AI Breakthroughs: Salesforce, Zoom, Vonage, Rackspace, More
Salesforce research says 62% of workers believe they don't have the skills to effectively and safely use AI technology.
July 17, 2023
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SupportLogic, known for its support experience management platform, has rolled out its first two generative AI features for Agent SX customers. Response Assist and Translation Assist deliver a tech stack that empowers support teams or any customer-facing functions within the organization, the company said.
The new features include response assist, which offers tonality, grammar assistance, compliance and soft skills coaching to customer support professionals. It enables agents to prioritize cases, transcribe calls, track customer commitments and collaborate with screen recording. The other is translation assist, which provides real-time, bidirectional language translation capabilities, with sentiment and keyword detection and response assistance. They allow support organizations to effectively build a global team without any language constraints, officials.
Krishna Raj Raja, founder and CEO of Support Logica, said the company is transforming the entire support agent experience.
“We understand the critical need to grow and protect your business at every phase of the customer journey,” Raja said. “These new generative AI capabilities assist customer support teams as they increase productivity, drive brand loyalty and renewals by making AI more human.”
Safesforce research says that while 54% of workers believe generative AI will advance their career, 62% say they don’t have the skills to effectively and safely use the technology. This is according to more than 4,000 full-time desk workers surveyed as part of the Salesforce Generative AI Snapshot Research Series.
Another survey found that only one in 10 global workers has overall, in-demand AI skills. The research also indicates that while workers want to learn and expect their companies to provide upskilling opportunities, employers often fall short of expectations.
Desk workers expect their company to close the skills gap, but employers are lagging. Workers want to learn and are looking to their companies for direction, but employers are falling short. Two out of three workers (67%) expect their employer to provide opportunities to learn how to use generative AI, but nearly the same amount (66%) say their employer does not offer training on the technology. Companies have a responsibility to close the skills gap.
Ann Weeby, SVP of Trailhead, Salesforce, said training is a necessity.
“Generative AI presents massive opportunities for businesses and workers alike. However, as AI becomes more common in the workplace, the skills gap will continue to widen,” Weeby said. “Companies have a responsibility to democratize access to needed skills and training to close the AI skills gap.”
She added: “The digital skills gap is nothing new, but the advent of generative AI has widened the chasm. Today, less than half of employees say they know how to get the greatest value out of generative AI. New job descriptions are emerging daily, and everyone from administrators to sales reps to developers will need AI skills in the coming years.”
Intermedia Cloud Communications, the provider of intelligent cloud communications and collaboration solutions, has launched AI Transcription Redaction. It’s a new data privacy and security feature designed to automatically identify and redact sensitive customer information from Intermedia Contact Center voice transcriptions.
It’s powered by Intermedia SPARK AI technology and is the most recent addition to Intermedia AI Interaction Insights – a suite of features developed for Intermedia’s omnichannel contact center solution. It leverages AI technology to automatically transcribe customer calls, summarize them, flag interactions for review based on key words and phrases, and provide instant sentiment analysis of each call.
The solution automatically removes various types of sensitive data from Intermedia Contact Center call transcriptions and summaries, including personally identifiable information such as social security numbers, passwords and dates of birth. It also removes payment card data like bank account and credit card information, as well as personal health information such as medication details and patient IDs. AI Transcription Redaction’s flexible design allows administrators to turn the solution on or off as needed but is enabled by default on transcription-enabled queues. Redactions will also persist when transcriptions are archived. These measures help ensure immediate and ongoing protection for sensitive data.
SignalWire, the provider of cloud-native, low-code APIs, has released its SignalWire AI Agent. According to the company, it’s the first and only no-code artificial intelligence agent for CPaaS.
AI Agent provides infrastructure to embed intelligent, human-like conversational agents into existing infrastructure with minimal coding and plain text instruction.
