News Summary:
- Cisco's Webex AI Agent automates contact center inquiries with
conversational intelligence for quick and effective issue
resolution
- New Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio and Cisco AI Assistant
for Webex Contact Center will change how businesses interact with
and support their customers
FORT
LAUDERDALE, Fla., Oct. 23,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at WebexOne, Cisco
(NASDAQ: CSCO) unveiled new AI-powered innovations, including the
Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio and Cisco AI Assistant features for
Webex Contact Center. These AI solutions leverage advanced
conversational intelligence and automation to enhance customer
interactions, streamline issue resolution and improve overall
customer satisfaction. This enables business leaders to deliver
faster, more effective and more empathetic interactions that
improve customer trust and brand loyalty.
Webex AI Agent: Addressing the Need for Immediate and
Effective Self-Service
To address rising customer expectations for helpful and
immediate assistance, Cisco announced the new Webex AI Agent. This
self-service concierge swiftly takes actions and handles customer
inquiries with natural dialogue and conversational intelligence to
eliminate wait times and provide faster resolutions. Webex AI Agent
incorporates the latest in responsible AI and automation into the
Webex Customer Experience portfolio. It will transform the
experience for customers, eliminating the complexity and
frustration they are accustomed to.
"Customer experience can make or break a brand, and unlike other
solutions on the market, the Webex AI Agent solves customer
problems instantaneously and will fundamentally transform the
experiences we have all reluctantly been using for far too long,"
said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice
President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco. "At Cisco, we're
building AI solutions natively. We start product design with the
assumption that AI is going to be in the core fabric of the product
and an essential ingredient in how we reimagine customer
experiences. We believe that in the next few years, a large
majority of first-time calls will be handled by an AI Agent that
will be just as interactive, dynamic, engaging and personable as a
human agent."
According to a new global study conducted by Cisco, there is a
link between customer satisfaction and effective self-service
tools. Current options are failing to meet their needs. For
example, rebooking a flight or replacing a lost credit card
typically require live agent support, leading to long queues and
hold times, multiple transfers, frustrated customers and agent
burnout. Webex AI Agent provides self-service options for scenarios
like these, which can result in a 39% improvement in customer
satisfaction (CSAT) scores according to customer experience
leaders.
AI Agent Studio: Simplify and Scale the Contact
Center
Webex AI Agent includes a new design tool called AI Agent
Studio, which makes it easy for business users and IT
administrators to train and deploy AI agents, providing them with
unmatched scalability and user-friendliness. The AI Agent Studio
allows contact centers to quickly deploy a voice or digital AI
agent in minutes and choose which AI models are used to support
customer inquiries. This AI front door will reduce calls in the
contact center so that agents can focus on higher touch and
relationship-based customer service.
Webex AI Agent along with the AI Agent Studio will be generally
available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for
on-premise customers in Q2 2025.
Building on Cisco's AI Momentum in Webex Contact
Center
Customer-facing teams often struggle with information overload
and growing workloads, leading to longer resolution times and
decreased CSAT scores. In fact, customer experience leaders report
that 1 out of 3 agents lack the customer context needed to deliver
ideal customer experiences. With the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex
Contact Center, becoming generally available in Q1 2025, busy
agents and supervisors benefit from automated guidance at their
fingertips to provide expert-level customer support, including:
- Context Summaries: When an agent is required,
context summaries facilitate seamless handoffs from an AI agent to
contact center agent. All necessary background information is
provided to continue the conversation while eliminating the need
for customers to repeat themselves.
- Suggested Responses: Recommendations appear directly
within the contact center platform, providing agents with the
information they need right at their fingertips to reduce call
times.
- Dropped Call Summaries: Interactions are captured
and documented up to the point of disconnection, ensuring
continuity when the call is resumed.
Also becoming generally available in Q1 2025 is Agent
Wellness for the contact center. These AI features allow for
proactive actions such as automatic breaks for agents, changes in
agent schedules and shifting of which channels agents support to
increase or decrease capacity based on need.
AI is also powering analytics to help customer experience
leaders operate a smarter, more efficient contact center:
- Topic Analytics: Generally available now, these
analytics quickly identify the drivers of incoming calls and
customer issues to enable proactive issue resolution.
- Automatic CSAT Scoring: Available January 2025, this solution leverages operational
data and transcripts to evaluate 100% of an organization's customer
interactions, addressing the common issue of low customer survey
response rates. With these new insights, business leaders can
resolve challenges as they arise and anticipate future needs,
delivering a new wave of proactive customer experience.
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader
that securely connects everything to make anything possible. Our
purpose is to power an inclusive future for all by helping our
customers reimagine their applications, power hybrid work, secure
their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their
sustainability goals. Discover more on The
Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco.
Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A
listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found
at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks
mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of
the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between
Cisco and any other company.
About Webex by Cisco
Webex is a leading provider of cloud-based collaboration
solutions which includes video meetings, calling, messaging,
events, customer experience solutions like contact center and
purpose-built collaboration devices. At Webex, we start with people
and their experiences first. This focus on delivering inclusive
collaboration experiences fuels our innovation, which leverages AI
and Machine Learning, to remove the barriers of geography,
language, personality, and familiarity with technology. Our
solutions are underpinned with security and privacy by design. We
work with the world's leading business and productivity apps –
delivered through a single application and interface. Learn more at
webex.com.
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SOURCE Cisco Systems, Inc.