From the launch of a highly-anticipated CX solution to the resurgence of a communications platform, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Microsoft Announces Copilot for Service Launch, Introduces a New Copilot Studio
Microsoft will launch Copilot for Service in a public preview next month.
The enterprise tech giant made the announcement at this week’s Microsoft Ignite event.
There, Microsoft also teased that the Copilot will become generally available during the first quarter of 2024 – costing $50 per user per month.
Sharing the news at an analyst pre-briefing, Frank X. Shaw, Corporate Vice President of Communications at Microsoft, stated:
The Microsoft Copilot for service includes the Copilot for 365 and helps to extend contact centers with generative AI to boost agent productivity.
Feedback from the Copilot Early Access program underlines this, with contact centers noting how call handling times had dropped – on average – by 12 percent.
Moreover, 77 percent of employees noted that they didn’t want to give up Copilot – and the same percentage of respondents said they would even sacrifice a free lunch every week in return for their continued access to Copilot. (Read on…).
After a Year of Decline, Webex Returns to Growth
Webex returned to revenue growth last quarter, following 12 months of decline.
Indeed, in November 2022, year-over-year (YoY) growth fell by one percent.
From there, the slump worsened quarter-by-quarter, dropping ten percent, 13 percent, and 12 percent – respectively.
Yet, from out of the blue, Webex returned to the green last quarter, achieving a three percent bounce and bucking the troubling trend.
Announcing the news during an earnings call, Scott Herren, Chief Financial Officer at Cisco, said:
Collaboration was up three percent, driven by growth in calling and contact center, partially offset by a decline in meetings.
While the return to growth comes rather abruptly, it perhaps indicates that Cisco is seizing the chance to cross-sell its calling and contact center solutions to its larger Meetings base.
Yet, that’s only one factor. Cisco has also started to bundle Webex – alongside its security, networking, and observability offerings – as part of a hybrid work package.
Meanwhile, Cisco has significantly expanded its routes to market. For instance, its global base of partners authorized to sell the Webex Contact Center solution has gone from 300 to 3,000 – in little over a year. (Read on…).
NICE CEO on Enterprise CCaaS: We Are the Clear Leader
Over the past 12 months, NICE enjoyed a 35 percent surge in annual recurring revenue (ARR) across its enterprise CCaaS business.
In other words, the number of customers it bills over $1MN for its CXone CCaaS platform has grown by over a third.
Moreover, NICE recorded a 48 percent year-over-year (YoY) increase in new customer portfolio deals.
Sharing these results during an earnings call, Barak Eilam, CEO of NICE, stated:
We are the clear [market] leader with CXone, having the largest customer base by far and serving the most complex enterprises at scale.
Supporting this argument, NICE CXone is one of only two CCaaS platforms with over a million users – with Genesys Cloud CX recently reaching this milestone too.
Meanwhile, many analysts agree that NICE is a leader in the crowded market.
In the past year, Forrester, Ventana Research, and – most recently – Gartner have awarded NICE this “leader” status in their annual market evaluations.
Of course, there are competitors. Genesys, Five9, and AWS are also vendors that keep cropping up at the forefront of prominent market studies.
Yet, while some may enter the fray – and some may drop out – Steve Blood, VP & Analyst of the Gartner Sales & Customer Service Practice, suggested that such a leading pack is a sign of what’s to come in CCaaS. (Read on…).
Salesforce Launches Analytics App ‘Service Intelligence’
Salesforce has launched the new analytics app Service Intelligence to enhance agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
Service Intelligence is powered by Data Cloud, Salesforce’s real-time hyperscale data engine, and grants users access to all of their business data directly within Service Cloud. This removes the inefficiencies of toggling between screens for information.
Ryan Nichols, SVP and GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce, commented:
With Service Intelligence driven by AI, companies can bridge the gap between data and action, turning raw data into valuable customer insights. This empowers service professionals with the right information to deliver on their core mission: delivering exceptional customer experiences.”
Service Intelligence’s Current Feature Set
Service Intelligence includes pre-built, customizable dashboards to offer a view of critical metrics, such as customer satisfaction, average time to close, and individual and team workloads. This provides agents and managers visibility and understanding, supported by the AI-powered insights produced by Einstein Conversation Mining. (Read on…).
