Cisco was founded nearly 40 years ago with a single purpose: using technology to connect people. In Cisco Collaboration, that is still our purpose: creating exceptional experiences for the most important business interactions – among employees and between employees and customers.
Over the years, many technological advancements have helped transform our industry. A common thread with each of these is that they ultimately delivered a significantly better experience than before, often at a lower cost. Now, with the rise of AI, technology has the power to completely transform the way in which we interact.
But ultimately, it’s not about the latest technology. Rather, it’s about the experience technology delivers. Whether it is employees collaborating in a hybrid workplace or agents engaging with customers, it’s the quality of these interactions that drives innovation and customer loyalty.
Customer Experiences Matter
While AI can optimize efficiency, in the realm of customer experience, nothing replaces the nuanced understanding and empathy that comes from real human connections. The future of customer satisfaction hinges on bridging the experience gap between human and virtual interactions. That’s why we are launching several AI-powered virtual agent tools enabling organizations to create richer virtual agent experiences across a range of use cases.
A recent study by Futurum and Webex found that 9 in 10 customers want to use self-service, but less than half find today’s self-service options helpful. Our new AI-powered virtual agent tools, including native voice virtual agents and Bring Your Own Virtual Agents, are reinventing self-service, giving organizations robust options to create experiences tailored to their use cases and industries.
With new native voice virtual agents, customers can easily design and manage automated self-service experiences across both voice and digital channels. For customers who have already invested in a preferred virtual agent, our new Bring Your Own Virtual Agent will allow them to integrate those solutions alongside an existing array of native and third-party options.
With self-service now able to tackle a broader range of customer needs and deliver a better experience, agents can focus on more complex customer issues that require a human touch. That’s why we’re empowering agents with the AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center. New features, available in beta, like summaries with native transcription for virtual agents and dropped call summaries, can make hand-offs to human agents seamless. And, available in beta later this year, suggested responses and automated wrap-up summaries increase agent efficiency and response accuracy, which can lead to less hold time for customers and higher resolution rates.
To further support agents, we are excited to announce our AI-powered agent wellbeing, which should be available later this summer. This new feature helps businesses enable automated actions before, during, and after calls to mitigate the impact of agent burnout.
Business stakeholders should also experience improved efficiency with the AI Assistant thanks to new features like topic analytics, available in beta. This makes it easy to identify top call drivers and create automated workflows for the most requested topics – ideal for proactive outbound communications and self-service options. The AI-powered automatic CSAT predicts customer satisfaction scores based on analysis of customer survey responses, including characteristics of those interactions, like sentiment, hold times, and more. The automatic CSAT data is used to provide additional insights into how your agents are performing.
Organizations are already seeing the benefits of the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex. In a recent survey, 93% of Webex Contact Center users shared that summaries enabled them to get up to speed with customer history and context faster. And on average, users anticipate 3X faster agent responses to customers!
Employee Experiences Matter
With the AI Assistant for Webex Suite now generally available, all Webex customers have access to meeting and message summaries, highlights, customization of message tone, style, and structure, and easy translation of messages into over 100 languages. These time-saving features allow users to focus more on high-value tasks, resulting in a better employee experience. In fact, a recent survey of Webex app users who leverage the AI Assistant found that more than 80% saved time on note-taking, action items, listening to recordings, and catching up on messages.
We are excited to introduce new enhancements to the AI Assistant available in beta later this summer, like ask AI Assistant during meeting recordings and AI Assistant custom dictionary, which will let organizations incorporate commonly used terms and acronyms into their training data.
Another way we are leveraging AI to improve the hybrid work experience is by enabling use cases like be right back and catch me up. Now when you step away from an in-progress meeting, our video intelligence capabilities will detect your absence, automatically mute your microphone, and disable your camera. When you return, the AI Assistant will offer you a summary of key highlights you missed while you were away.
Generative AI can also benefit developers, which is why we are launching a new AI Assistant for Developers. Later this year, developers can visit the Webex Developer Portal or the Webex Contact Center Developer Portal and use the Al Assistant to rapidly search and leverage generative coding assistant tools to build custom integrations, bots, and more.
Calling is still the foundation of modern communication, and now over 15 million Webex Calling users worldwide experience reliable calling every single day! We recently announced an exciting partnership with Tata Communications, launching a cloud calling offering in the India market called Webex Calling by Tata Communications. This partnership leverages Tata’s Cloud PSTN reach and local regulatory expertise and offers unparalleled quality and scale for Indian and multinational businesses operating in India. Webex Calling by Tata Communication is generally available and orderable right now.
As employees return to the office, they might find it is not ready for the new way of working. Now that individual work can be supported from home, more office space must be dedicated to coworking and shared spaces where devices like our Cisco Board Pro G2 shine. That means new digital workplace management tools, like the all-new desk reservation from Cisco Spaces, are vital for desk reservation and collaboration space management. Soon, your Cisco Spaces mobile app will allow you to easily find and book available desk spaces and devices, like our recently announced Cisco Desk Phone 9800 series.
Flexible communications are key to keeping people connected, especially in a hybrid world. Vidcast, our asynchronous video messaging collaboration tool, is a great example and is now available from within the Webex app, making recording and managing your video content smooth and efficient. And coming later this year, all-new Vidcast Pages enables tailored landing pages for your team, department, or client and features videos and curated playlists that cater specifically to their needs and interests.
IT admins already love Webex Control Hub, and we are making it even better with the AI Assistant by providing quick answers to queries and enabling faster, more informed decisions with simple prompts. All new features, like remote device access management and AI-powered workplace ranking, which enable issue prioritization and rapid resolution for collaboration spaces, help IT deliver the best in-office experience possible.
Delivering Exceptional Experiences
When we connect with a customer, we form a relationship that will leave a lasting impression from the very first interaction. In a hybrid work environment, we’re not just sharing information; we’re building bonds, culture, and a sense of purpose. The experience matters. That’s why we have leveraged AI innovations across the Webex platform — so businesses can deliver exceptional experiences in every interaction.
More from Webex at Cisco Live US 2024:
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