One key feature of SignalWire AI Agent is the SignalWire AI Gateway. It gives virtual agents the ability to retrieve or post information to custom middleware as well as transfer calls, send SMS and all of the other CPaaS APIs available at SignalWire. SignalWire makes AI approachable and efficient with the simplicity of SWML, a powerful markup language that lets you control the conversation flow, creating dynamic and engaging experiences for users, the company said.
Innovating further, SignalWire is integrating AI Agent into its Call Flow Builder, an intuitive and visual interface that will offer an even simpler way for developers or creators to construct and customize AI conversations.
Zoom has launched Intelligent Director for Zoom Rooms which uses AI and multiple cameras to allow remote meeting participants to see each in-room person.
Intelligent Director can individually frame up to 16 participants in a Zoom Room using multiple cameras, choosing the best video stream via a Zoom-designed AI. It sends that stream to the gallery view of the Zoom Meeting. Intelligent Director is designed for medium- to larger-sized rooms.
Vonage has added new features and capabilities to its Vonage Conversational Commerce, powered by Jumper.ai solution. These include enhanced mobility via live chat and messaging from any device or platform.
The new Vonage Conversational Commerce mobile app for iOS and Android enables conversational commerce agents to access and leverage live chat features on the go, helping businesses to create meaningful connections with their customers from anywhere. With the mobile app, these agents can offer immediate support to customers with queries through real-time messaging with the same access to functionality, resources, CRM and customer information available on the Jumper.ai unified dashboard, including the ability to create orders and share products and images.
With the Vonage Conversational Commerce Attentive Widget, businesses can embed instant messaging widgets anywhere on their website, never missing an opportunity to engage with customers at their moment of interest. It’s powered by AI-driven bots and easily accessible through the customer experience management dashboard.
Vonage Conversational Commerce now also features more messaging capabilities with the addition of SMS and Google Business Messenger (GBM). With these new additions, businesses can send messages directly with customers via these channels through a single customer experience management dashboard, as well as create bots for all of these channels with the AI-enabled Chatbot Builder. Vonage Conversational Commerce also supports social and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter and Instagram, as well as LINE, Google Adlingo Ads, Webchat, Telegram, iMessage, and more.
Rackspace has appointed CTO Srini Koushik as the global head of the company’s new spin-up Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace (FAIR).
Koushik has been the chief technology officer at Rackspace Technology since 2021 and is responsible for technology strategy and road map, thought leadership, information technology and security. Koushik will retain his CTO responsibilities while leading the FAIR spin-up business.
Koushik said the convergence of cloud computing and AI has sparked a transformative revolution, democratizing access to artificial intelligence.
“Whenever our customers needed to capitalize on the latest technology, we have been there with innovative solutions,” Koushik said. “From web hosting to the first public cloud based on OpenStack and modernization of application and data workloads to the Cloud – Rackspace has been there to help them. As our customers chart new territories with generative AI, we will help them become trailblazers in their transformative journeys by pioneering the responsible and sustainable use of AI solutions.”
Before his position at Rackspace, Koushik was general manager and managing partner for Hybrid Cloud Advisory Services at IBM Consulting. He worked closely with CIOs there, shaping their hybrid cloud strategies and fostering innovation. Earlier, he was the CIO & CTO for Magellan Health, where he built an Exponential IT organization that helped the company double its revenue over four years. Koushik was also president and CEO of NTT Innovation Institute Inc., a Silicon Valley-based start-up building multi-sided cloud platforms for digital businesses. Earlier in his career, he held C-Level roles at HP, Nationwide Insurance and IBM.
FAIR is a global practice dedicated to accelerating the secure, responsible and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions across industries. FAIR aims to be a force multiplier to accelerate the pragmatic and secure use-case-based adoption of generative AI in businesses across all industries. It builds on unique Rackspace Technology IP and multicloud capabilities along with their global footprint to facilitate scaled and global AI/ML, MLOps, analytics, DataOps, and application and data modernization for the cloud. Its open innovation is powered by partnerships with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and an extended ecosystem of open-source AI providers.
