Sunday Recap - Twilio, Cisco & Vonage

News Roundup 10th to 16th of August 2019

Another sensational week of British summer has past, and that means another selection of compelling news stories from the team here at UC Today.

Over the last week, we've had some interesting discussions at the news desk about artificial intelligence, contact centre environments, and the evolving demands in customer experience. If you haven't had time to check out all our latest posts, here are some of the stories you don't want to miss.

Twilio Celebrates Diversity at SIGNAL

Diversity isn't always easy to come by in the technology world. For a sector that's so devoted to evolution and change, it can be surprisingly behind on the times. Fortunately, many modern businesses are beginning to replace their outdated views and embrace the many wonderful communities and groups that make up our incredible world.

At their annual SIGNAL event for 2019, Twilio showed that it wasn't afraid to support people from all backgrounds with a new commitment to better diversity in the years to come. The company claims that it's planning to create a new, more diverse workplace, complete with lofty goals to achieve by 2023. What kind of targets is Twilio aiming for you ask? Well, it's starting by attempting to have a 50% female workforce, as well as ensuring that 30% of its US employee base is made up of underrepresented populations. Nice work, Twilio!

Cisco Acquires the Voicea Brand

Cisco has been transforming the collaboration and communication environment over the years with the introduction of countless exciting new tools. Most recently, the company introduced it's new "Cognitive Collaboration" strategy, which attempts to bring more intelligence to day-to-day business conversations.

Over the last few months, Cisco has made numerous investments into this new cognitive collaboration idea, and this week, they announced their acquisition of Voicea, a leader in the creation of innovative voice collaboration tools. The latest addition will bring the "EVA" collaboration platform to the Cisco Webex environment, allowing users to tap into advanced tools like automated speech recognition and artificial intelligence for things like real-time transcription.

Vonage Invests in Conversational AI

Cisco isn't the only company making intelligent acquisitions this week. Leading communications brand, Vonage recently announced their decision to purchase the leading artificial intelligence brand, Over.AI. According to the President of Vonage's API platform, the two companies have been working together for quite some time (more than a year), which makes the acquisition a natural step forward for both brands.

The acquisition of Over.AI will help Vonage to implement more clever tools into their portfolio, including better solutions for process automation, and incoming voice recognition. The incoming voice recognition option will help to support agents in the customer conversation and help them to make better decisions about how to serve their clients. In today's age of customer experience, that's a massive bonus for Vonage customers!

Monday.com Earns Some Serious Funding

Leading collaboration company Monday.com announced a fantastic achievement for their brand this week, as it raked in $150 million in new funding. The completion of a Series D funding round delivered plenty of new cash for Monday.com to put towards their ongoing strategy to deliver exceptional collaborative experiences to everyday users.

Monday.com states that it's planning to continue expanding on the platform that its customers already know and love, with access to a wide range of advanced new capabilities and functionality. The brand hopes to design an experience that "just works for you," making life simpler as employees struggle to stay ahead of deadlines in today's fast-paced business environment. According to Monday.com, they aim to give users their own "personal assistant" that they can rely on all day long.

Is There Too Much AI in Contact Centres?

As vendors throughout the UC environment continue to invest more money into the artificial intelligence and machine learning space, we started to wonder whether there's such a thing as "too much" AI. After all, while intelligent tools have a lot to offer the contact centre, from predictive analytics to sentiment analysis and automated routing, AI might not belong in every part of your customer's journey.

Our own Moshe Beauford caught up with Twilio's Director of Developer Education, Andrew Baker, while attending this year's SIGNAL event, to discuss the concept of AI overwhelm in the contact centre. Check out their discussion here.

Stay tuned for more stories in the week ahead!