The landscape of consumer demands has undergone a transformative shift over the past few decades, driven by the rise of e-commerce and mobile technologies. In the earlier days, customer demands were more predictable, and contact centres were perceived merely as a cost of doing business, lacking significance in shaping a company’s brand identity. However, with the advent of technology, customer service centres have evolved into strategic assets, driven by the need for faster, more intelligent, and agile solutions that deliver not just for the customer experience but the employee as well.

Cisco’s Leading Role in the Contact Centre Evolution:

Cisco has been at the forefront of this transition, leveraging networks to facilitate faster communication, information gathering, and issue resolution. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has played a pivotal role in transforming contact center’s from digital and fast to intelligent and agile. As a leader in the contact center market, Cisco is driving advances in intelligent care to enhance the customer journey, turning the contact centre into a strategic asset rather than just a cost centre.

Webex has amplified its contact center portfolio through well-targeted enhancements to address emerging needs in the market.

— Oru Mohiuddin, Research Manager, IDC

AI Integration in Cisco’s Product Strategy:

AI is deeply embedded in Cisco’s product strategy, influencing various aspects of customer care. Here are some notable examples:

1. Self-Service: AI-driven self-service enables consumers to instantly access the information they need. Intelligent bots, FAQ resources, and virtual agents leverage customer data to provide the best possible answers at the time of inquiry.
2. Intelligent Routing: By automating call flows through AI and machine learning tools, intelligent routing optimizes inbound communication based on factors such as hold time, location, and time of day, ensuring the best possible outcome.
3. Real-Time Help for Agents: Building on intelligent routing, Cisco facilitates seamless and personalized customer journeys by providing agents with suggested answers and relevant information in real-time.
4. Actionable Business Insights: AI-driven business insights relieve agents of mundane tasks, allowing them to focus on building relationships. The system observes interactions, makes suggestions on responses, and can engage other systems to assist with tasks, streamlining the backend processes for agents.

Collaboration with Google and Contact Centre AI:

Cisco announced its collaboration with Google and its new Contact Centre AI service, marking a significant leap in enhancing agent effectiveness and efficiency. The “intelligent agent assist” feature automates the process, eliminating the need for agents to search through multiple systems and knowledge bases to find responses to customer requests. This integration ensures that agents can consistently provide customers with the best possible responses.

How the Google Solution Works:

The Google Contact Centre AI service operates through a multifaceted approach:

1. Listening: Observing conversations in real-time, suggesting relevant content such as documents, links, and articles.
2. Adapting: Adjusting to evolving conversations by incorporating the customer’s prior data using Cisco’s context service.
3. Assisting: Providing agents with the best information to handle specific cases in a single dialogue box, ensuring a consistent end customer experience.
4. Learning: Utilizing machine learning to continuously improve its performance over time.

As Cisco pioneers the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into contact center’s, the vision of a more efficient, responsive, and intelligent customer service reality is becoming tangible. This collaboration with Google signifies just the beginning of a new era, where open platforms, a global footprint, and a massive customer base converge to redefine the standards of excellence in contact center operations.

As a premier provider of Cisco and a Google partner, TTEC Digital combines Cisco’s comprehensive, customisable, highly secure cloud contact center capabilities with our own operational dexterity and strategic experience to build a custom solution that meets the unique needs of even the largest and most complex businesses — especially those already using other Cisco contact center products today, including UCCE, Webex Contact Center, Webex Contact Center Enterprise, and Webex Connect.