Google has launched a new contact center offering: the Customer Engagement Suite with Google AI.
The announcement came during its Gemini at Work event, where Google explained how it will combine its CCaaS and Conversational AI solutions within one suite.
The suite will also leverage Gemini 1.5 Flash - the latest version of Google’s large language model (LLM) - to deliver embedded GenAI capabilities.
With that first-party LLM, Google strives to offer contact center teams faster, more cost-effective GenAI innovation.
Finally, the suite supports an ecosystem of third-party offerings, including CRM, WEM, and telephony solutions, with Google enabling a bring-your-own telephony (BYOT) approach.
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The Google Customer Engagement Suite with Google AI[/caption]
Celebrating the launch of the Customer Engagement Suite, Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Applied AI at Google Cloud, stated in a blog post:
As new generative AI capabilities are demonstrating increasingly larger value for customer service operations, we are combining the rich features of Contact Center AI with our latest generative AI technology to deliver a new application.
That application also promises to deliver contact center tech beyond an organization’s core CX hubs to “wherever service occurs”, whether that’s in-store, on-site, or even in a drive-thru.
Yet, beyond that, Google believes its suite is differentiative in four specific ways.
1. Blended Omnichannel Journeys
Google allows contact centers to design resolution workflows that flick between channels to best utilize the strengths of each.
2. Multimodal Experiences
The Customer Engagement Suite is multimodal, allowing customers and agents to share text, images, and audio "seamlessly".
Sharing an example of how this works, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, told attendees of the Gemini at Work event:
If you call a telephone company to trade in your phone, they can send a chat request asking you to upload an image of the phone. From that image, the system can identify that the screen is cracked and then provide a relevant trade-in offer via voice... This is possible because our Gemini models are multimodal.
3. Rule- & GenAI-Based Workflows
Through the suite, Google enables customers to build deterministic and generative workflows.
One example of a deterministic workflow is a bank legally required to verify a customer's identity by asking an explicit set of questions. This is called "Know Your Customer" (KYC).
That bank may also have generative workflows. An example would be a workflow triggered when the customer asks to compare different mortgage products. Here, the business can set up a GenAI-powered flow to scour knowledge sources to deliver an answer.
"Our platform allows you to mix and match these approaches in conversations with customers," confirmed Kurian.
4. Grounded GenAI
Contact centers can ground the Conversational Agents and Agent Assist products within the Customer Engagement Suite to provide "the highest accuracy", according to Kurian.