No Jitter Roll: Genesys Debuts New AI-powered ‘Xperiences,’ Glue Sports New Threads and Microsoft's Going Places

Welcome to this week’s No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. Leading off this week, we highlight: AI-powered capabilities for the Genesys Cloud platform; Glue's debut of a generative AI-based comms platform; Microsoft’s public preview of Places (as well as the company’s ongoing EU woes); Vonage's expanded Salesforce partnership and Vodafone Business Ireland's RingCentral-powered solution. Finally, enjoy our overview of the OpenAI GPT-4o customer service proof of concept video.

Genesys Unveils Multiple AI-powered Xperiences

During its 2024 Xperience event, Genesys announced new Genesys Cloud AI capabilities which include:

• Copilots that support employees in real time via large language model-based automated assistants for agents. Agent copilots are available now; copilots for supervisors and administrators are coming soon.
• Virtual agents that provide generative AI-powered self service to customers.
• An ‘empathy detection’ capability based on speech and text analytics.
• An agent workspace that supports the new AI-powered capabilities and offers agents the ability to configure their desktops.

Genesys also announced “native journey management” capabilities for Genesys Cloud – Journey Flows and Journey Analyzer are now embedded within Genesys Cloud. These products give customers the ability to visualize customer behavior, and centralize customer and employee data processing into a single unified view with enhanced analytics. Insights from Genesys Cloud Journey Management are then used by the platform’s AI for various purposes, such as identifying opportunities to create self-service and virtual agent interactions and improve conversational AI models to better fit customer intents.

Journey Flows is available now and included with any Genesys Cloud CX license; Journey Analyzer is currently offered under limited availability.

Source: Genesys; Used with Permission

Introducing Glue: New Threads for AI-powered Collaboration

Glue is a new, AI-native workplace communication platform that uses AI to enhance both human and automated chat experiences. Glue threads are topic-focused and have AI-generated subject lines for referencing. The AI functions like a ‘virtual team member,’ with context from previous messages, attachments, and app integrations.

In Glue, chat is its own ‘thread’ rather than bound to a channel (as in Slack or Teams, for example). Each thread can be shared with multiple people or groups. And because the threads can be shared, users don’t need to join channels to get the information they need.

Teams can choose their preferred LLM model or let Glue pick the best model for each query. Glue AI is model-agnostic and currently supports OpenAI’s GPT and Anthropic’s Claude 3, with more coming soon. Integrations with Github, Google Meet, Linear, Typeform, Zapier, and Zoom are available now, with ClickUp, Google Drive, Notion, Sentry, and others shipping soon.

There is currently a waitlist to try Glue. The product is currently priced at $7 per user per month (annual pricing) with a three-month free trial.

Source: Glue

Vonage Expands Salesforce Service Cloud Voice Offering with Einstein Integration

The cloud communications provider expanded its Vonage Premier for Service Cloud Voice solution to include integration with Salesforce Einstein Conversation Insights. Thanks to this integration, customer can see conversational data (e.g., voice transcripts and caller sentiment) in real time. Calls are then recorded and analyzed for mentions of specific keywords, phrases, and points of interest. Vonage Premier for Service Cloud Voice with Salesforce Einstein Conversation Insights is currently GA and available on Salesforce AppExchange.

Vodafone Business Ireland and RingCentral Unveil Hybrid Work Solution

The telecom provider and UCaaS/CCaaS vendor launched Vodafone Business UC with RingCentral to organizations of all sizes in Ireland. The solution offers the expected unified communications and collaboration capabilities associated with RingCentral’s platform: team messaging, video meetings, AI features, etc. The solution is now available in Ireland for new and existing Vodafone Business customers.

Public Preview for Microsoft Places

Billed as an app that “reimagines flexible work,” Microsoft Places uses AI to help better coordinate in-person meeting and collaborating with coworkers. Some of the capabilities within the Places application include:

• Location plan: set and share the proposed location schedule with coworkers while also viewing their schedules. Updating or adjusting that location can be done within Places but can also be done via Outlook.
• Peek cards provide an ‘at-a-glance’ view of who will be attending, as well as suggestions for where (desks, meeting rooms).
• Places finder: Search for rooms and desks based on location in the office, technology in that room, etc. This includes access to bookable desk capabilities.
• Team guidance: Managers communicate which days their team should plan to be in the office and what the priorities are for each in-office day.

