KEY INSIGHTS FROM ENTERPRISE CONNECT 2019

Twelve months on and we found ourselves in familiar territory as we arrived at the Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando where the set up for Enterprise Connect 2019 was well underway! A conference we found so beneficial last year and one we were keen to sponsor and learn from again this year.  

To recap, last year was focused around speech to text, with voice and AI being the big topic of conversation. This year’s messages built upon this as we heard that voice is essential, speech to text has matured and focus is on the adoption of virtual assistants, output of Natural Language processing and Artificial intelligence becoming a reality.  

So what better way to start, than learn the terminology that would then become the buzz words for the next four days. What does AI, ML, Deep Learning, NLP, NLU and Conversational AI really mean for organisations? Can one be used without the other or are they all required at some point to get to the ultimate goal where machines can imitate intelligent human behaviour? One thing they all have in common, is they require data to fuel this intelligent new way of learning, to drive business outcomes, freeing up time for humans to provide better service to their customers.  

This amazing technology is clearly our future, but there is no centre of gravity yet, we are in a use case driven market, where providers and vendors are proceeding cautiously and can’t put metrics on volume of market or speed, and where consumer experience may or may not be an indicator of success for workplace applications.  

The challenge many organisations are facing is understanding how to implement an analytics and AI strategy when their infrastructure is siloed and access or collection of data, required to fuel the machines, is either inaccessible or non-existent. There is a need to listen to enterprise wide conversations, interlink the solutions to gain a 360 degree view of the customer, bringing CRM, contact centres, front, middle and back office systems together, along with other structured and unstructured data sets.

But who is leading these initiatives? Organisations that recognise the need for a Chief Customer Officer, with ultimate responsibility for all customer facing activities and strategy to maximise customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction are driving AI adoption faster. They see that 76% of customer interactions happen through conversation, but 50% of conversations fail to meet customer expectations* and they have the ultimate responsibility to find solutions that improve these statistics.

Despite it being suggested cloud solutions enable this future innovation, with some of the major players all showcasing their capabilities at the show, there is still a need to capture data and run applications in a hybrid environment, ensuring organisations have complete control of their assets.

Last year we recommended being prepared for change by capturing and storing your voice data, ready for the new world coming. Today the new world is here, and we find Red Box being the enabler and gateway to this exciting digital transformation, collecting critical voice data, and through open APIs, connecting with best of breed partners, like Salesforce and Tethr, so that organisations can begin to automate customer facing workflows and deliver valuable business insights.

_{* Source- Global Contact Center Survey, Deloitte 2017}