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Vendors race to adopt Google Contact Center AI
Google has entered the contact center market with the release of an AI platform supporting virtual agents and call analytics. Leading vendors, including Cisco and Genesys, were quick to adopt Google Contact Center AI.
Google has released a development platform that will make it easier for businesses to deploy virtual agents and other AI technologies in the contact center. The tech giant launched the product in partnership with several leading contact center vendors, including Cisco and Genesys.
The Google Contact Center AI platform includes three main features: virtual agents, AI-powered assistance for human agents and contact center analytics. Google first released a toolkit for building conversational AI bots in November and updated the platform this week, with additional tools for contact centers.
The virtual agents can help resolve common customer inquiries using Google's natural language processing platform, which recognizes voice and textual inputs. Genesys, for example, demonstrated how the chatbot could help a customer return ill-fitting shoes before passing the phone call to a human agent, who could help the customer order a new pair.
Google's agent assistance system scans a company's knowledge bases, such as FAQs and internal documents, to help agents answer customer questions faster. The analytics tool reviews chats and call recordings to identify customer trends, assisting in the training of live agents and the development of virtual agents.
Vendors rush to adopt Google Contact Center AI
Numerous contact center vendors that directly compete with one another sent out strikingly similar press releases on Tuesday about their adoption of Google Contact Center AI. The Google platform is available through partners Cisco, Genesys, Mitel, Five9, RingCentral, Vonage, Twilio, Appian and Upwire.
"I don't think I've ever heard of a launch like this, where almost every player -- except Avaya -- is announcing something with the same company," said Jon Arnold, principal analyst of Toronto-based research and analysis firm J Arnold & Associates.
Avaya was noticeably absent from the list of partners. The company spent most of 2017 in bankruptcy court and was previously faulted by critics for failing to pivot to the cloud quickly enough. The company said at a conference earlier this year it was developing AI capabilities internally, said Irwin Lazar, an analyst at Nemertes Research, based in Mokena, Ill.
An Avaya spokesperson said its platforms integrated with a range of AI technologies from vendors, including Google, IBM, Amazon and Nuance. "Avaya does have a strong relationship with Google, and we continue to pursue opportunities for integration on top of what already exists today," the spokesperson said.
Google made headlines last month with the release of Google Duplex, a conversational AI bot targeting the consumer market. The company demonstrated how the platform could pass as human during short phone conversations with a hair salon and restaurant. Google's Contact Center AI was built on some of the same infrastructure, but it's a separate platform, the company said.
"Google has been pretty quiet. They are not a contact center player. But as AI keeps moving along the curve, everyone is trying to figure out what to do with it. And Google is clearly one of the strongest players in AI, as is Amazon," Arnold said.
Because it relies overwhelmingly on advertising revenue, Google doesn't need its Contact Center AI to make a profit. The product should help Google keep pace with Amazon, which released the contact center platform Amazon Connect last year.
While Google is always looking for ways to improve its AI models, the vendor said it would not have access to the data businesses route through Contact Center AI.
The contact center vendors now partnering with Google had already been racing to develop or acquire AI technologies on their own, and some highlighted how their own AI capabilities would complement Google's offering. Genesys, for example, said its Blended AI platform -- which combines chatbots, machine learning and analytics -- would use predictive routing to transfer calls between Google-powered chatbots and live agents.
"My sense with AI is that it will be difficult for vendors to develop capabilities on their own, given that few can match the computing power required for advanced AI that vendors like Amazon, Google and Microsoft can bring to the table," Lazar said.