In the second half of 2024, Places data will be integrated into Microsoft Copilot. Among other capabilities, Copilot can be used to understand trends regarding the days that are best to come into the office, why that’s the case based on factors like in-person meetings, manager’s planned attendance, when coworkers are in (or out of) the office and then adjust schedules based on this information.

Places is currently in public preview; organizations with a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan can begin using it now. Places will be licensed as part of Microsoft Teams Premium.

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft May Still Face EU Antitrust Case Over Teams

As has been widely reported (see ArsTechnica), the European Commission may issue antitrust charges against Microsoft over (ongoing) concerns that it is “undermining rivals to its videoconferencing app Teams.” The ArsTechnica article stated that charges may come in the next few weeks, but also said that Microsoft and the European Commission may reach an agreement that could avoid those formal charges.

See the following NJ articles about this issue as well as regulations in the EU more broadly:

• No EU in Teams: Microsoft to unbundle Teams from Office in Europe
• Unbundling Teams?: Whether Teams is included or separate from the Office bundle, it has proven its value to millions of users, and tens of thousands of organizations -- a value many are likely to pay separately for.
• Copilot Integration with Teams: Microsoft Copilot's pricing structure made news – but what do users get for that $30 every month? We break down how Copilot works, what it can do, and how safe user data is within Copilot.
• The EU Lead in AI Regulation: The European Union Artificial Intelligence Act is intended to create a balance between regulation and innovation – and its implementation will be felt by partners all over the world.
• Efforts to Regulate Tech in 2024: Technology always advances more quickly than the rules and processes designed to regulate it -- and with newer technologies making massive leaps, 2024 promises to keep all of us busy.
• Digital Markets Act and Enterprise Communications: As the European Union continues to impose new requirements on big tech, an emerging question is if users or the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) will drive the enterprise messaging providers to embrace messaging interoperability.

Bot-on-Bot Customer Service Courtesy of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o

OpenAI launched its latest AI model, GPT-4o thus displacing GPT-4 Turbo and GPT-4 as the ‘top’ models. NJ’s sister publication, AI Business, summarized the news. GPT-4o is available to free and paid ChatGPT users. OpenAI’s site (and YouTube channel) provide multiple demo videos which are all worth watching.

NJ focuses on OpenAI’s GPT-4o “customer service proof of concept” video. (Click on the < > below the ‘model capabilities’ header to find and view it.) In the demo, the presenter prompts the ChatGPT-4o client on his smartphone by saying that he received a new iPhone that isn't working. He instructs the bot to speak with the carrier’s customer service and get them to send him a replacement.

The presenter then ‘dials’ the carrier’s customer service – which is itself a ChatGPT-4o client running on the smartphone on the table next to the presenter’s smartphone. The two bots speak with each other and interact to do exactly what the user wanted – return and replace his non-functioning phone.

Now, this is a demo, so it is orchestrated to work. In real life, this interaction between a human and a bot, however intelligent and responsive, probably wouldn’t go so smoothly. But, the demo does illustrate what may soon become possible – one bot “speaking on behalf of” the customer with an enterprise’s bot.

Want to know more?

Synthedia’s Bret Kinsella provides his thoughts on OpenAI’s new model. His take is generally favorable, but he notes two shortcomings: ChatGPT 4o cannot execute tasks in other applications and it is “way too verbose.”

This Week on No Jitter

In case you missed them, here are some of our top stories:

• Learning to Live With Your UCaaS LLM, Part 1: This three-part series provides an inside look at the generative AI inside Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex, and Google Meet. Part 1 delivers a short discussion of how generative AI works and how LLMs are trained.
• Testing Gen AI Use Cases in UCaaS Platforms, Part 2: In part two of a three-article series: a look at how each of the major UCaaS platforms perform on two key use cases – meeting summaries and text refinement.
• Assessing the Risks and Rewards of Using Gen AI in UCaaS Platforms, Part 3: The final part of our three-article series on Gen AI in Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex, and Google Meet, provides an assessment of the risks and rewards associated with using the Gen AI in these platforms.

Reserve Your Spot: Enterprise Connect AI 2024

Check out the new Enterprise Connect AI 2-day summit which offers a unique opportunity to reach technology decision makers actively seeking insights to help lead their enterprise’s implementation of AI for communications/CX tech and business productivity. EC AI 2024 will be held October 1-2, 2024 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA.