Five9 has credited its AI credentials for driving record quarterly and full-year sales.
The CX vendor saw sales rocket 40 percent to $609.6m in 2021, while Q4 revenues were up 36 percent.
Five9 also stated that its Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) is its “most scaled” AI-based solution, revealing that IVA usage tripled last year. Such growth has contributed 10 percent of enterprise bookings from new customers.
Rowan Trollope, CEO at Five9, said:
Our results were driven by the growing market adoption of our AI and Automation offerings. In addition to the success, we have made in our march upmarket, as prospective enterprise customers turn to Five9 for the reliable and innovative platform we have built as a company.
Five9 used an earnings call with investors to tease details of its product pipeline. It said that upcoming capabilities include Agent Assist, which guides agents through checklists and verifies they’ve carried out the required tasks.
It also revealed that it is investing in technology dubbed “conversation architect”, which provides a central hub for building and managing AI applications.
“Conversation architect provides a no-code solution that enables customers to train AI models off of their own data without needing machine learning or AI expertise, just business expertise,” Trollope added.
Partner Growth
Barry Zwarenstein, CFO at Five9, said that its partner strategy is now a crucial route to market for Five9, compared to five years ago when the vendor was pushing the channel to adopt its offering.
Underling this, Five9 channel bookings rocketed 61 percent in 2021.
“[Partners] had alternatives in the premises-based solutions, but they really didn’t have the appetite to carry cloud until the market opened up,” Zwarenstein said. “Customers started demanding it and they came running and they’ve leaned in.”
In this spirit, Five9 has continued to develop new partnerships in the past few months. Alliances with Aktify and Pindrop are excellent examples as the CX vendor builds into the future.
Towards the backend of 2021, Brian Atkinson, Vice President EMEA at Five9, gave us more of an insight into what this future may hold. Luckily, we had our cameras with us and filmed the following conversation.
