The CCaaS space is heating up, with several market trends adding coals to the furnace.
Indeed, legacy vendors are becoming increasingly eager to push contact centers to the cloud.
Moreover, a host of three-year CCaaS contracts are expiring after the initial rush to the cloud brought on by the pandemic.
As such, many CCaaS vendors anticipate a swarm of new interest and are leveraging AI advancements to fuel innovation.
Last week’s Enterprise Connect set the stage for much of this innovation, with many prominent CCaaS providers making exciting announcements and attempting to differentiate their offerings.
Here is a quick overview of the most notable announcements.
AWS Streamlines Its Agent Interface
From an initial set of contact center building blocks to a fully-fledged platform, AWS has evolved its Amazon Connect CCaaS solution into a marketing-leading platform.
Last month’s Gartner Peer Insights and Forrester Wave CCaaS studies underline this status.
Yet, the rapid addition of new features had left its agent UI crowded, which often meant that reps navigated many pages and tabs to resolve customer queries.
Thankfully, AWS announced the release of Step-by-Step Guides for Amazon Connect, which lead agents across the optimal resolution path as they handle customer queries.
The vendor also launched a partnership with Zoom, which will see the UC provider join its marketplace, giving customers that want to converge UCaaS and CCaaS another option.
Zoom Teams Up With Calabrio on Workforce Management
Alongside its AWS partnership, Zoom announced that it had joined forces with Calabrio to make workforce management (WFM) solutions available within the Zoom Contact Center.
Calabrio has become a prominent player in the WFM arena since it acquired Teleopti in 2019.
With the integration, Zoom users can leverage AI-driven forecasting, automated scheduling, mobile app self-scheduling, and much more.
It also provides an alternative option to Verint WFM, another integration that Zoom announced in November 2022 – alongside several others.
NICE Embraces the GPT-Era with Enlighten Actions
In January, NICE became one of the first CCaaS vendors to integrate ChatGPT into its CCaaS platform, supporting conversational commerce experiences.
Now the vendor has launched NICE Enlighten Actions, the next evolution of Enlighten, its collection of AI models embedded across its CXone solution. These aim to empower contact center leaders with intelligence.
Actions will add a generative AI layer over-the-top to turn that intelligence into action.
Early examples include auto-summarizing customer contacts, generating knowledge articles, and showcasing automation opportunities.
Five9 Follows Suit with Agent Assist 2.0
As CX Today teased in February, Five9 has now formally released its first GPT-driven contact center solution, which will bolster its agent-assist offering.
Indeed, the vendor announced the solution as "Agent Assist 2.0 with AI Summary".
The AI Summary tool harnesses the power of large language models (LLMs) to auto-summarize customer conversation transcripts and publish them in the CRM.
It complements Five9’s other agent-assist tools, which sit on the agent desktop and support agents to work faster and smoother.
Expect the formal announcement of another solution: GPT-fuelled AI Insights. Also, teased in February, this will group contacts by traits such as intent to help contact centers spot automation and process automation opportunities.
Cresta Jumps On the Generative AI Bandwagon
While it may not provide an all-encompassing CCaaS platform, Cresta integrates with many, adding value with cutting-edge AI.
As such, it is unsurprising to see the vendor grab the generative AI bull by the horns, releasing several enhancements to its portfolio.
These include instant modeling, flow modeling, topic discovery, and automated labeling.
In addition to these announcements, the provider also launched a Cresta Revenue Growth platform, which listens to sales conversations and churns out insights.
Google Leverages Its Conversational AI Prowess
Google has revealed plans to embed its generative AI App Builder into its CCaaS platform.