No Jitter Roll: UCaaS Partnerships, AI Integrations

This week’s No Jitter Roll provides an update on UCaaS partnerships; AI, voice, and video integrations; and a new video conferencing service featuring end-to-end encryption.

 

RingCentral has partnered with Red Box for integration with the company’s new open microservices-based enterprise voice capture platform, Conversa by Red Box. Conversa will capture recordings of audio and video conversations from the RingCentral UCaaS and CCaaS platforms in real-time, and customers will be able to apply AI tools for conversational analysis. The Red Box integration will give customers the “access and control they need to realize compliance” and get value from their recorded conversations, said David Lee, VP of product management at RingCentral, in a prepared statement.

 

Avaya has tapped Spearline, a global technology company that proactively monitors toll and toll-free numbers for connectivity and audio quality, to support its Avaya OneCloud UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS offerings, the companies said in a joint announcement. Connection issues can severely impact contact center and remote interactions to the extent where calls won’t connect. With Spearline’s monitoring, Avaya has gained increased visibility into the quality of toll-free standard and conference numbers, and can better provide users the ability to connect with their customers and employees seamlessly, said Mehdi Nezarati, VP cloud operations and platform at Avaya, in a prepared statement. (For more on how Spearline and audio quality, tune into our 12-part podcast series.)

 

Agent assistance is the theme of separate announcements this week from contact center AI companies Cresta and Blue Prism.

 

First, Cresta announced an integration of its agent coaching software with the Amazon Connect CCaaS platform. Cresta provides real-time prompts with the goal of optimizing agent responses, honing their strengths, and correcting weaknesses. The Cresta integration for Amazon Connect is available now for U.S. customers.

 

Next, Blue Prism announced general availability of Service Assist, a digital assistant that automates customer interaction tasks such as searching databases, scheduling callbacks, and updating customer records. Service Assist also supports attended automation, digital workforce orchestration, integration with AI and machine learning tools, Blue Prism said. Expected benefits include reduced average handling time and improved first call resolution. Blue Prism will be featuring Service Assist at this year’s ICMI Contact Center Virtual Expo, a sister event.

 

Conversational AI company Nuance this week announced that global fashion retailer H&M is expanding its use of its Nuance Intelligent Engagement Platform to allow consumers to engage with virtual assistants and live agents directly from Google Search or Google Maps in the U.S.. H&M has been using the engagement platform since 2018 to provide virtual assistant and live-chat options to customers y when shopping online. Now via the platform, H&M will be able to provide assistance to customers via Google Business Messages, , Nuance said. The virtual assistant provides H&M customers real-time answers to inquiries about store locations and hours, online order tracking status, or item availability, for example.

 

Collaboration startup Wire this week launched its video conferencing platform service. Wire is an end-to-end encrypted video service that features messaging, one-click conference calls (up to 12 people for video, up to 25 for audio), file and screen sharing capabilities, and guest rooms for partner and customer collaborations, Wire described on its website. Built by Skype technologists, the platform will be supported by an open-source community to maintain security and transparency, Wire said.

 

The service is available in a pro or enterprise pricing tier for $6 and $9 per user/per month, respectively, Wire said.