Lifesize, the branded company from this year’s
merger between cloud video provider Lifesize and cloud contact center provider Serenova, last week
announced a multitude of new capabilities for its CxEngage CCaaS platform across three primary areas: artificial intelligence (AI) and automation; agent productivity in an omnichannel environment; and workforce optimization (WFO), quality management (QM), and reporting.
Some of the new capabilities come via technology integrations and others through internal development.
“We’re going to have our own [technology] where it makes sense, and we’re going to partner where it makes sense,” Andy Bird, director of product management, Lifesize, told me.
In building more automation and AI into CxEngage, Lifesize looked to partner across four areas: pre-call, routing, mid-call, and post-call, Bird said. It vetted at least 15 AI and automation vendors for current and future capabilities, and added four to its partner ecosystem, he added. They are: AutoReach, which provides an intelligent dialer for outbound calling; Observe.AI, for improving the agent coaching via call transcription and sentiment analysis; Omilia, for offloading agent workload via conversational AI; and Zappix, which offers a visual IVR.
As Lifesize infuses more intelligence into CxEngage, it will also be able to better deliver on its goal of becoming “channel agnostic,” or true omnichannel — not just multichannel, Bird said. As an example, he pointed to an agent being able to pivot from a voice call to a video interaction based on sentiment analysis of the conversation delivered in real-time. “We want to bring the humanity back to the calls that need it,” he added.
In addition, Lifesize is aiming to improve agent’s ability to handle customer interactions across channels, said Bird, noting that contact centers as a whole face a significant “stacking” problem. By this, he said he means contact centers need a better way of managing calls across agents — an agent who speaks a second language and also offer technical support shouldn’t be stuck in a chat, email, or voice “stack.”
To boost agent productivity across channels, Lifesize has added the ability for agents to chat proactively with customers browsing the company’s website, for example, and via MMS with mobile and online customers. It also has added support for WhatsApp messaging and process automation from Ivinex, and has expanded its Salesforce integration.
As an example of how these piece parts fit together, Bird pointed to a new customer, an outdoor retailer migrating an omnichannel contact center to the Lifesize platform. This retailer supports voice, email, chat, and Facebook Messenger, and will be bringing on WhatsApp, too, he said. Surfacing intelligence from its CRM, the retailer will be able to see a customer’s buying patterns, then serve up related products for an upsell. If a customer has purchased wetsuits in the past, the retailer could push a kayak promo via webchat, for example, he said. If that kayak is damaged in shipment, the customer can share a video with the agent, and streamline the return process.
AI ties into “every aspect of the organization,” from CRM to web data and purchasing, Bird said.
Lastly, Lifesize is further looking to improve the contact center with workforce optimization, quality management, and reporting updates and integrations. This includes the addition of 10 languages, an integration with CallMiner for sentiment analysis of call recordings, the ability to store screen recording and email transcripts of an entire agent interaction, and an integration with Plecto, which offers automated real-time centralized reporting and visualization of KPIs from more than 50 integrated platforms, apps, and services, of course including CxEngage.
