Jabra provides sentiment analysis with first AI software
The new SaaS offering voice coaches agents and provides self-coaching assessments and personalized evaluations. The vendor also introduced two new headsets.
Jabra, the producer of headset and speakerphones, has introduced its first software offering, a SaaS system called Engage AI that provides live coaching to contact center agents.
Unveiled Thursday, Engage AI live coaches agents during calls and provides agents with self-coaching assessments and personalized evaluations.
The Jabra Engage AI offering shows the increasing use of AI to power sentiment analysis, said Dan Miller, an analyst at Opus Research.
Rather than replacing agents through pure automation, computing power is being applied toward making agents more efficient and more human.
Dan MillerAnalyst, Opus Research
"Rather than replacing agents through pure automation, computing power is being applied toward making agents more efficient and more human," Miller said.
Jabra is now among a host of vendors applying AI to sentiment analysis. Speech analytics vendors such as Verint, Nice, Uniphore and Genesys boast products that help contact center agents with pop-ups that appear on their screens.
For example, in 2020 Nice powered CXone, the vendor's customer experience platform, with AI-driven sentiment analysis data to evaluate customer engagement during interactions between customers and agents.
Meanwhile, Jabra hardware competitor Poly also sells a voice assistant for contact center agents as part of its offering, which may be a motivating factor for why Jabra is now offering a SaaS product like this, Miller said.
The real judge
"There's merit to providing 'whisper' prompts rather than, or in addition to, screen pops," Miller continued. "Baking an intelligent assistant into the headset platform can simplify the issues surrounding how to get started with a voice assistant."
However, the real measure of whether Engage AI effectively addresses the problem of consumer engagement will be contact center workers.
"The agents themselves will judge whether it is perhaps less distracting to have suggested next steps come from a virtual agent whispering in their ear rather than taking up space in their workspaces," Miller said.
Jabra also introduced two new headsets: Engage 50 II and Engage 40. Engage 50 II includes a SmartRinger Feature, which alerts agents to incoming calls. Engage 40 includes noise cancellation for agents.
Pricing information for Engage AI was not immediately available.
