UC Today Awards AI-Powered Cisco Webex Assistant 2020 Innovative Product of the Year

Cisco Recognized for Delivering Highly Innovative Webex Assistant AI Solution

We have some great news to share. Cisco won two UC Today 2020 Awards last week: Webex for Best Collaboration Platform & Webex Assistant for Most Innovative Product.

UC Today is the industry’s leading authority on communication and collaboration technology. The panel of judges included some of the most reputable analysts in our industry including Zeus Kerravala, ZK Research, Blair Pleasant, Commfusion, Kevin Kieller, enableUC, Melissa Swartz, Swartz Consulting, Jon Arnold, J. Arnold & Associates, and Irwin Lazar, Nemertes Research.

Webex Assistant is based on the groundbreaking speech engine by Voicea, the company I co-founded that was acquired by Cisco in September 2019, and AI technology from MindMeld, the company Cisco acquired in May 2017. We’ve natively integrated our AI technology into Webex Meetings and Webex Rooms, and we’ve also uniquely integrated call transcription into the contact center agent-customer experience, giving agents a full transcript and summary of each call.

Let me tell you more about why Webex Assistant was recognized as most innovative.

Never Again Touch Another Button to Start a Call or Take Notes in a Meeting

In today’s meeting saturated work-from-home era, businesses place their trust on the technology that enables them to gather virtually so they can get work done and keep their business moving forward. Highly secure, dependable, and easy-to-use products are a must. Innovation is a plus.

And Webex Assistant delivers. It’s the first AI-powered fully integrated in-meeting digital assistant for the enterprise, automating meeting tasks and bringing voice commands to Webex video conferences.

Imagine getting a full transcription of all of your meetings, being able to ask for things during your meetings, and then, having immediate access to the full transcript, recording, highlights, and action items after your meetings. Think of how much time will be saved, productivity gained, and follow-through to ensure accountability, outcomes and decisions.

This is the power of a voice-first design approach! Webex Assistant provides real-time closed-captioning, takes notes, creates action items, and allows you to mark highlights. You can download the meeting transcript, and each speaker is identified so you can go back and hear who said what. Searching for topics and making updates is easy, so you can quickly share meeting outcomes and keep your team coordinated. It’s that simple.

Solution Highlights

Webex Assistant for Webex Meetings automates many of the mundane tasks when hosting a meeting – note-taking, highlights and assigning action items. This way you can focus on the meeting discussion rather than on being distracted with note-taking. It uses natural language processing (NLP) to support voice commands, real-time transcription, automatic closed captioning, highlights and notes, automatic action items, post-meeting keyword-search, editing and distribution, and recorded transcripts. And it offers the industry’s highest transcription word accuracy rate, giving you meaningful and highly accurate content regardless of participants’ speech delivery, talking styles or accents.

Webex Assistant for Webex Rooms provides a zero-touch meeting room experience. You can easily call colleagues, book meeting rooms and fully control your meetings using only your voice. For example, you can start, join, record, mute, adjust the volume, invite colleagues and end meetings without ever touching anything! In addition, the “proactive join” feature verbally reminds you to join your call before your meeting. Just enter a room and your mobile device or laptop will pair automatically. Webex Assistant will then let you know when your meeting is about to start and ask if you’re ready to join. Calling a colleague or adding someone to the meeting is simple. Just say “Ok Webex call John” and Webex Assistant will provide a list of colleagues based on your collaboration history with people named John.

Webex Assistant

Highly Secure in the Cisco Cloud

Webex Assistant for Webex Meetings is also the industry’s only first-party transcription service, which means your data stays securely in the Cisco cloud and doesn’t have to be sent to a third-party to be transcribed and then sent back – which could result in potential security breaches.

We Thought About Everyone

According to the World Health Organization, over 5% of the world’s population has disabling hearing loss. It’s estimated that by 2050 over 900 million people, or one in every ten people will struggle with this condition. Webex Assistant makes meetings more accessible for participants who are hearing impaired or for those who are not fluent in the language of the meeting. The solution supports close captioning for when it’s easier to read than hear, and is available today in English, and will soon be available in Spanish, French, and German for Webex Rooms devices.

Continued Innovation

We will continue to embed this incredible technology across the rest of the Webex platform – including post-call transcription for Webex Calling and even more integrations with Webex Contact Center. Stay tuned!

Webex Assistant for Webex Meetings is currently available in a 90-day free trial to Webex customers and Webex enterprise trial users.

Webex Assistant for Webex Rooms is currently available at no additional cost on cloud registered devices including the Webex Desk Pro, Webex Room Series, Webex Room Kit Series, and Webex Board Series devices.

To learn more about Webex Assistant visit our website.