Last year, I attended Twilio Signal in San Francisco. While there, I realized something about Twilio, the CPaaS powerhouse loved to flex their muscles on the contact center front, especially when it came to making it easy to install AI in a contact center environment. Twilio did so with the release of two AI-centric APIs built to enhance CX.
Media Streams simplify the process of layering AI solutions like NLP, keyword spotting, and SI on top of live voice calls. And Twilio Conversations, the second of two API major launches, aimed to connect fragmented messaging channels. Months later, they’re still steadfast on the AI bandwagon, and say AI will prove “Key to building meaningful and lasting connections with customers.”
This is according to Jay Gurudevan, Principal Product Manager, AI/ML, Twilio. In a recent interview with UC Today, he shared further insight into AI’s future in contact centers, and how valuable it will become to enterprises of all sizes moving forward. He also said automation will prove indispensable in 2020.
Automation will Prove Vital in 2020
During our chat, Gurudevan further shared his thoughts on the future of automation in the contact center, adding continued advancements in automation tools like intelligent bots will help usher in an era of frictionless experiences for enterprises.
“This will enable authentic two-way conversations between companies and customers – a direct result of a larger trend we’re seeing, customers who expect multichannel communications to be standard”
The way he sees things, it is about customers and the experience they have with an enterprise. He continued, customers not only demand faster responses than ever before, but they want meaningful, cross-channel conversations from the enterprises they engage with. “As a result, every interaction should be seamless and enterprises need to be able to respond with the right message, at the right time, and via the right channel,” Gurudevan added.
AI-Powered Bots will Play Key Role in 2020
Gurudevan has a lot of perspective into the world of artificial intelligence. As a Principal Product Manager at Twilio, he is laser-focused on machine learning and is one of Twilio’s go-to guys on the subject matter.
To him, cross-channel communication is a growing trend, one that shows no signs of slowing down. And AI-powered bots will assist in the process, according to Gurudevan. When it comes to the technology behind some of these cross-channel experiences, he told me, AI-powered bots, in particular, will play an integral role in making cross-channel conversations seamless for customers.
“Enterprises that approach transformation strategies by focusing on augmenting current systems and processes with AI, rather than replacing them, will be the most successful”
He also believes, in 2020, advancements in automation tools will enable businesses to build the conversational workflows they need to engage with customers. This is a trend, Twilio, too, says they’ve seen for some time now.
“For example, we see enterprises offering customers the ability to make changes to deliveries by replying to status update notifications over SMS.” Such advancements in automation may be one of the keys to unlocking the true potential of CPaaS as well as to how many additional adaptors the model gains in 2020.
