No Jitter Roll: Zoom Expands Language Support, 8x8 Gets Proactive and Klarna Does the Work of 700

Welcome to this week’s No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. This week, we highlight: Zoom's expansion of multilingual support across its platform, 8x8's addition of Proactive Outreach to its CCaaS offering and Klarna's OpenAI-powered Assistant that automates customer service. Additionally, Microsoft Teams Phone lends calling to frontline workers and common area phones, Microsoft brings Mistral AI's LLMs to Azure, RingCentral makes its revamped Business Analytics generally available and Vyopta introduces Aviator, an AI assistant for its platform.

Zoom AI Companion Expands Language Support

Zoom has added a slew of new language features to its collaborative meeting space; Zoom AI Companion now supports nine new languages for Team Chat and has 36 different languages in preview for in-meeting capabilities. In addition, it automatically detects supported languages and offers meeting summaries in those languages. Zoom said that more than 510,000 Zoom accounts have enabled the AI assistant and used it to generate more than 7.2 million meeting summaries since AI Companion launched in September 2023.

Source: Zoom

8x8 Contact Center Adds Proactive Outreach

The integrated cloud contact center and unified communications platform provider announced Proactive Outreach for 8x8 Contact Center. By leveraging 8x8's programmable SMS and WhatsApp capabilities natively in 8x8 Contact Center, organizations can:

• Notify: One-to-many, personalized outbound messaging, with direct routing, reporting and analytics.
• Interact: One-to many & two-way messaging, which includes Notify capabilities plus automation, API access and inbound routing to contact center agents or bots.
• Alert: Instant, mass outbound notifications, using pre-made templates for sharing time sensitive, critical information.

“With Proactive Outreach, mid-size businesses now have access to native notification for SMS and WhatsApp without the need for a third-party solution,” said Sheila McGee-Smith, founder and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics. “Now, instead of ‘do not reply to this SMS’ companies can offer a direct transfer to contact center agents when required.”

Source: 8x8

Klarna: Our AI Assistant Does the Work of 700 Full-time Customer Service Agents

The AI-powered payment and shopping solution provider debuted its OpenAI-powered Klarna AI Assistant and touted its ability to do the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents. Klarna’s AI Assistant is designed to handle different types of customer service needs including refunds, returns, payment-related issues, cancellations, disputes, and invoice inaccuracies. It will also provide real-time updates on outstanding balances and upcoming payment schedules. It can handle inquiries in over 35 languages.

According to Klarna, in the month its AI assistant has been live globally in 23 markets, it has:

• Handled 2.3 million conversations, which amount to two-thirds of Klarna’s customer service chats.
• Is on par with human agents in regard to customer satisfaction scores.
• Is more accurate in errand resolution, leading to a 25% drop in repeat inquiries.
• Customers now resolve their errands in less than 2 minutes compared to 11 minutes previously.

(Editor’s Note: At time of publication, Klarna had not responded to our request to define “errand.” From context in the fourth bullet, an “errand” may mean “service/support interaction.”)

Source: Klarna

Microsoft Debuts Teams Phone Solution for Frontline Workers

Teams Phone is a cloud calling solution within Microsoft Teams. With Teams Phone for frontline workers, calls can be routed via auto-attendants, call queues, and call delegation. The solution also supports electronic health record application integration, call recording, and transcription, as well as CRM system integration and call park. Groups of users can also make and receive calls with a shared phone number and calling plan. Teams Common Area phones are also available as a Teams Shared Device License. A common area phone provides auto-attendants, call queues, call transfer, shared line appearance, and call park features, as well as Walkie Talkie in Teams as well as hotline phones programmed to dial one number.

Teams Phone for Frontline Workers license is available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 F1 and F3. The Microsoft Teams Phone Standard for Frontline Workers ($4 user/month) is available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 F1 ($2.25 user/month) and F3 ($8 user/month). 

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft-Mistral Partnership Brings Mistral AI to Azure

Microsoft and Mistral AI partnered to bring Mistral Large, the company’s flagship commercial LLM, to Azure AI infrastructure. Microsoft and Mistral AI will make Mistral AI’s premium models available to customers through the Models as a Service (MaaS) in the Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning model catalog. The ability to use Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) for purchasing Mistral AI’s models is available today.

• Reuters reported that after the Microsoft-Mistral AI deal, and Microsoft’s $16 million USD investment into Mistral, EU lawmakers are demanding an investigation into the partnership. As the Reuters story noted, EU antitrust authorities are already looking at Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI.
• Models as a Service debuted in November 2023 when Microsoft expanded its partnership with Meta to offer Llama 2.

RingCentral’s Business Analytics Now in General Availability

The unified communications and contact center cloud solutions provider announced that its Business Analytics product is now generally available. Business Analytics provides insights to line of business leaders in departments like sales, support, marketing, etc. Two packages are available:

• Business Analytics Essentials: Provides out-of-the-box insights to users who don’t need customized dashboards or filters. Essentials will replace Performance Reports, a solution that enables users to combine user, queue, and call activity to evaluate performance.
• Business Analytics Pro: Provides users with the ability to customize dashboards and filters, create custom KPIs, and choose longer data retention periods for even greater historical perspective.

Both Business Analytics Essentials and Business Analytics Pro are included in many RingCentral solutions. The linked site (above) provides a chart of which version is available by RingCentral package.

Vyopta Introduces Aviator for AI-Assisted Support to Enhance CX

The digital collaboration and experience optimization solution provider launched Aviator, which provides AI-powered assistance integrated within the Vyopta platform. Aviator assists in various Vyopta use cases, such as guiding new customers through the onboarding process or when adding new infrastructure and devices. Aviator will also prompt with advice on how to best use Vyopta and when organizations migrate between UCaaS platforms. Vyopta said it “enriched” the generative AI LLM with Vyopta’s knowledge base, troubleshooting guides, and product documentation.

Source: Vyopta

This Week on No Jitter

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

• Apple Vision Pro: Is it really worth the hype? Here’s the case for the $3500 headset.
• The Shifting Pattern of Tech Jobs: While companies are quick to cite AI in job reductions, the truth is a little trickier to discern, and requires looking at how well some technologies are meeting current and anticipated business needs.
• Transforming Customer Service: In the evolving landscape of UCaaS and CCaaS it’s clear that AI will play a major role in how companies interact with their stakeholders in the future. But despite the excitement around the growing capabilities of chatbots, traditional service channels aren't going away anytime soon.

Reserve Your Spot: Enterprise Connect 2024

Learn more about today’s most pressing enterprise communications and CX issues at Enterprise Connect, March 25-28, 2024, in Orlando, FL.