Finally, AI private cloud capabilities, including GPU-based high-performance computing, low latency storage solutions such as Rackspace Data Freedom and secure networking across 30-plus global data centers means focusing on the kinetics of data needed to build advanced AI models in a private, secure and on-demand environment.
Rackspace has appointed CTO Srini Koushik as the global head of the company’s new spin-up Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace (FAIR).
Koushik has been the chief technology officer at Rackspace Technology since 2021 and is responsible for technology strategy and road map, thought leadership, information technology and security. Koushik will retain his CTO responsibilities while leading the FAIR spin-up business.
Koushik said the convergence of cloud computing and AI has sparked a transformative revolution, democratizing access to artificial intelligence.
“Whenever our customers needed to capitalize on the latest technology, we have been there with innovative solutions,” Koushik said. “From web hosting to the first public cloud based on OpenStack and modernization of application and data workloads to the Cloud – Rackspace has been there to help them. As our customers chart new territories with generative AI, we will help them become trailblazers in their transformative journeys by pioneering the responsible and sustainable use of AI solutions.”
Before his position at Rackspace, Koushik was general manager and managing partner for Hybrid Cloud Advisory Services at IBM Consulting. He worked closely with CIOs there, shaping their hybrid cloud strategies and fostering innovation. Earlier, he was the CIO & CTO for Magellan Health, where he built an Exponential IT organization that helped the company double its revenue over four years. Koushik was also president and CEO of NTT Innovation Institute Inc., a Silicon Valley-based start-up building multi-sided cloud platforms for digital businesses. Earlier in his career, he held C-Level roles at HP, Nationwide Insurance and IBM.
FAIR is a global practice dedicated to accelerating the secure, responsible and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions across industries. FAIR aims to be a force multiplier to accelerate the pragmatic and secure use-case-based adoption of generative AI in businesses across all industries. It builds on unique Rackspace Technology IP and multicloud capabilities along with their global footprint to facilitate scaled and global AI/ML, MLOps, analytics, DataOps, and application and data modernization for the cloud. Its open innovation is powered by partnerships with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and an extended ecosystem of open-source AI providers.
Finally, AI private cloud capabilities, including GPU-based high-performance computing, low latency storage solutions such as Rackspace Data Freedom and secure networking across 30-plus global data centers means focusing on the kinetics of data needed to build advanced AI models in a private, secure and on-demand environment.
This edition of AI Breakthroughs encompasses everything artificial intelligence, including promotions, research and innovation among top channel companies such as Salesforce, Zoom, Vonage, Rackspace and more.
Let’s start first with some findings.
The newest CNBC Technology Executive Council survey shows that nearly half of top tech executives plan on making AI their number one budget item over the next year.
For example, CNBC reports cybersecurity as a primary use case for AI. The news agency said: One reason AI needs to be deployed in cybersecurity more broadly is because it is being used by hackers already, and they can gain an early advantage. At least in the short-term, generative AI will increase the ability of malicious actors to create social engineering content that makes it harder for users to distinguish it from legitimate data. A malicious actor may steal email traffic as well as a victim’s address book, enabling spear-phishing messages that focus on the content of the victim’s recent conversations with each of their contacts, and uses the language and syntax for each.
AI Breakthroughs: A ‘Huge High-Risk Bet’
CG Infinity’s Saurajit Kanungo
IT strategist Saurajit Kanungo, and president of CG Infinity, has a word of warning for companies before they make a huge decision to invest in AI.
“Yes, AI has great potential, but it is a huge high-risk bet, and a large percentage of your investment will likely go nowhere,” Kanungo said. “Only invest if you can measure the ROI in business terms — is it going to decrease costs, increase revenue, etc.”
Kanungo says if you invest in generative AI now, there is a high risk of disillusionment in the near future.
See the slideshow above for more research findings and AI breakthroughs. If you didn’t catch the previous roundup, you may do so here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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