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No Jitter Roll: Google Bolsters Gen AI Features, Cresta Unveils New LLM-related Capabilities and Five9 Enhances Zendesk Integration
Google improves Workspace, debuts Vertex AI Agent Builder and highlights several deployments, while Cresta launches new AI features for custom LLMs, Five9 enhances Zendesk integration, and Convoso launches ClearCallerID Pro.
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 Google’s improvements to Workspace and Gemini, new AI-powered add-ons for meetings, messaging and security, as well as the new Vertex AI Agent Builder and Google Vids. Also, Cresta debuts new capabilities for custom LLM creation and testing and Five9 enhanced their Zendesk integration. Finally, Convoso launched ClearCallerID Pro to help companies “manage their caller ID reputation.”
Google Bolsters AI Functions Across Portfolio
At Google Cloud Next this past week, Google made multiple announcements.
Gmail: Users can send emails with voice input and convert notes to emails.
Sheets: New table features will be added for formatting and organizing data. Users can use templates to build spreadsheets rather than doing so from scratch.
Docs: Tabs will be added to Docs (like those Sheets) to help users consolidate information in one doc. Users will also be able to personalize documents with cover images.
Chat: Member capacity will increase to up to 500,000 and interoperability for Slack and Teams will be made through Mio. Gemini will be coming to Google Chat in preview, as well. (Regular NJR contributor Dave Michels provided his thoughts on the Google/Mio interop here.)
Google said that these features were either available now or will be in the coming weeks.
Google Vids, AI-powered Meetings, Messaging and Security
Google also announced Google Vids, a video creation app that uses AI to help users generate custom videos. Vids can generate storyboards, suggest scenes using stock videos, images, background music, and voice over recommendations. Vids will join the line-up with Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
Additionally, Google announced a new “AI Meetings and Messaging” add-on capability which includes AI-powered note taking (now in preview) and translation (coming in June 2024). This will cost $10 per user per month and can be added to most Workspace plans.
Google also announced a new “AI Security” add-on, also for $10 per user per month, that will allow IT teams to automatically classify and protect sensitive files in Google Drive. Google is also extending data loss prevention (DLP) controls and classification labels in Gmail (in beta). Google has further added experimental support to protect sensitive data against quantum computer attacks.
Google highlighted some of these announcements in the following video.
Google Vertex AI Agent Builder
Google also announced Vertex AI Agent Builder, which unites Vertex AI Search and Conversations to help developers build and deploy Gen AI experiences such as no-code consoles or open-source frameworks. Vertex AI Agent will also help with grounding Gen AI outputs in enterprise data via Vertex AI Search as an out-of-the-box grounding system as well as retrieval augmented generation (RAG) APIs for document layout processing, ranking retrieval, and performance checks on grounding outputs. Developers can use vector search to build embeddings-based agents and applications.
With respect to how Google defines the term agent, “Google is referring to request-response systems that leverage generative AI,” wrote Synthedia’s Bret Kinsella. “Google’s AI Agents are ChatGPT-style solutions grounded in your defined data sources and preferences.
Google
Other Google Updates:
Best Buy, Google Cloud, and Accenture Partner: Best Buy’s US customers will have access to a Gen AI powered assistant for self-service support by late summer 2024. Best Buy will also launch Gen AI capabilitiesfor agent-customer interaction through internal platforms. They will also be working with Google and Accenture to create an AI assistant for employees.
Google Cloud and Mercedes-Benz expand partnership: Mercedes will implement a Gen AI-powered sales assistant on its site to provide Google-like search and recommendation for customers. They will also expand its use Google Cloud AI in its call center and implement Vertex AI and Gemini model for their marketing campaigns.
Cresta Unveils New Tools for Custom LLM Creation and Testing
The end-to-end Gen AI platform provider for contact centers, unveiled new AI capabilities which include using LLMs to identify and define previously unknown customer behaviors from unstructured data.
Using Opera, Cresta’s no-code AI tool, customers can use a new feature, Generative AI Intents, to create custom AI models using natural language. Said models can also be trained via a proprietary few-shot learning processes; model quality can then be tested via an “industry standard F1 benchmark.” (TheF1 Score "is a measure of the harmonic mean of precision and recall.")
Cresta expanded its existing automated quality management solution to include “human-in-the-loop” capabilities. New features include multi-monitor screen recording with personally identifiable information (PII) redaction, AI-annotated transcripts, auto-assignment and tracking of conversations to be graded by analysts.
According to Metrigy CEO and Principal Analyst, Robin Gareiss, Cresta’s “quality management features drastically improve agent performance scoring so supervisors can precisely target their coaching—ultimately boosting both agent and customer satisfaction. In fact, among those using AI today, 65.7% apply it to quality management, citing it as the top way supervisors are using the technology.”
Cresta
Five9 Enhances Zendesk Integration
Five9announced enhancements to its integration with Zendesk Talk Partner Edition (TPE). These enhancements will support the Zendesk Voice Comment and Standard Call Object Features include:
A customizable ticketing user interface that can be organized based on priority
Agent guidance for customer experience to deliver context to agents
Automation to streamline workflows with call logging for missed and abandoned calls
AI-Ready Framework to activate Five9 AI for real-time guidance, transcriptions, and summaries
This is the Five9 Adapter login window which can be accessed via the Zendesk agent workspace. In this instance, the agent enters the user credentials to login to the agent workspace.
Five9
Convoso Announces ClearCallerID Pro
The CCaaS contact center software provider for sales and lead generation teams, announced the release of their ClearCallerID Pro which helps companies reach their intended recipients without being blocked or flagged by carriers. It provides services to register phone numbers (DIDs), monitor carrier and FCC actions on registered numbers, automatically remediate flagged or blocked DIDs, and prevent flagged or blocked DIDs.
ClearCallerID Pro also provides dashboards to monitor numbers that are flagged or blocked by major carrier, automated remediation to remove flagged or blocked numbers from call campaigns, as well as real-time performance analytics for how flagged or blocked numbers are affecting contact rates.
Convoso
This Week on No Jitter
In case you missed them, here are some of our top stories this week:
Microsoft Teams SLAs: Getting credits may not be easy, and reliability is only beneficial when there is good call quality.
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.
Google’s updates reflect its strategic vision to adapt to the changing dynamics of workplace technology, emphasizing efficiency, inclusivity, and security.
A slew of AI-assisted updates to Microsoft Teams are meant to reduce the information-sorting and communicating tasks that often presage the actual work employees do.
