Fresh Genesys-Salesforce AI CX Tool Could Energize the Channel

With more than a 10-year partnership under their collective belt, Genesys and Salesforce have announced the evolution of that collaboration with the launch of an AI (artificial intelligence) CX (customer experience) tool.

This time around, the pair has launched an AI CX tool that facilitates businesses in merging data, agents, bots and communication channels for savvier end-to-end customer and employee experiences.

GenesysCloudCX, the contact center/CX company’s flagship offering, now pairs with Salesforce Service Cloud, a customer service orchestration/management tool, making way for the fresh-faced AI CX tool. By employing it, users can access a knowledge base, omnichannel support, automation and analytics.

InFlow Analysis’ David Smith

The deal chiefly concerns furnishing value to customers — and the channel, for that matter. So says David Smith, founder and principal of InFlow Analysis. Smith highlights something of significance, as well, telling Channel Futures: “This is the first time the duo have co-developed and brought together their product teams. CRM (customer relationship management) vendors for years have moved closer to the contact center, as it makes sense concerning customer engagement. CRMs do not have the advanced features a pure-play contact center provider has, so this makes a lot of sense.”

Smith acknowledges the belle of the ball as the contextual experience Genesys and Salesforce have created within a single platform.

Demonstrating Its Leadership Rating

Last month, Gartner publicized its CCaaS (contact center as a service) Magic Quadrant report, naming Genesys a CCaaS leader, which included others such as Five9. Today, Genesys’ leader status appears to be shimmering.

COMMfusion’s Blair Pleasant

“Ryan Nichols from Salesforce illustrated there have been many conversations over the years about CRM (customer relationship management) and contact center coming together, and who better than the leader in contact center and the leader in CRM to come together,” offered Blair Pleasant, president and principal analyst at COMMfusion.

She went on to express that it likewise boils down to reciprocal interest, as the duo has a lot of joint customers, assembling a concrete case to converge CCaaS with CRM.

Genesys found this notion was highly sought-after in its “State of Customer Experience” report, which it released in April. In it, CX leaders (44%) blamed delivering fluid experiences on the lack of carryover of customer context from one channel to another.

One-half (50%) said that merging data from omnichannel experiences would make that experience better for everyone involved, something Geneeys saw in making a case for the convergence of CCaaS and CRM.

AI CX Tool and the Channel

As for the channel, Pleasant notes that the deal comes with co-selling opportunities.

“They can go beyond just CTI (computer telephony integrations) and offer a converged CRM/CCaaS offering that leverages AI, as it extends a single unified agent interface, which has been the holy grail for a while,” said Pleasant.

Available via the Salesforce AppExchange and the Genesys AppFoundry Marketplace, Salesforce customers, quite importantly, will gain access to Genesys’ WEM (workforce engagement management) capabilities, which Salesforce lacks, another selling point for partners in the Genesys landscape.

“Part of the value prop is to reduce the friction and make it easy to have the two solutions work together. Moving to more pre-canned, native integrations makes it easier for channel partners to sell instead of creating large service engagements that take more time and resources,” Pleasant contended.

She added that there are some potential pitfalls, as there is some overlap between the offerings. They both have AI and generative AI capabilities, digital engagement and more, leading to potential customer confusion.

Both Genesys and Salesforce are actively selling the solution. Pleasant also confirmed that nothing stands in the way of partners who work with both companies from creating bundles of the new AI CX tool.