelligence between bots and humans.
According to Dan Miller, Lead Analyst at Opus Research, such thinking is the future. He said:
By employing collaborative intelligence, many companies can overcome the inherent complexities involved in integrating multiple touchpoints across both self-service and assisted channels.
As a result, businesses may play to the strengths of each channel and enhance service experiences.
Finally, the vendor has launched real-time subtitles for Five9 Messenger, again enhancing channel strategies by embedding AI.
More Features for the Five9 IVA
Alongside its channel innovation, Five9 unveiled new features to support Five9 IVA (intelligent virtual agent) Studio users and an integrated analytics suite.
One new feature gives developers more visibility into their IVA’s edit histories, alongside a view of which colleagues are making changes.
Five9 has also added more powerful programming tools for advanced users, including JavaScript support, and given them the chance to control Studio through APIs.
Yet, its increased support for NLP engines is perhaps the most exciting development. It gives Five9 customers more choice and flexibility when building their IVA.
Such engines include IBM Watson Assistant and Google Dialogflow Knowledgebase integration. The latter paves the way for quicker deployments of FAQ-style applications, taking manual work away from developers.
Finally, Five9 has bolstered its LumenVox partnership, adding open voice transcriptions from its speech recognition technology. These allow for more accurate real-time conversational insights and support the growth of Five9’s analytics platform.
These real-time analytics capabilities allow users to access performance insights across live channels and self-service, highlighting pain points within workflows.
Users may also create custom reports, dashboards, and metrics unique to measure customer journey success across various intents.
Such announcements may allow Five9 to add to its recent CCaaS successes, having secured three massive CCaaS wins last quarter.
