Calabrio has snapped up Wysdom, a provider of contact center virtual agents.
The move adds to the workforce engagement management (WEM) frontrunner’s AI and machine learning capabilities.
Moreover, Calabrio disclosed that the move primarily aims to maximize its customers’ agent engagement rate, productivity, and return on investment (ROI).
The vendor may secure those outcomes by supporting Wysdom to further its efforts in developing software and services that enhance virtual agent performance.
Altogether, the conversational AI outfit has 75+ bot industry professionals supporting customers as they build their post-bot deployment strategy, working closely with operations teams as they monitor, tweak, and improve their offerings.
Yet, Calabrio may also aim to leverage their expertise to further the capabilities of Grant, its virtual agent that assists contact center agents in performing various scheduling tasks.
Such tasks include managing their shift preferences, requesting shift swaps, and claiming holidays.
With this knowledge, Calabrio automates scheduling and shift management activities for resource planners – and has developed a robust reputation for doing so since its 2019 acquisition of Teleopti.
Now, Kevin Jones, CEO of Calabrio, hinted that the acquisition will bolster the business’s workforce management (WFM) offering further. He stated:
We are excited to bring Wysdom and Calabrio together to help our customers use AI to drive optimal allocation of resources across both human and virtual agents.
“By unlocking core insights across all interactions at scale, Wysdom’s powerful AI/ML-fueled analytics will ensure that our customers are able to leverage all of the valuable data in their omnichannel contact center.”
However, before Calabrio augments Grant with new capabilities, it may provide an immediate value-add in boosting its conversational intelligence software.
In doing so, the vendor will make it easier for customers to present various conversational metrics within a single pane of glass.
Such an approach may enhance the performance and resource allocation of agents, both human and – now with Wysdom – virtual.
Moreover, within the pane, Calabrio-powered contact centers may soon sort conversations into thematic categories. Those categories may include intent, sentiment, channel type, and more.
From there, customers may run bot-aided analysis to determine areas for potential improvement to processes, tech, and individual performance, augmenting Calabrio’s quality management (QM).
Such cross-solution innovation may lead to a WEM copilot that runs across the Calabrio platform, pulling disparate capabilities together to bring new possibilities bubbling to the surface.
Indeed, such analytics may aid WFM teams too. For instance, they may use agent performance data to optimize agent schedules – offering them breaks when their performance dips and extra shifts at times they typically perform well.
Yet, while this may come, Ian Collins, Founder & CEO of Wysdom, is also enthused by the shorter-term possibilities.
“At Wysdom we have spent years single-mindedly focused on improving the efficacy of the AI-enhanced chatbot, believing the modern contact center to be a space ripe for transformational change,” he said.
All along we’ve viewed Calabrio as a like-minded innovator, so we’re thrilled to join them in this crucial mission.
That mission for transformational change is one that many strive towards, with lots of CCaaS providers stepping further into the WEM market.
However, Calabrio seems determined to bolster its value-add with this acquisition, striving to “build the world’s best software”.
In doing so, it may bolster its argument that the best-in-class WEM tools can add significant value to all-in-one platforms that offer some level of workforce optimization (WFO).
