ChannelVision Magazine

smart machines and artificial intelli- gence (AI) within business communica- tions and contact center services. And it’s not just from the likes of Google or Facebook and the major communica- tions providers such as AT&T, Century- Link and Windstream that will provide those capabilities. Consider SkySwitch, for instance, a smaller provider of hosted and next-gen business communications platforms. Intrigued by the explosion around the Amazon Echo, SkySwitch president Eric Hernaez started think- ing about putting Amazon’s personal agent to work on the company PBX. Now, SkySwitch customers are able to control PBX features using a voice command, such as “Alexa, call Jane in accounting at her extension.” This was accomplished by creating an Alexa skill that connects to the SkySwitch voice API. “Knowing what is on the hori- zon, my philosophy is, I’d rather lead the charge then get run over by it,” says Hernaez. Indeed, the company also recently announced the avail- ability for trial of a new feature that combines business SMS and an AI smart agent to ad- dress a growing trend within customer service and interac- tion. More and more, consumers are relying on text messaging as a means for contacting busi- nesses. Nearly a third of U.S. online adults recently surveyed by Forrester, for instance, say they have already sent a mobile/ SMS message to a company re- questing assistance, while other studies have shown that the majority of millennials prefer to send texts rather than talk on the phone. This can be a challenge for business owners, says SkySwitch, since most business phone lines still can’t receive SMS messages, and even when a busi- ness phone line is enabled with business SMS, it’s often difficult to ensure that an inbound SMS message gets routed to the right person in the company. To address this problem, SkySwitch developed Sallie the SMS directory bot, an AI smart agent that helps direct the message using business SMS to the appropriate person or department within a company. So when a text message is sent to a business number, Hernaez explains, SkySwitch employs a small application that intercepts the business message and sends it to Facebook’s wit.ai API service, which allows the system to take discernible data from the message and feed it back into the routing of that message. Sallie engages with customers who send SMS mes- sages by intelligently responding with relevant information from the company directory and taking the appropriate ac- tions based on the responses received. If the system, for instance, recogniz- es that it’s a known customer texting in, and that customer has previously spo- ken with someone in the company, Sal- lie will send an autoreply by SMS that says, “You’ve reached the SMS support of company ABC. It looks like you have talked to Jack in the past, would you like to talk to him now?” If the customer replies “yes,” using call control the sys- tems places a call to the customer and then places a call to Jack. Along with automatically connect- ing customers to the right resources in a company, Sallie also can respond to inquiries about hours of operation, driving directions or special events, just to name a few of the possibilities. The systems also is learnable, says Hernaez, so it will get smarter and do more things as it learns and gathers more data. “It’s not an extremely smart ap- plication,” says Hernaez, “but it is a way to get into the spirit of AI. And, of course, once you have the ability to interact with customers using SMS messages, it can expand.” And while it’s a very narrow appli- cation, admits Hernaez, he’s also quick to point out that development didn’t require huge amounts of resources and expertise. “It is really easy to take something like machine-learning and inject it into a business process,” he says, “because it is all available out there trough APIs.” Literally hundreds of companies, says Her- naez, have developed machines algorithms and made them consumable in ways that allow compa- nies to use the capabilities to enhance and improve products. “You can upload data through an API, and get back intelligible results that let you take action. It’s almost ridiculously simple to use them,” he says. “It’s there and available now; it’s just about taking a very spe- cific problem, applying AI through an API to that problem and working it into a use case.” That’s good news for the customers of lots of channel partners, because their end users are increasingly expecting, and more impor- tantly, measuring satisfaction based on smart customer services experiences that recognize them across channels, allow them to move seamlessly across channels and minimizes the time it takes to resolve a problem. As Forrester’s Leggett puts it, “your customers now decide how customer centric you need to be, not your inter- nal operations.” o Source: Forrester; survey of 4,513 U.S. online adults “Which of the following live-assist channels have you used in the past 12 months?” Conversation with a customer service representative or agent via telephone Voice Digital Visual Click-to-call The response to an email that I sent to customer service Instant messaging/online chat with a live person Contacting a company using Facebook or other social channels that don’t include twitter Contacting a company using Twitter Sending a mobile/SMS message to the company requesting assistance Using a mobile messaging app Screen sharing Online video chat with a live person Percentage of IT Assets Off-Premises Off Premises Spending Increases IT Pros’ Most Critical Hosted VoIP Features Source: CenturyLink and Spiceworks 59% 37% 54% 45% 33% 31% 31% 30% 32% 32% 57% 55% 54% 52% 50% Audio conferencing Video conferencing Web conferencing IP desk phones IP telephony/ IP confere ce phones 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 1-249 employees 1-249 employees 250-999 employees 1,000-9,999 employees 10,000+ employees 250-999 employees 1,000-9,999 employees 10,000+ employees 34% 48% 21% 22% 27% 22% 44% 20% 45% 17% 43% Current In Two Years EMERGENT Channel Vision | March - April, 2018 20