Brands are looking at adopting AI as a means to an end – anything to help make sense of data, shift customer conversations to more digital channels, or automate disconnected manual processes in customer service. And technology partners are responding with plug-and-play solutions.
It’s not about AI maturity. It’s about getting the work done.
In March this year, VOXI by Vodafone became the ‘first’ UK telecommunications company to launch a generative AI (GenAI) chatbot.
Powered by ChatGPT, the new chatbot was built by Accenture and uses an AI safety framework to ensure a responsible and ethical deployment. The news came in the quick run up to the announcement of Vodafone Group’s ten-year strategic partnership with Microsoft. Part of the deal is for the telco to strengthen customer experiences by implementing Microsoft’s AI.
Is it a big deal? Yes. According to the findings from the 2023 State of Conversational AI in the Contact Center report, contact centre and IT leaders believe conversational artificial intelligence (AI) is the future. Some 80% say these capabilities will be a must have in the near future, and 41% agree that if companies don’t adopt these capabilities, they will fall behind.
It’s positive news. Business leaders are keen to share that conversational AI compliments the human touch – and does not replace it. In fact, businesses are leveraging it to improve customer service capabilities (62%), streamline internal workflows (42%), improve customer satisfaction and reduce customer wait times (36%).
Conversational AI is at an inflection point. Thanks to generative AI’s recent developments, it is being seen as a way to deliver crucial CX priorities – like personalisation in a meaningful way and at scale.
“The integration of Generative AI along with the emergence of vector databases as the new standard for providing persistent memory to large language models and the pivotal role of personalisation are driving exceptional customer experiences, in the Intelligent Contact Center,” said Craig Kennedy, Senior Director of Research at Aragon Research.
Technology partners add capabilities
Last year, Oracle was one of the first to add new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to its Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX). The new features promise to liberate marketers, sellers, and service agents from time-consuming, manual tasks by unlocking relevant content, recommendations, and insights with automation and conversational interfaces.
“Pre-trained large language models (LLMs) are changing the way we interact with people, content, and critical knowledge in our enterprises. We can now unlock insights and communicate with clarity like never before,” said Rob Tarkoff, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Cloud CX.
Earlier this year, LivePerson and call analytics platform Infinity announced a partnership to help brands better personalise digital experiences through the power of conversational data and intelligence. Together, they promise to drive enhanced personalisation and measurable ROI by making it easy to connect attribution data across voice calls and digital messaging conversations. This bi-directional attribution — inclusive of conversations handled with AI and automation — makes it easier to understand a customer’s end-to-end, omnichannel journey with a brand.
Warren Newbert, CEO of Infinity said, “We’re already making it possible to attribute calls and ROI to digital conversations, and we’re excited to offer even more valuable insights to marketers, sales teams, CX professionals, and contact centres as our partnership progresses.”
Real-time revenue execution platform Acqueon and Cresta, a provider of generative AI for intelligent contact centres have joined forces to help B2C enterprises better engage their customers and optimise the effectiveness of every customer interaction.
This partnership will help businesses deliver meaningful revenue generation and recovery outcomes through omnichannel outbound engagement and enhanced customer service and retention. Brands will be able to proactively connect with customers at the right time and on their preferred channels, in a fully compliant manner.
“Customers are holding businesses to higher standards than ever before, and it’s essential that we ensure that every customer touchpoint is productive and positive,” said Ping Wu, CEO of Cresta
Custom models as a competitive advantage
Invoca made enhancements to its Signal AI suite, and introduced Signal AI Studio, a new solution that empowers businesses to quickly create custom AI models that automatically unlock breakthrough insights from phone conversations. For businesses that acquire customers, members, or patients over the phone, Invoca AI enables digital marketing and contact centre teams to collaborate in driving revenue growth. With Signal AI Studio, businesses can train custom AI models to detect meaningful insights from every customer conversation. Revenue teams can optimise marketing spend and agent performance by surfacing previously unknown insights.
“With Signal AI, you don’t need to be a data scientist to unlock the power of AI. Now, any user can drive revenue by unlocking breakthrough insights from the buying journey, especially the ‘moment of truth’ where consumers make critical purchase decisions. AI models custom-trained for your business deliver the most accurate insights, and now with Signal AI Studio, marketing and contact centre teams can create them faster than ever.”
Also Read: How Did Intel’s denstu-led Personalised Audio AI Campaign Boost Brand Metrics?
