The release of the latest version of the Five9 Agent Assist is imminent, offering new capabilities such as “AI checklists” and automated compliance.
Such advancements come as contact centers become increasingly comfortable with AI and automation, with many embracing the idea of using AI to assist and guide live agents.
Indeed, as self-service propositions expand, these capabilities are garnering greater demand as the contact center agent role grows ever more complex.
During a recent earnings call, Rowan Trollope, CEO of Five9, discussed how the agent-assist upgrades will cater to this new environment. He stated:
These AI capabilities ensure that not only does the agent have the information they need when they need it, but we’ve also seen our customers looking to adopt these features to help support agent onboarding training and upskilling.
Another use case is harnessing real-time guidance and reminders to enhance upselling programs, helping to blend the role of service and sales agents.
However, ongoing AI innovation extends beyond agent assist and native Five9 capabilities. Positioning itself as an AI-enabled platform, Five9 is building a partner ecosystem that drives business growth through a broad, pioneering solutions portfolio.
An excellent example of this is its VoiceStream API, which enabled the company to onboard 24 partners to the platform this quarter. The offering also provides customer authentication via biometrics and agent assist, coaching, real-time speech analytics, and much more.
In addition, Five9 will continue to enhance the operational aspects of its other native AI and automation solutions – alongside agent assist – including its customer-facing virtual agents.
Sharing more information regarding this well-rounded AI approach, Trollope said:
I’m not aware of any of our competitors who are built the way that we built. We have a different perspective… which is to stand on the shoulders of giants, leverage the underlying technologies that are being built by the Googles and Amazons, and the hyperscalers of the world. Then, we build that layer that sits above all those technologies.
This strategy differs from competitors, who spend much of their research and development efforts on evolving their speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) propositions.
Instead, Five9 has taken more commoditized technologies and applied them to the contact center in more unique ways. According to Trollope: “That’s giving us our technology lead.”
Such platform development is one of three building blocks that Five9 has established to deliver a balanced growth, alongside its “march upmarket” and global expansion.
Its Q1 results may reflect the success of this strategy, achieving revenue growth of 33% by recording an income of $182.8 million.
Such earnings are perhaps also a result of the increasing profile that Five9 is building across the globe, which grew significantly last year after Zoom made a play to acquire the company.
