No Jitter Roll: Salesforce Voice Partnerships, Zoom Acquisition

This week we share announcements around Salesforce Service Cloud Voice for Partner Telephony integrations, STIR/SHAKEN call authentication implementations, a Zoom acquisition, an intelligent search assistant for contact center use, and an audio/videoconferencing collaboration.

 

Following GA of Salesforce’s Service Cloud Voice for Partner Telephony, which allows customers to integrate their preferred phone systems into Service Cloud Voice, as discussed in this No Jitter post, Avaya and Vonage this week announced availability of their respective integrations.

 

Specifically, Avaya announced that its Service Cloud integration for the OneCloud CCaaS platform is now available on the Salesforce AppExchange. For service agents, OneCloud for Service Cloud delivers AI-enhanced customer engagement and unites voice, digital channels, and customer insights into a single, centralized view, Avaya said.

 

Likewise, the Vonage Contact Center for Service Cloud Voice is now available on Salesforce AppExchange, too. The Vonage implementation is available in more than 80 countries in North America, EMEA, and APAC; provides omnichannel visibility across chat, email, messaging, SMS, and social channels; and offers support for CRM, speech, and desktop analytics, Vonage said. Additional capabilities include call wrap-up and article recommendations, voice-activated self-service, a WebRTC app, and 24/7 global support, Vonage added.

 

With the Federal Communications Commission’s mandate to implement the STIR/SHAKEN call authentication framework by June 30, we’ve seen a flurry of announcements from service providers touting their implementations and approaches to combatting malicious robocalls and call spoofing. Cloud provider BICS and UCaaS leader RingCentral are among them.

 

For its STIR/SHAKEN implementation, BICS said it upgraded FraudGuard, its fraud mitigation platform, with global robocalling insights and capabilities. With these, telecom operators and digital service providers can identify and automatically block robocalls through the use of external data points, data analysis, and machine learning, BICS said.

 

For its approach to call authentication, RingCentral, is complementing the STIR/SHAKEN call framework with AI models it will use to identify fraudsters and predict whether an inbound call is spam or spoofed based on number analysis. Delivering only verified, authenticated call traffic should help build trust and security for users, RingCentral said.

 

Zoom this week signed a deal to acquire Kites, a startup founded in 2015 by academics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany to create real-time speech translation products. Kites’ 12 research scientists will join Zoom’s engineering team but remain in Germany, Zoom said. Zoom didn't disclose details of the transaction, but said it would use the technology to boost multilanguage translation for its products.

 

Clarabridge this week introduced an intelligent search assistant for its customer experience (CX) management platform aimed at helping contact center, customer engagement, and CX teams get the answers they need on the spot. When an agent types an event, trend, or topic into the search bar, the assistant, aptly named "Clara" (see image below), scans customer feedback and interaction data sources and then delivers visual graphs that display relevant insights like scores, trends, performance metrics, and associated feedback, Clarabridge said.

 

Clara is available to all Clarabridge customers via Clarabridge Studio data analytics portal. Clarabridge also added pre-built connectors for customers to integrate with its existing technology stack, such as outbound connectors for Qualtrics and Amazon S3, which will be available later this summer.

 

Nureva, an audioconferencing vendor, this week announced that it has joined Logitech's collaboration program and now offers its HDL300 audioconferencing system for use with Logitech’s rally camera, Tap meeting room touch controller, and RoomMate meeting room appliance. The integration will allow the HDL300 to calibrate automatically to room configurations, and ensure that remote and in-office participants can hear each other clearly, Nureva said. This audioconferencing system uses Nureva’s patented Microphone Mist technology (see image below) to provide full room coverage by filling the room with over 8,000 virtual microphones, the company said.

 

Nureva’s HDL300 wall-mounted unit retails for approximately $4,000. Logitech RoomMate will be available a later date.

 

Ryan Daily, No Jitter associate editor, contributed to this article.

---

Learn more about contact center and customer experience and visit our sponsors RingCentral and Zoom at Enterprise Connect this September in Orlando, Fla. Register now with promo code NJAL200 and receive $200 off your registration.