Cisco’s Webex Contact Center platform gets agentic AI-powered chatbots

Cisco Systems Inc. mentioned as we speak it’s bringing agentic synthetic intelligence capabilities to its contact middle and video conferencing platforms, serving to customer support brokers and staff increase their productiveness by means of automation.

The brand new capabilities, announced on the firm’s annual Webex One occasion in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, embrace a brand new Webex AI Agent that’s designed to take buyer calls on behalf of human brokers. The corporate additionally introduced the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Middle, which is a digital assistant for human contact middle staff, designed to assist them be extra environment friendly whereas coping with prospects.

As well as, the corporate introduced a brand new AI Agent Studio for corporations that need to create their very own, personalized AI brokers to be used in Webex Contact Middle.

Agentic AI chatbots

With as we speak’s updates, Cisco is trying to take the lead in a contact middle trade that has eagerly embraced the capabilities of AI. Nearly each contact middle software program supplier gives some type of AI-powered chatbots for dealing with fundamental buyer queries, earlier than handing off the tougher ones to human brokers.

However with Webex AI Agent, Cisco says it’s going one higher, as its chatbots will be capable of carry out far more difficult duties, and cut back the workload that people are required to take care of. The Webex AI Agent leverages superior pure dialogue and conversational intelligence to ship quicker resolutions, decreasing wait instances for callers.

For example, Cisco mentioned points resembling a client needing to rebook a flight or change a misplaced debit card nearly all the time contain a human agent, however that’s not the case. With Webex AI Agent, corporations will be capable of create personalized, self-service choices for such use circumstances, so shoppers can full these duties with out human agent help. In accordance with Cisco, early adopters have seen a 39% enchancment in buyer satisfaction since they started implementing the expertise.

Cisco Government Vice President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel mentioned the standard of customer support has a big effect on a model’s popularity, to allow them to’t afford to get it fallacious. “Webex AI Agent solves buyer issues instantaneously and can essentially remodel the experiences we have now all grown accustomed to,” he promised.

Throughout the Webex AI Agent, prospects may also be capable of mess around with Cisco’s AI Agent Studio, which supplies an interface and instruments for coaching personalized AI bots that possess extra context about their enterprise. Clients will be capable of use their very own AI fashions and prepare them on their very own information, and deploy them inside Webex Contact Middle, enhancing the capabilities of their chatbots additional, the corporate mentioned.

Cisco mentioned Webex AI Agent and AI Agent Studio will each turn into typically accessible for cloud prospects within the first quarter of subsequent 12 months, whereas on-premises prospects will be capable of preview them beginning within the second quarter.

Assistants for human brokers

As for Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Middle, that is an AI bot that’s designed to help human brokers, who will nonetheless be essential to deal with essentially the most difficult buyer points that Webex AI Agent can’t take care of. Usually accessible now, supplies automated steerage for name middle brokers as they take care of every caller, delivering at-a-glance context summaries to facilitate the hand-off from chatbot to human, who will instantly be capable of see what the caller’s drawback is.

Along with context, the Cisco AI Assistant may also present advised responses to brokers. It’s sensible sufficient to pay attention and perceive the conversion between the agent and the client, and can instantly inform the agent what they need to do subsequent to resolve the client’s subject as quickly as doable.

The AI Assistant isn’t the one means that Cisco is taking good care of human brokers. With the brand new Agent Wellness functionality introduced as we speak, it’s offering contact middle managers with some helpful capabilities resembling automated breaks for brokers to forestall them from getting burned out. Different options embrace higher agent scheduling and instruments for rising or lowering every agent’s workflow on the fly.

Extra immersive digital conferences

Lastly, the corporate additionally revealed quite a few updates for enterprise customers of the Webex video conferencing platform to facilitate digital conferences The brand new stuff features a function known as Spatial Meetings that may remodel any area geared up with a Cisco Room Bar right into a extra immersive, studio-like atmosphere with immersive, spatial audio.

There’s a brand new piece of {hardware} too, known as the Cisco Ceiling Microphone, which helps to seize pure dialog from anyplace within the room. It makes use of AI to detect the place the voices are coming from and modify the microphone on the fly, so it could actually all the time deal with the one that is talking. It’s appropriate with numerous Cisco cameras and room programs, and replaces the necessity for particular person microphones for every person.

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