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No Jitter Midroll: Cisco Unveils Updates and new AI Features at WebexOne

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The new Webex logo
Source: Cisco Blog

On October 23, 2024, at WebexOne, Cisco unveiled the Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio and Cisco AI Assistant features for Webex Contact Center, as well as the Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro, a Workplace Designer tool for building-out meeting spaces, Smart Diagnostics in Control Hub and ThousandEyes integration for the Desk Phone 9800 Series and Webex Calling.

"Cisco's announcements were evolutionary more than revolutionary, as it continues to play to its strengths around AI in hardware, integrated management, and contact center capabilities," said Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst with Metrigy. “I was most excited about the ceiling microphone as I think it will be an easy decision for Cisco's customers to deploy it rather than multiple desktop microphones or ceiling microphone arrays.”

 

Webex AI Agent

The new Webex AI Agent, currently in pilot both at Cisco and with customers, will be generally available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for on-premises customers in Q2 2025.

Much like ‘AI Agents’ launched by companies such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, the WebEx AI Agent unites conversational intelligence, generative AI and the ability to integrate with back-office systems so that customers can completely automate a customer (or employee) interaction with the contact center.

Cisco’s demo of this capability involved a customer speaking with an AI Agent to dispute a fraudulent credit card transaction, cancel the card and add expedited shipping to speed the delivery of the replacement card. The customer spoke naturally, estimated the dollar value of the fraudulent charge (she said $900, but the AI Agent still found the charge of $899.23) and asked questions of the AI Agent as she would have of a human agent. The AI Agent replied naturally, answered all the questions and completed the interaction.

“The data set [we used for the demo] was finite – we seeded that knowledge base with only those knowledge items – and obviously it's not a full band back-end system,” said Vinod Muthukrishnan, VP and COO, Webex Customer Experience Solutions. “But everything else about the interaction was real – from the human in front to [our AI Agent.]”

Webex AI Agent includes a new design tool called AI Agent Studio, which is a low-code/no-code solution that allows customers to build and customize Webex AI agents for their unique scenarios via a relatively straightforward process. For example, customers can train their AI Agents on their own data and information and enable it to talk to their back-office systems and take actions as was shown in the demo.

Webex AI Agent
Cisco

“Where it does get complex is the integration of the back-end systems. That's where I think we have a real differentiator, because of our experience integrating into many different line of business systems,” said Jay Patel, SVP & GM, Webex Customer Experience Solutions. “We have some out of box integrations into Salesforce, ServiceNow and many others, but integrating into a banking system, for example, will obviously require work that is specific to that particular situation.”

AI Agent Studio will be generally available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for on-premises customers in Q2 2025.

 

New AI Assistant Capabilities

At WebexOne 2023, Cisco launched its AI assistant which can provide generative AI-powered assistance such as meeting summarization, email composition, translation and changing the tone of a message. Since then, Cisco has made several improvements to its AI Assistant including:

  • Identification of different speakers in a meeting room in the AI-generated meeting summaries or action items.
  • Producing call summaries and action items via Webex Calling with AI Assistant. This feature also applies when calls are transferred to colleagues; they will receive a summary of the previous interaction, so they’ll get a ‘warm start’ on the call.
  • Making it easier to access the AI assistant through all Webex devices, including conference room and personal devices, so that users can invoke meeting summaries and ‘catch-me-up’ from those devices and the Webex application.

All of these features will be available in early 2025.

The Cisco AI Assistant will enable users to automate workflows through integrations with enterprise apps including Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, and more. It will also integrate with Glean, and has connectors into Outlook, Salesforce and ServiceNow. AI Assistant generated summaries and recaps will be shareable across third-party platforms including Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Copilot and Slack. Customer will also be able to choose the Large Language Model (LLM) they prefer via a partnership with Amazon Bedrock.

Lastly, the Cisco AI Assistant now includes Vidcast enhancements such as highlights, chapters and transcripts enhance asynchronous video capabilities. And via Gen AI, Vidcast will soon allow users to upload a PDF or PPT and automatically generate a script and voice-overs in the language and tone of their choice. Meeting participants can also use the AI Assistant to generate Slido polls during webinars and large meetings.

 

Webex Contact Center

The Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center, will be generally available in Q1 2025, and bring several new capabilities for agents and supervisors, including:

  • Context Summaries: When a human agent is required, the AI Agent will hand the interaction off to the human and include all necessary background information to continue the conversation.
  • Suggested Responses: Human agents will receive recommendations from the Assistant based on the given service/support issue.
  • Dropped Call Summaries: Interactions are captured and documented up to the point of disconnection, which will help ensure continuity when the call is resumed.

Agent Wellness for the contact center will also become generally available in Q1 2025. This AI feature enables allows for proactive actions such as automatic breaks for agents, changes in agent schedules and shifting of which channels agents support to increase or decrease capacity based on need.

Two new AI-powered analytics features were also announced:

  • Topic Analytics: Generally available now, these analytics identify the drivers of incoming calls and customer issues to enable proactive issue resolution.
  • Automatic CSAT Scoring: Available January 2025, this solution uses operational data and transcripts to evaluate 100% of an organization’s customer interactions so that business leaders can be more proactive in addressing deficiencies (or successes) their customers’ experiences with their organization.

 

Other News

Some of Cisco’s other news includes its ‘Spatial Meetings’ meeting capability which pairs a Cisco Room Bar Pro with the Webex for Apple Vision Pro to enable an ‘immersive studio and spatial video’ to those users. Cisco says there are 28,000 Cisco Room Bar Pros deployed worldwide. Essentially, this 3D-headset use case allows customers to see, in 4K and true color, real objects. Cisco states that this capability, enabled by a software upgrade to those Room Bar Pros, is ideal for product demos, remote training, education and more with video that includes remarkable depth and dimension.

Cisco also debuted its new Ceiling Microphone Pro. This product incorporates an adaptive microphone that uses AI to automatically adjusts to speaker position and changes to room configuration. It is compatible with Cisco cameras and room systems.

Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro Family
Cisco

The Cisco Workspace Designer is an online tool that guides users through customizing and configuring a meeting room based on various settings: room dimensions, table size, number of chairs, number of participants, etc. It provides a 3D view of audio and video coverage and provides detailed notes on why certain configurations may or may not work.

Smart Diagnostics in Control Hub, another new features, allows IT to dynamically identify and resolve meeting room issues in real time while ThousandEyes integration for the Desk Phone 9800 Series and Webex Calling also helps IT monitor and troubleshoot in real-time.


(Note: No Jitter attended WebexOne courtesy of Cisco’s press program.)