Big CX News from Playvox, NICE, Nuance, Avaya, & Twilio

The bundles aim to give those customers new AI and public cloud capabilities while allowing them to keep their core contact center platforms on-premise.

In releasing the packages, Avaya is again delivering on its “innovation without disruption” strategy.

After all, customers can choose the best-fit bundle and layer it over their existing infrastructure.

The first package is AXP Essentials. It offers a starting point for Avaya customers to build on what they already have, with noise removal, real-time transcription, and agent-assist capabilities.

Also available within the bundle is a unified desktop, “advanced” workflow integrations, and connectors to CRM systems, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Dynamics.

Avaya also mentions journey orchestration tools, which likely stem from its recent Edify roll-up, and an open framework to integrate a third-party virtual agent into the Avaya environment.

The second bundle is AXP Advanced. It offers everything Essentials does, alongside additional digital channels and an “omnichannel experience” (Read on...).

Twilio Taps OpenAI’s Realtime API, Expands Its Conversational AI Capabilities

Twilio has added the new Realtime API from OpenAI to its Communications Platform.

The API facilitates natural speech-to-speech interactions – similar to how the Advanced Voice Mode works within ChatGPT – and comes with preset voices.

With the API, developers can pass any text or audio into GPT-4o and have the model respond via either medium or both.

In serving up this capability, Twilio hopes to allow its customers to build out automated customer experiences that blend voice, messaging, and possibly languages, too.

Such customer journeys will leverage the full capabilities of the modern smartphone alongside the next generation of large language models (LLMs).

Inbal Shani, Chief Product Officer at Twilio, shared her excitement at taking the relationship to the next level and enabling developers to build new experiences:

Businesses can use this to create voice experiences that feel more human and can reduce operational costs and drive higher customer satisfaction.

Twilio also promises that automated conversations will feel “more like real human dialog”, as the Realtime API lowers latency. It also considers conversation pacing, tone, and interruption handling to enable a better balance between speaking and listening (Read on...).