From a regulation breach to a massive, expanded CX partnership, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Vonage & Twilio Are In Hot Water for Breaching Australian Anti-Scam Rules
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has taken action against Vonage and Twilio for breaching its SMS anti-scam regulations.
After an investigation, the government agency established that the two CPaaS giants allowed customers to send SMS messages – including sender IDs (i.e. shortened business names) – without making adequate checks that their tech wasn’t being utilized to execute scams.
Moreover, it uncovered that fraudsters had leveraged Vonage tech to send 3,387 scam texts impersonating organizations, including ApplePay, Commonwealth Bank, and Australia Post.
In total, Vonage enabled the sending of 11,780 non-compliant SMS messages.
Meanwhile, the ACMA also adjudged Twilio to have “inadequate” systems to comply with the rules. Yet, thankfully, in its case, there is no evidence that scammers exploited these vulnerabilities.
The agency has now formally directed both businesses to comply with its Reducing Scam Calls and Scam SMS Code, introduced in July 2022.
It will also continue conducting audits, warning telcos that they may face $250,000 fines for compliance breaches and highlighting how battling SMS scams is an ACMA priority. (Read on…).
Avaya Showcases New Generative AI Use Cases for Contact Centers, Adds Genesys & Adobe Alum to C-Suite
Avaya has released three generative AI (GenAI) solutions for its contact center customers in the build-up to GITEX Global 2023.
Each auto-generates new contact center workflows and insights from written prompts alone.
First is a journey map builder. The contact center team may describe their ideal customer journey, and the tool will plot out such a map – isolating how customers can use the Avaya Experience Platform to roll it out.
Next, the vendor has augmented the search functions across the Avaya Experience Platform so managers can quickly gain “specific, actionable insights” from their natural language requests.
Finally, there is a tool that pairs GenAI with Avaya Experience Platform analytics to provide general recommendations for improving various customer, agent, and business outcomes.
The features are only available via the cloud. However, Avaya’s on-premise customers may leverage these capabilities by working with the vendor in a hybrid mode.
Such a hybrid option is critical to the company’s “innovation without disruption” mantra. (Read on…).
AWS and IBM Team Up on Contact Center Generative AI & More
IBM has expanded its partnership with AWS to support more mutual clients as they operationalize generative AI (GenAI).
For starters, this will focus on the delivery of three specific solutions: Contact Center Modernization with Amazon Connect, Platform Services on AWS, and Supply Chain Ensemble on AWS.
IBM Consulting and AWS worked together to release the first solution in July. It auto-summarizes and -categorizes voice and digital customer conversations using GenAI.
Such use cases can streamline post-contact processing work for contact center agents and afford service operations greater visibility into their demand drivers.
Yet, IBM notes how the solution also supports escalations from live and virtual agents to supervisors, giving the latter a clear-cut summary of the conversation so far. That allows them to pick up the interaction from where it left off.
Meanwhile, AWS has released further Gen AI solutions for Amazon Connect, going beyond agent-assist use cases to include manager-assist and customer self-service applications.
IBM consultants can work with AWS customers to implement these tools too. (Read on…).
Most Contact Centers Are Fully Staffed for the First Time in Seven Years, Finds Metrigy
Metrigy has revealed that most contact centers are fully staffed for the first time since its records began seven years ago.
The US-based customer experience research firm shared the finding in an infographic – which highlights how 58 percent of service operations now have the necessary staffing.
That represents a massive ten percent jump from 2022.
Interestingly, Metrigy notes that the “biggest driver” of this trend is the rise in AI-powered agent-assist technologies, revealing that contact centers leveraging the technology are 20 percent more likely to be fully staffed.
This year, these agent-assist technologies have received lots of TLC from contact center vendors, augmenting them with generative AI and inspiring new, exciting use cases.
That said, other forms of AI are likely helping out, including virtual agents and RPA. As Robin Gareiss, CEO of Metrigy, said:
Companies didn’t suddenly find new agents. Rather, AI is making existing agents more productive, reducing the need for new hires.
Gareiss also suggests that companies not using AI will hire 2.3 times the number of new agents throughout 2023.
Yet, many other significant factors have contributed to the staffing uptick. (Read on…).
