From Microsoft pushing GenAI into contact centers to another app shutdown at Twilio, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Microsoft Gives Copilot to Its Enterprise CCaaS Customers, Whether They Want It or Not
Tomorrow, Microsoft will release an update to enable and install Copilot automatically across Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise environments.
The update will impact Microsoft’s CCaaS customers in its Australia, UK, and US regions.
After the installation, each customer will find Copilot available on the contact center agent desktop “by default”.
At first, this default Copilot will only include case and conversation summarization features, which aim to standardize and accelerate post-call processing for agents.
However, other Copilot features – including the capability to auto-generate emails for agents – are not part of this update.
As such, Microsoft is giving the sizzle of its Copilot, but if contact centers want the sausage, then additional costs will come into play.
Sharing the announcement in a Microsoft blog post, Rushil Vora, Program Manager of Dynamics 365 Customer Service, stated:
We believe this update presents a significant opportunity to fundamentally alter the way your organization approaches service by quickly improving and enhancing the agent experience.
"This update applies only to the Copilot summarization capabilities, which integrate with service workflows and require minimal change management." (Read on…).
The Purge Continues! Twilio to Shutter Authy’s Desktop App
In August, Twilio will shut down the desktop app for Authy, its two-factor authentication (2FA) app.
As a result, Authy will be unavailable on Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop devices.
The only surviving devices will be smartphones and Macs with M1 or M2 silicon. Users of the latter may still download the iOS version of the app.
That app generates codes every 30 seconds, which users may leverage to sign into a linked account – adding a second security layer to the authentication process.
While the likes of Microsoft and Google now offer these tools, Authy’s desktop compatibility gave Twilio a significant market differentiator.
After all, with this feature, users could sign into their accounts via the computer without switching to their phones.
As such, it comes as a surprise that Twilio is pulling the plug on this capability. Yet, the giant has to make these difficult decisions as activist investors pressure the vendor to trim its portfolio.
Twilio made no bones about its motivation to streamline, stating on Authy’s website:
We made this difficult decision to sunset the Twilio Authy desktop apps in order to streamline our focus and provide more value on existing product solutions for which we see increasing demand.
Although Authy may still run on particular Macs, Twilio recommends switching to the mobile app, which automatically syncs to the desktop version. (Read on…).