Five9 will launch its “next generation” intelligent virtual agents next week, CEO Mike Burkland has revealed.
Speaking on an earnings call with investors, the chief exec said the AI-powered service, called Five AI Agents, will function across voice and digital channels.
“Five9 AI agents are designed to achieve unprecedented levels of comprehension, capability and autonomy using generative AI,” he said.
“This allows them to deliver great customer experience while also reducing the volume of interactions that need to be routed to human agents.
“With these AI agents plus AI-empowered human agents, Five9 is delivering the new CX designed to result in higher customer satisfaction scores, happier employees and improved efficiency for organisations around the world.”
Burkland said the AI Agents will sit in the self-service front end of Five9’s AI offering, complementing the existing AI Agent Assist technology, which augments human customer service.
They will identify, authenticate, drive intent, inject knowledge, apply reason, take actions completely independently, and without the need for a human”, he added, calling them “a new paradigm” for customer experience.
The CEO was speaking on an earnings call as Five9 released its quarterly results. Sales for the quarter ending 30 September rose 15 percent to $264.2m, topping the previous record quarterly high reported earlier this year.
AI was pegged as the driver behind this growth. Burkland said the average annual recurring revenue (ARR) of new logo wins including AI has been five times the size of wins without AI over the last four quarters.
“With the acceleration of AI, CX is changing right before our eyes, and we call this the new CX,” he added.
“This new CX is delivered by our AI-powered platform that stays aware and engaged throughout the entire customer journey, delivering value in many ways we previously could only imagine.”
Customer Wins and Verint Partnership
While Five9 execs did not reveal any customer names, they did give a glimpse into some recent wins.
They highlighted a global wireless carrier deal, which they expect to be worth $4m in ARR, and a global manufacturer deal in partnership with Verint, worth $1.6m in ARR.
The Verint partnership also came under the spotlight in the wake of a RingCentral announcement made earlier the same day.
RingCentral revealed a deal with Verint that will give RingCX customers access to Verint’s workforce engagement management and CX automation technology.
An analyst on the earnings call quizzed the Five9 CEO on the implications of the new partnership.
“They partner with the entire market of CCaaS players and I think it’s important for their business for them to be open and partnering with more than just Five9,” he said.
“We’re their number one partner; we just won their partner of the year again, but we don’t have any issue with them partnering with other players, and we get that.
“That interest expands their market opportunity, and RingCentral is at the low end of the contact centre market.”
