From an exciting new contact center capability to a statement customer megadeal, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
AWS Makes Proficiency-Based Routing for Contact Centers Possible
Amazon Connect now allows admins to route customer interactions according to the proficiency of contact center agents.
To start, admins can create a set of agent proficiencies to reflect an individual’s skill level across numerous attributes. Possible attributes include their ability to handle a specific intent or fluency in a particular language.
With these proficiencies, contact centers can create custom routing requirements to drive specific business outcomes and match the loyalty-hinging customer contacts to the best-placed agents.
Another exciting feature of Connect’s proficiency routing is the ability for admins to create “timed routing steps” – which act as a backstop if the most “proficient” agents are unavailable.
The feature gradually extends the routing thresholds to attract a broader agent pool and find the best match within a reasonable timeframe. (Read on..).
Verint Secures a Huge $49MN Healthcare Customer Win
Verint has secured a $49MN contract with a leading U.S. healthcare company, which includes Open CCaaS, specialist bots, and more.
The contract has a five-year term and – while it includes these new elements – it will also expand on existing solutions already deployed by the customer.
Dan Bodner, CEO of Verint, commented on its new multi-million-dollar contract:
We are pleased to receive this strong endorsement of our differentiated open platform and CX automation strategy.
“This large contract, which includes the deployment of more than 12 AI-powered bots, is another proof point that our differentiated open platform is gaining momentum along with our ability to monetize our strong AI capabilities.”
Verint announced the launch of its Open CCaaS platform at its Engage 2023 event.
The platform stands out in the market as it embraces a bring-your-own-telephony approach.
As such, deployments start by giving customers the opportunity to build the optimal contact center workflows. They then fit the operational systems around these.
That is a divergent approach, and major wins like this seemingly represent a major affirmation of the solution and perhaps signal that it is living up to the hype surrounding its launch. (Read on..).
Salesforce’s Latest Innovation Turns Unstructured Data Into Actionable Intelligence
Salesforce has introduced a new vector database that unifies various business data sources – including unstructured data like PDFs, emails, and transcripts – within Data Cloud.
There, businesses can also add structured data from its various Salesforce CRM apps to enrich the data pool further.
As a result, customers can use various data types across their business applications and workflows.
Moreover, many will no longer need to engage in costly and complex fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs).
Other forms of structured data that businesses can pull into Data Cloud include customer purchase histories, customer support cases, and product inventories.
Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM of Unified Data Services & Einstein at Salesforce, outlined more benefits of this new solution: “The Data Cloud Vector Database relieves the challenge of costly and complex processes to harness the value of unstructured data.
“Now, our customers can reason over the full spectrum of their enterprise data to power their business applications more effectively.” (Read on..).
NICE to Build a “Conversational AI Powerhouse” as LiveVox Acquisition Closes
NICE has completed its acquisition of LiveVox and now plans to create a “conversational AI powerhouse”.
How? By pulling LiveVox’s AI-powered outreach capabilities onto its CXone platform.
According to NICE, the fortified offering will pave the way for the “only” interaction-centric platform within the contact center industry.
NICE reportedly spent $350MN to acquire the rival CCaaS provider, with the Livevox team’s industry expertise a significant motivator – alongside these outbound features.
The CEO of NICE, Barak Eilam, released a statement welcoming the LiveVox team to the company:
The successful completion of this acquisition is a major milestone for NICE as we continue to execute on our strategic vision, further cementing our leadership position.
“Organisations around the globe are looking to partner with us as they accelerate their CX AI journey, and we are excited to provide them with the most comprehensive platform to help fuel their success.
“I would like to extend a warm welcome to the talented LiveVox team and take the next step in transforming the CX industry together.” (Read on..).