Not just the UK, Europe is encouraging too
HiJiffy, a Portuguese company specialising in conversational Artificial Intelligence for hotels, raised €3.8 million in funding. Further goals for the business include enhancing and strengthening its presence in the UK and France and expanding into the DACH region (German, Austrian, and Swiss markets).
DRUID, a Romanian no-code conversational AI platform, announced the successful closure of a $30 million Series B funding round.
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Monday.com is a project management software company, offering a cloud-based platform that enables businesses 
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Talkdesk offers an innovative AI-powered customer-centric tech stack to its global partners. The company provides generative AI integrations, delivering industry-specific solutions to its customers. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds utilise modern machine learning and language models to enhance contact centre efficiency and client satisfaction.
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IBM is a global hybrid cloud and AI-powered 
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Google Cloud accelerates every organisation’s ability to digitally transform its business. Its enterprise-grade solutions leverage modern technology to solve the most criticial business problems 
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Sprinklr is a comprehensive enterprise software company for all customer-focused functions. With advanced AI, Sprinklr’s unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform lets organisations offer human experiences to every customer, every time, across any modern channel.
Upland offers a comprehensive suite of contact centre and customer service solutions with products including InGenius, Panviva, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers. InGenius enables organisations to connect their existing phone system with CRM, further enhancing agent productivity. Panviva provides compliant and omnichannel capabilities for highly regulated industries. Whereas, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers are its AI-powered solutions, 
Zoho Social, a part of Zoho’s suite of 50+ products, is a comprehensive social media management platform for businesses and agencies. The Zoho Social dashboard includes a robust set of features, such as Publishing Calendar, Bulk Scheduler, and Approval Management to offer businesses all the essential social media publishing tools. Its monitoring tools help enterprises track and respond to relevant social conversations.
Hootsuite, headquartered in Vancouver, is a social media management platform that streamlines the process of managing multiple social media accounts. Some of its core offerings include social media content planning and publishing, audience engagement tools, analytics and social advertising. Its easy-to-integrate capabilities help marketing teams to schedule and publish social media posts efficiently.
Brandwatch enables businesses to build and scale the optimal strategy for their clients with intuitive, use-case-focused tools that are easy and quick to master. Bringing together consumer intelligence and social media management, the company helps its users react to the trends that matter, collaborate on data-driven content, shield the brand from threats and manage all the social media channels at scale.
Zoho Corporation offers innovative and tailored software to help leaders grow their business. Zoho’s 55+ products aid sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance, and recruitment requirements. Its customer analytics capabilities come with a conversational feature, Ask Zia. It enables users to ask questions and get insights in the form of reports and widgets in real-time.
Salesforce-owned Tableau is an AI-powered analytics and business intelligence platform, offering the breadth and depth of capabilities that serve the requirements of global enterprises in a seamless, integrated experience. Marketers can utilise generative AI models, AI-powered predictions, natural language querying, and recommendationsons.
Fullstory is a behavioural data platform, helping C-suite leaders make informed decisions by injecting digital behavioural data into its analytics stack. Its patented technology uncovers the power of quality behavioural data at scale, transforming every digital visit into actionable insights. Enterprises can increase funnel conversion and identify their highest-value customers effortlessly.
Contentsquare is a cloud-based digital experience analytics platform, helping brands track billions of digital interactions, and turn those digital 
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Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirement for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its platform helps play an essential role in managing different digital content or assets to improve customer happiness. Its easy-to-optimise content gives users appropriate marketing streams, ensuring product awareness.
Started in 2005 in a Sweden-based small town, Norrköping, Voyado offers a customer experience cloud platform that includes a customer loyalty management system. This platform helps businesses design and implement customer loyalty programs, track customer 
TapMango provides a comprehensive, customisable, flexible and feature-rich customer loyalty program. The loyalty tools include an integrated suite of customised consumer-facing technology, easy-to-use merchant tools, and automation algorithms, all aimed at enhancing customer experience. Adaptable to any industry, TapMango’s platform helps merchants compete with larger chains, converting customer one-time purchases into profitable spending habits.
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirements for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its innovative platform has played an essential role in managing different digital content or assets, to improve customer happiness or satisfaction. Some of its products include Adobe Gen Studio, Experience Manager Sites, Real-time CDP, and Marketo Engage.
