From major product launches to CEO swaps, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Verint Announces Open CCaaS Platform at Verint Engage 23
Verint has unveiled a CCaaS platform, which the vendor suggests will "transform" the contact center landscape.
Launching the platform at its hallmark Engage event, Verint also introduced a new concept: Open CCaaS, which inspired the CCaaS solution.
To understand this concept, consider the challenges companies often face with CCaaS platforms.
Most aspire to offer a single application that contact centers can use to effectively manage all their customer conversations.
Yet, according to Verint, most lack the openness to succeed.
For instance, a global business may use different vendors for various voice, digital, and social applications across various locations – which are impossible to bring into a central environment.
That is where Verint aims to stand out from the crowd. As Dan Bodner, Chairman and CEO, states:
In today’s fast-paced technology environment, brands adopt platforms that are open in all dimensions to future-proof their contact centers.
However, Verint did not only design a platform to harmonize various CCaaS solutions. The open theme spreads across the many technologies that touch the contact center.
Conversational AI is one such technology, which Bodner was keen to underline. He stated:
They need a platform that is designed to augment their human workforce with an effective team of specialized AI bots to deliver tangible business outcomes.
The platform also allows businesses to plug in various other data sources, including third-party CRM and HCM technologies – for instance – to augment the user experience. (Read on…).
Salesforce Announces AI Cloud - with a Lofty Price Tag
Salesforce has teased a new product suite – "AI Cloud" - to bolster its position in the crowded customer experience AI market.
The announcement is the vendor’s latest move to augment its portfolio with "enterprise-ready AI" – with the emphasis very much on generative AI.
Indeed, it combines the generative AI activities Salesforce launched in April.
These include: Service GPT, Sales GPT, Marketing GPT, Commerce GPT, Apex GPT, Flow GPT, Slack GPT, and Tableau GPT.
Currently, many of these solutions are half-baked, with Tableau GPT not available in pilot until November 2023, for example.
Yet, that has not stopped many big-name businesses from already using elements of the suite, including AAA-The Auto Club Group, Gucci, Inspirato, and RBC Wealth Management.
In addition, those that leverage the AI Cloud may benefit from an Einstein GPT Trust Layer, which is front and center of the announcement.
According to Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce, this provides a benchmark for trusted enterprise AI. He said:
AI Cloud, built on the number one CRM, is the fastest and easiest way for our customers to unleash the incredible power of AI, with trust at the center driven by our new Einstein GPT Trust Layer.
That layer aims to bridge the trust gap many associate with generative AI, as concerns swirling data governance, privacy, and potential risks run rife.
In doing so, the Trust Layer will prevent large language models (LLMs) from retaining sensitive data.
Another core feature of the AI Cloud platform is its "prompt templates and builders". These allow users to influence the "quality and relevance" of AI-generated content.
To do so, the solution will leverage "harmonized data to ground generated outputs in every company’s unique context," according to a Salesforce press release.
Finally, Salesforce has committed to an open ecosystem, despite the plethora of GPT-powered products with the suite. (Read on…).
