Announcing the New Cognitive and Collaborative Contact Center

Using the power of cloud analytics and AI to enhance your customer experiences

You’re in a taxi on your way to the airport and your connecting flight back home has just been cancelled due to bad weather conditions in that city. Your airline app sends you a notification message, an email, a phone call, and a text. “Hi Barbara, your connecting flight #2001 has been cancelled due to poor weather conditions. I see that tomorrow is your birthday, so we want to get you home safely today. We have two alternative flights for you. Please select your preference.” From your smartphone app, you select the flight. The app replies: “I see you’ve been a Premium member for the past five years. To show our appreciation, we’d like to give you a free upgrade to first class and 10,000 free mileage points. Would you like that?” You select Yes. The app replies with flight confirmation information, and follows up with an email and a text. You’re all set!

The airline knows who you are, they know your situation, they know when it’s your birthday, they know about the cancelled flight, and they know your preferred connecting cities based on past flights. Plus, because they view you as a high revenue customer, they gave you free points and you were one of the first to be offered a free upgrade for the inconvenience. Later when you arrive at your connecting city, you receive another notification inviting you to their lounge for a birthday drink, along with its location. Wow!

This is the power of cloud data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).

Two weeks ago I shared my view on the top five factors reshaping the contact center and customer experience. Today I’m thrilled to highlight some exciting enhancements we’re unveiling at Enterprise Connect, that leverage the power of cloud analytics and AI to deliver exceptional customer experiences like the one described above. We’re calling it Cognitive Collaboration for the contact center.

Our cloud analytics reporting service will be available for on-premises contact centers

A new cloud-based intelligent agent that listens and assists agents with contextual information

An enhanced omni-channel customer self-service experience via BOTs

Here are the highlights of the new cognitive collaboration capabilities:

Cloud analytics available for on-premises contact center

Our innovative Cisco® Customer Journey Analyzer cloud analytics reporting service which is currently offered with our Customer Journey Platform, will be available with our on-premises Customer Journey Solutions – Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Packaged Contact Center Enterprise, and Unified Contact Center Express.

This means you’ll be able to leverage ALL the data across your entire organization, beyond the contact center, to gain valuable insights about your customers’ behaviors so you can understand them better and provide more highly personalized care that will improve their loyalty and lifetime value.

According to a survey conducted by the Aberdeen Group, 60% of contact centers are using 7 or more systems to interact with customers and 44% manually integrate data using spreadsheet software.* Imagine what else you could be doing with all that time and energy. The Customer Journey Analyzer mines and consolidates this data for you from all these multiple sources, so you can have a complete view of your customers’ journeys, enabling you to optimize for operational efficiency, financial performance, and an improved customer experience.

Moving a contact center to the cloud is not a small task. Which is why we recommend you do this in steps. This “hybrid” version of Analyzer is the first of many cloud-based services we’re making available to your on-premises contact centers as part of our “cloud first, not cloud only” commitment to helping you benefit from innovative cloud technology today, while protecting your valuable on-premises investments. Analyzer is a practical way to begin your cloud journey. And when you do decide to move, you’ll continue to use the same familiar analytics reporting tool, making the transition that much easier.

Intelligent agent for smarter responses

We’re introducing Cisco Answers, our brand new cloud-based “intelligent agent” that’s powered by Google Contact Center AI. Cisco Answers listens to customer conversations in real-time, and provides contextual assistance to your agents such as process guidelines, pricing, membership benefits, coupons, policy updates, and other key information relevant to the request, while they’re interacting with a customer.

Cisco Answers helps your agents be more informed and knowledgable while assisting customers, saving time and minimizing the need for agents to go searching for information while the customer is waiting. Agents feel empowered and productive, and this leads to improving their morale and loyalty to you. Studies show that the more loyal your employees are, the more loyal your customers are.

Enhanced BOT self-service assistance

We’re enhancing the current AI capabilities in our Customer Journey Platform omni-channel customer experience with the introduction of the Customer Virtual Assistant, an integrated BOT self-service capability to handle simple and specific requests that don’t always require a live agent.

The Customer Virtual Assistant helps reduce agent workload and allows them to spend more quality time helping customers on more complex requests. The BOT chat interaction can easily escalate to an agent chat when a more in-depth engagement is needed by the customer. When the chat escalates, it brings along with it the history of the conversation to enable a seamless transition from self-service chat to assisted chat. The agent can then easily find and access experts and colleagues outside the contact center for additional help if needed.

Last but not least.

Administration simplification to improve ops efficiency

We’re making it much easier for you to manage all of this, by unifying the Customer Journey Platform admin experience with the Control Hub where all other Cisco Cloud Collaboration solutions are managed. We’re also significantly simplifying tenant onboarding and provisioning with integrated billing and improved usage statistics. These enhancements reduce IT complexity and cost. Less complexity maximizes IT performance and productivity.

Contact centers play an essential role in driving customer loyalty, innovation, and business growth. By enabling you to leverage your customer data to its fullest, extend the power of cloud to your on-premises deployments, and empower your agents to provide more cognitive, personalized care, you’ll be on your way to building deeper, more meaningful relationships with your customers. Ultimately you will transform your contact center from delivering reactive care to predictive care, and move from isolated customer experiences to cohesive and engaging journeys.

To learn more about our Customer Journey Solutions, please visit our website.

For a complete recap of the Cisco Cognitive Collaboration announcement, read the following articles:

Calling in Webex Teams Now Powered by Cisco BroadCloud

The Cisco Unified Cloud Platform Continues to Lead in Workplace Transformation – Promises Made, Promises Kept

66% Say They’d Switch Vendors in Order to Get an Intelligent Online Meeting Solution

What is Cognitive Collaboration?

*Source: Aberdeen Study June 2018: The Intelligent Contact Center: Get Smarter to Drive Customer Satisfaction Study.