From a tech giant entering a new customer experience arena to alleged layoffs, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
Zoom Struts Into the Workforce Management Space
Zoom has expanded its contact center portfolio by introducing Zoom Workforce Management.
The platform provides solutions across the workforce management (WFM) cycle, which has four stages. These are: forecasting, scheduling, intraday management, and review.
At that final review stage, planners take learnings and apply those to their future plans, completing the cycle and ensuring continuous improvement.
Zoom has applied AI across the cycle to lighten the load on planners.
Moreover, as Ben Neo, Customer Experience Sales Leader at Zoom, tells CX Today:
Zoom’s WFM software is easy to use, intuitive, and reliable, and best of all is cloud-based to help customers scale up and down as their team evolves.
"This is another key element to further round out the Zoom Contact Center functionality and shows how we are reacting quickly to customer feedback."
Interestingly, Neo also suggests that the platform will soon expand further, with Zoom Workforce Management the first offering within a wider Workforce Management Engagement (WEM) suite.
Alongside WFM tools, such suites often include contact center Quality Assurance (QA), gamification, and learning management solutions.
These will bring many further native capabilities to Zoom Contact Center customers. (Read on…).
Microsoft Launches Sales Copilot, Makes Many More CX-Related Announcements
Microsoft has unveiled Sales Copilot, an application that supports salespeople as they complete tasks across Outlook, Teams, and Dynamics 365 Sales.
In doing so, it aspires to improve productivity and personalize customer conversations.
That personalization comes from a CRM integration – be it Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics.
By pulling in that data, Copilot autogenerates emails tailored to the customer, which the salesperson can review, tweak, and send.
Moreover, Copilot can automate tasks between the CRM and communication channels, craft meeting summaries, and prepare pre-meeting notes.
AI powers these notes, incorporating real-time insights, such as top business and customer opportunity summaries.
Finally, a post-interaction capability recommends the next moves to salespeople and suggests AI-generated follow-ups. (Read on…).
Cisco Continues Its Layoffs, with Webex a Reported Victim
Cisco has reportedly engaged in significant layoffs this week, sweeping numerous business units.
A source told CX Today that the actions – which started on Monday, July 17th - allegedly affected the following business units:
- Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
- Cisco Collaboration
- Cisco Cisco Data Center Services & Solutions
- Cisco Experience Centers (CxC) - Research Triangle Park, N.C. "dissolved"
- Cisco Security Business Group (SBG)
- Cisco Servers - Unified Computing System (UCS)
- Cisco Webex
Cisco has not yet confirmed this to CX Today when asked for clarity.
Nonetheless, the tech giant told Fierce Telecom that the most recent job cuts are a continuation of "the rebalancing effort" announced in November 2022.
