No Jitter is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Microsoft and Google Roll Out Collaborative AI Capabilities, While Zoom Hits a Home Run

AdobeStock_203293749.jpeg

AI/machine learning concept drawing
Image: ryzhi - stock.adobe.com

Welcome to this week's No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. In our St. Patrick’s Day 2023 edition, Microsoft and Google both added AI capabilities to their respective suites of office and collaboration products. Meanwhile, Zoom is now the official communications platform for Major League Baseball.

Microsoft, Google Incorporate AI Into Their Productivity and Collaboration Solutions

Within days of one another, both companies announced the incorporation of AI into their productivity and collaboration solutions.

  • Microsoft Copilot: Positioned as a companion for (white collar) workers, not a replacement, Microsoft showed Copilot participating in, and creating summaries of, Team meetings; party planning; analyzing data in Excel and creating a PowerPoint presentation. Microsoft did not specify when Copilot would be available or how much it would cost. The company did say Copilot would be integrated into Microsoft 365 and a new experience called Business Chat which appears to span Microsoft’s suite of collaboration tools. In its blog post discussing Copilot, Microsoft did state that it was guided by its AI principles and Responsible AI standard and that Copilot’s large language models (LLMs) are not trained on a company’s tenant data or prompts and that Copilot would inherit all of a given company’s security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes.

           In related news: Microsoft also laid off its AI Ethics and Society team.

  • Google’s Generative AI: For Google Workspace, the AI will draft, summarize and reply to emails in Gmail, write and proofread in Docs, auto-generate media in Slides, analyze data in Sheets, create backgrounds and notes in Meet, and enable workflows in Chat. Google did not announce when its AI would be commercially available, but that updates would be publicly available during 2023 (and beyond, perhaps).

GoTo Integrated ChatGPT into Customer Engagement and GoTo Resolve Products

In other AI news, the SaaS and remote-work tools platform integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its Customer Engagement and GoTo Resolve products. According to a blog post by Damon Covey, head of product at GoTo, the integration of ChatGPT will help humans write message, respond to queries, and create effective SMS campaigns. GoTo also intends to grant beta access to a ChatGPT integration for its IT management and support solution, GoTo Resolve. The idea here is similar: make it easy to create and run IT scripts that automate administrative and repetitive tasks. Note that while some of Covey’s post was written by ChatGPT, none of this post was…as far as you know.

MLB to Use Zoom Contact Center for Replay Review

Zoom is now the Official Communications Platform of Major League Baseball, and in that capacity, the league will be incorporating Zoom's services into its game operations. Beginning with the 2023 Season, the Crew Chief (the most senior member of the four-person umpire crew) will connect to the Zoom Replay Operations Center using Zoom’s Contact Center solution during any replay review. For context, in the 2022 season there were more than 1,400 replay reviews. Zoom will also be the communications platform supporting the 2023 MLB draft.

In a press release, MLB also highlighted other Zoom integrations into their operations: Some MLB teams are using Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center for customer service, while MLB’s corporate offices use Zoom Meetings, Zoom Rooms, Zoom Phone, and Zoom Webinar.

MLB Chief Operations & Strategy Officer Chris Marinak, said: “We are excited to integrate Zoom Contact Center and other Zoom platform technology into our gameday operations and continue to modernize experiences in a secure, reliable, and innovative way.”

Infobip Launches Tool for Moving Customer Queries to Video

The global cloud communications platform's browser-based Call Link solution allows customer service agents to escalate advanced customer queries from type-based chat to a live video or audio call. Call Link generates a URL unique to the customer conversation, which agents can then share over any channel, including WhatsApp, SMS or email, across desktop or mobile For example, if a customer is struggling to submit a meter reading, the agent can escalate the query to video and remotely guide the customer through that process.

According to Infobip, implementing Call Link enables an enterprise to avoid building its own video experience, thus avoiding the associated time and expensive while fielding a solution that helps the enterprise connect with their customers on their preferred channel at their preferred time.

Adrian Benić, Chief Product Officer at Infobip, said: “Call Link enables businesses to offer live one-to-one video and audio support without having to spend time or expense on developing their own solution in their tech stack. For businesses and brands with high customer contact, it helps accelerate their ability to escalate queries to video and solve customer issues more quickly.”

DIDWW Offers SIP Trunking Solution on Genesys AppFoundry

The VoIP communication and SIP trunking service provider is now offering its DIDWW SIP trunking solution on the Genesys AppFoundry, a marketplace of solutions offering a curated selection of applications and integrations. Genesys users can now select a certified telecom provider that offers solutions tailored to their unique business communications needs. This partnership allows DIDWW and Genesys customers to expand their local and international business communications by using the operator’s coverage of local, national, mobile and toll-free virtual phone numbers in over 80 countries, together with two-way SIP trunking and text messaging.

Also: SIP Trunking and SMS platform FlowRoute announced upgrades to its HyperNetwork service. HyperNetwork helps mitigate outage time by detecting upstream network impairments and quickly rerouting DID voice traffic around them to successfully complete inbound calls.


This Week on No Jitter

In case you missed it, here are our top stories for the week:

How Salesforce's Einstein GPT Works: There are some key, customer-friendly differences between the Salesforce implementation of generative AI and the more broadly available ChatGPT.

Celebrating Innovation in Collaboration at #EC23: Presenting the Innovation Showcase Companies to be highlighted at Enterprise Connect 2023.

8x8 Highlights a Pivot In Strategy at Nasdaq Event: By leading with contact center offerings instead of unified communications, the company is well positioned to capitalize on a growing demand for customer service solutions.