Last week, I attended Cisco’s Contact Center Analyst Deep Dive at company headquarters in San Jose, CA. The event provided an opportunity for a deep-dive into the company’s strategic focus and product roadmap, discussion of recent acquisitions, and conversations with company executives.
Cisco x CloudCherry
Cisco completed the acquisition of CloudCherry (a digital CX solution provider) on October 11, 2019. Following that, in January 2020, the company announced a new solution: Webex Experience Management— bringing CloudCherry capabilities within its portfolio, allowing contact centers with AI-enabled capabilities to map customer journeys, conduct root-cause analysis, and provide a prescriptive approach to manage customer experiences across numerous channels.
At the event, we had a chance to take a first-hand look into some of the capabilities of Webex Experience Management. I found the theme flow analysis capability to be a particularly innovative way to help CX leaders observe inflection points across the customer journey. Specifically, it uses customer data across multiple channels to observe the key drivers / influencers of customer behavior. CX leaders can use this analysis to inform themselves about the top issues clients face at distinct stages of the customer journey.
Cisco x Voicea
Another acquisition the company completed on September 6, 2019 was that of Voicea — an AI solution provider focused on real-time meeting transcription, voice search, and speech recognition. The capabilities brought through this acquisition — along with Cisco’s 2017 acquisition of another AI firm, MindMeld — will fuel the company’s conversational IVR (interactive voice response) and chat bot capabilities. Specifically, incorporating Voicea capabilities within the Webex Contact Center platform will enrich machine learning algorithms designed to help agents manage customer journeys while driving agent productivity.
Besides adding new product capabilities around digital experience management and contact center AI, another important aspect of the above acquisitions is adding knowledgeable and experienced talent from these firms.
Cloud & AI
Other discussions at the event focused on Cisco’s cloud-first approach — specifically, facilitating the contact center’s transition from on-premise to a cloud deployment model. To this point, Zack Taylor, Director of Strategic Communications for Customer Journey Solutions noted that the company has observed almost 200% growth in cloud bookings within Q1 of its fiscal year. Zack also discussed cognitive collaboration as a topic, sharing how T-Mobile uses collaboration and contact center capabilities together to empower agents, break barriers across the business, and ultimately help agents meet customer expectations.
Lastly, AI was shared as a key pillar of the company’s market messaging and product capabilities over the next several years. Amy Chang, EVP & General Manager for Cisco Collaboration, noted that the company invested significant resources in this area and that the capabilities will form the basis of the company’s AI-augmented super-agent capabilities.
It’s important to note that AI in the contact center isn’t a magical tool that will suddenly transform performance results and provide full automation. Rather, it enables firms with greater intelligence to manage self-service interactions, detect emerging and common issues across clients, and provide agents with real-time guidance. As the algorithms get more advanced and accurate, contact centers will see greater accuracy and benefits across those areas over time.
Are you a Webex Contact Center or Webex Experience Management user? If so, please share your perspectives on how these capabilities such as customer journey theme analysis and AI can impact your use of the platform.
