From Microsoft pushing GenAI into contact centers to another app shutdown at Twilio, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Microsoft Gives Copilot to Its Enterprise CCaaS Customers, Whether They Want It or Not
Tomorrow, Microsoft will release an update to enable and install Copilot automatically across Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise environments.
The update will impact Microsoft’s CCaaS customers in its Australia, UK, and US regions.
After the installation, each customer will find Copilot available on the contact center agent desktop “by default”.
At first, this default Copilot will only include case and conversation summarization features, which aim to standardize and accelerate post-call processing for agents.
However, other Copilot features – including the capability to auto-generate emails for agents – are not part of this update.
As such, Microsoft is giving the sizzle of its Copilot, but if contact centers want the sausage, then additional costs will come into play.
Sharing the announcement in a Microsoft blog post, Rushil Vora, Program Manager of Dynamics 365 Customer Service, stated:
We believe this update presents a significant opportunity to fundamentally alter the way your organization approaches service by quickly improving and enhancing the agent experience.
“This update applies only to the Copilot summarization capabilities, which integrate with service workflows and require minimal change management.” (Read on…).
The Purge Continues! Twilio to Shutter Authy’s Desktop App
In August, Twilio will shut down the desktop app for Authy, its two-factor authentication (2FA) app.
As a result, Authy will be unavailable on Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop devices.
The only surviving devices will be smartphones and Macs with M1 or M2 silicon. Users of the latter may still download the iOS version of the app.
That app generates codes every 30 seconds, which users may leverage to sign into a linked account – adding a second security layer to the authentication process.
While the likes of Microsoft and Google now offer these tools, Authy’s desktop compatibility gave Twilio a significant market differentiator.
After all, with this feature, users could sign into their accounts via the computer without switching to their phones.
As such, it comes as a surprise that Twilio is pulling the plug on this capability. Yet, the giant has to make these difficult decisions as activist investors pressure the vendor to trim its portfolio.
Twilio made no bones about its motivation to streamline, stating on Authy’s website:
We made this difficult decision to sunset the Twilio Authy desktop apps in order to streamline our focus and provide more value on existing product solutions for which we see increasing demand.
Although Authy may still run on particular Macs, Twilio recommends switching to the mobile app, which automatically syncs to the desktop version. (Read on…).
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Cautions OpenAI on Its “Ripped Off” Training Data & “Commoditized” Models
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has shared his concerns over how GenAI companies leverage data to train their large language models (LLMs).
During an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum, he stated:
“I own TIME, then there is Bloomberg and the New York Times. We’re all finding our intellectual property, your stories, your work… surfacing in these results because all of the training data has been stolen.”
The CEO then noted that this data is one of three critical tiers in developing GenAI apps, including those created by Salesforce partner OpenAI. Indeed, Benioff stated:
Download the OpenAI or Copilot app. [There is a] commodity UI on the front-end, in the middle you have what is becoming somewhat highly commoditized large language models… [and] then you have this broad set of training data, which is the third tier of it, which has been basically ripped off.
While Benioff caveated that by highlighting how nobody knows the fair price for that training data, he suggested AI companies shouldn’t just continue doing what they want.
Instead, he proposed there is an opportunity to build a standardized set of training data that allows these companies to play a fair game and ensures content creators receive fair compensation for their work.
“I think that bridge hasn’t yet been crossed, and that’s a mistake by the AI companies,” he concluded. (Read on…).
Zoom Moves to Improve Contact Center Data Privacy, Outbound Dialing, & More
As part of its January release, Zoom has added ten new features to its CCaaS platform: the Zoom Contact Center.
This month, the video conferencing pioneer has put emphasis on giving customers more control over their data, with two eye-catching new capabilities.
First is a Customer Managed Key (CMK) support function that allows admins to define the types of Zoom Contact Center data they encrypt.
In doing so, they may better manage cross-channel contact center data – whether that’s from a recording, transcript, or voicemail.
Second is its new personal data redaction capability, which automatically redacts personally identifiable information (PII) from voice, video, and messaging recordings and transcripts.
When enabled, it isolates personal data entities and replaces them with generic placeholder text.
Such innovations will allow contact centers to curate data sets – which belong solely to that organization – without exposing sensitive customer data to various AI models.
Indeed, each customer owns the data they place onto any Zoom platform, and Zoom will only use the encrypted, secured data to train their AI if they receive explicit consent. (Read on…).
