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  AWS, Cisco, Salesforce Showcase Latest in Contact Centers
  - Amazon Connect Wisdom assists agents by surfacing recommended answers using artificial intelligence (AI). Among competitive products, two things about Amazon Connect’s approach stood out to me. Wisdom determines caller intent by listening to the IVR conversation, then connects to third-party knowledge bases and FAQs to find information relevant to the intent. It then passes along that guidance to the agent for assistance in handling the inquiry.
  - Amazon Connect Voice ID is a machine learning-based caller authentication solution that verifies customer identity by analyzing their unique voice characteristics.
  - Contact Lens for Amazon Connect Real-Time analyzes conversations while they occur to trigger alerts to supervisors and proactive assistance to agents.
  - Amazon Connect Customer Profiles use pre-built connectors to CRM and APIs to consolidate customer profiles and contact history.
  - Amazon Connect Tasks leverages Amazon Connect routing engine to manage tasks like interactions, prioritized, and assigned to skilled agents.
  - Cisco announced its intent to acquire IMImobile, a CPaaS provider focused on digital engagement. IMImobile is a sizable player with over $225 million in revenues. It has recently acquired Rostrvm, a small CCaaS vendor, and 3Cinteractive, a mobile marketing provider, bringing Cisco a pretty broad technology portfolio.
  - Cisco unveiled it had rewritten Webex Contact Center, including a new agent desktop and a new workflow builder. This update is a significant undertaking. After the BroadSoft acquisition, Cisco selected it as its go-forward cloud contact center offer. The software, coming from the earlier Transera purchase, was geared towards small and midsize contact centers. Cisco is accelerating its pursuit of the enterprise CCaaS market with a multi-cloud, multi-telecom provider solution with this rewrite.
  - Cisco shared that it built the newly minted Webex Contact Center around a unified data platform for agent operations, contact center reporting, customer experience (CX) management, and AI predictions. It’s also extending its Cloudcherry technology beyond CX management to progressive customer profiling.
  - Customer 360, built out of the Mulesoft acquisition, connects the different Salesforce clouds to create a unified customer view. It’s now featured at the top of Salesforce’s “mega-menu” of products and positioned at the cornerstone for delivering seamless digital experiences.
  - Einstein Automate is a low-code software for automating tasks and workflow, particularly relevant to contact center, assisting agents for after-call work.
  - Service Cloud Workforce Engagement is an AI-based workforce planning and scheduling solution built for omnichannel operations.
  This post is written on behalf of BCStrategies, an industry resource for enterprises, vendors, system integrators, and anyone interested in the growing business communications arena. A supplier of objective information on business communications, BCStrategies is supported by an alliance of leading communication industry advisors, analysts, and consultants who have worked in the various segments of the dynamic business communications market.