Most products progress through the product life cycle in this order: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. The contact center has hit the maturity stage multiple times but keeps resetting. Reinvention resets the game, “back to Go,” or more accurately, the Introduction or Growth stage. We are seeing something similar within the automotive industry as cars reinvent themselves as EVs.
The contact center has experienced this reset a few times. It was renewed when we went from analog to digital, from digital to IP, from hardware to services, and most recently, from voice to digital or omnichannel. It is now being reinvented again with Generative AI.
This is the first industry-wide narrative that Five9 amplified last week. Generative AI is propelling us into a new era of CX. We are early, and things are still changing quickly, but it has delayed the maturity and decline stages (again). AI is not just a feature or enhancement; it’s completely changing the sector.
For example, less than two years ago we started seeing AI automatically summarize and document customer inquiries. This was magical at the time as there had been nothing like it before. That magic has since transitioned into a mouse click (or less). CCaaS providers no longer get points for what has become a table-stakes feature as the capabilities (and expectations) continue to increase.
The boundaries between the Introduction and Growth stages are blurry. However, Five9’s (and others’) quarterly results hint that we have already entered the Growth stage. Five9 reported that its annual revenue run rate is exceeding $1B for the first time. It posted second-quarter sales of $252.1 million, up 13% from a year ago and beating expectations. Combined with Five9’s focus on generative AI innovation these signals suggest that Five9, as well as the sector/industry, may have moved into the Growth phase.
This brings us to the second industry narrative: Generative AI CX needs to become more accessible, and the barriers to adopting the new tools are curtailing growth. Generative AI is commoditizing and becoming less expensive, but concerns remain over hallucinations, security, and privacy, and customers are confused about how or where to start their implementations. Products early in their growth cycle rely on professional services and shift toward indirect channels as they mature. Generative AI is not something you buy and turn on. Multiple departments and systems must coordinate training and integrate the technology into workflows.
Presumably, widening the implementation bottleneck was behind Five9’s announcement of the Genius AI Suite. In 2018, Five9’s Genius was described as the ability to use data across channels to predict certain customer behaviors. Last week, Genius got smarter. The new Genius Suite includes Five9 AI Knowledge (Preview), Five9 Analytics, Five9 Insights (GA), and the Five9 GenAI Studio (GA). The suite helps its customers identify, implement, and deploy generative AI within CX.
The Genius AI process leads customers through a four-step process: Listen, Analyze, Tailor, and Apply. In the "Listen" step, Five9's technology collects customer interaction data from various channels such as calls, chats, emails, and social media. Five9 also offers streaming APIs, namely TranscriptStream and VoiceStream, for integrating this data into applications. The "Analyze" step examines the collected data to generate insights and recommendations to help enhance self-service capabilities and provide information to contact center staff. In the "Tailor" step, companies can customize AI models using contextual data. Finally, the "Apply" step puts these customized AI models into action, enabling organizations to leverage their data effectively.
The Five9 AI Studio stands out because it equips customers (and channels) to experiment with generative AI. The AI Studio is essentially an AI prompt engineering tool that’s supplemented with variables from Five9’s platform. Users can customize their prompts with specific references to elements within a conversation. Five9 is not attempting to build its own AI (it is AI agnostic), but is making generative AI more useful with contextual data.
The Five9 AI Studio is important because contact center solutions are inherently bespoke — no two implementations are alike. Contact center staff are in a perpetual experiment-and-implement loop as they adjust variables for competing resources, changing processes, and new technologies. Five9 has made the power of generative AI as accessible as other modeling and forecasting tools used in contact centers.
The third industry narrative is that the contact center is becoming central to CX. This may seem odd as the second C in “CC” has always been “Center.” However, with the product life cycle reset, we need to revisit assumptions. Traditionally, contact centers did the interactions, and valuable data and insights were managed in external systems like CRMs. With the advent of generative AI, the role of the contact center transitions from passive data collector to active data producer.
Tools like Five9’s AI Knowledge enable contact centers to quickly answer inquiries. AI Knowledge is a generative AI-improved form of knowledge management. It combines organizational content (for knowledge) and a process called retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to reduce hallucinations. The result is a knowledgeable AI system that is simple to create and maintain and safe to implement. It can be used by human agents or bots to get answers (not search results) to specific questions.
[I often use my experiences with United Airlines in CC posts. AI Knowledge is the cure for Gershwin fans. UA has ruined Rhapsody in Blue for millions by selecting it for music-on-hold. AI Knowledge may not change the music-on-hold but should reduce the amount of hold music customers endure.]
If you want to know what customers are asking about or what agents are frequently communicating, then the contact center is the best source. The information was always there but ephemeral. Now generative AI can capture it and contact centers can then provide the data enterprises need to analyze interactions and extract insights and patterns. For example, the Five9 AI Insights tool uncovers underlying causes of customer issues through near real-time analysis of interactions. No CRM is required. The data the contact center generates is becoming critical for improving agent training and customer satisfaction. Businesses can streamline operations, optimize processes and workflows, and lower costs by leveraging the Insights tool.
Five9’s intent to acquire Acqueon highlights a fourth industry trend: CX is much broader than traditional customer service. While CX and CCaaS are often used interchangeably, there is a distinct difference. CX refers to the customer’s broader experience with a product or company. Customer service typically refers to the direct interactions a customer has with a company when seeking assistance or resolving issues. It is a reactive and often episodic process focused on addressing an immediate need.
The broader customer journey encompasses all customer interactions with a brand, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. It is a proactive and continuous process that considers all touchpoints, including marketing, sales, and support. Understanding the customer journey allows businesses to identify pain points and sales opportunities. Acqueon’s Revenue Execution Platform proactively helps businesses connect with customers for outbound sales, service, and revenue capture opportunities. It helps organizations realize revenue by presenting offers at the right time and on the right channel.
Five9 alone does not make industry trends, but its announcements last week illustrate and validate them. Many providers are contributing to these trends. While there’s a natural path from CC/CCaaS to CX, not all providers will make the journey, and there are other paths to CX too. We are seeing new entrants from various sectors, including UC/UCaaS, CRM, social engagement, and cloud infrastructure. There’s also a variety of vendors that complement the CC/CCaaS sector that are upping their CX game. There are lots of pieces in play on this board.
Dave Michels is a contributing editor and Analyst at TalkingPointz.
