Many integrations, partnerships, and products have been announced in the contact center segment, many which help both agents and customers, such as the implementation of conversational intelligence and noise reduction technologies.

Additionally, experience management provider Qualtrics recently announced two real time contact center solutions.

Ascensos Partners with IRIS Audio Technologies for Voice Isolation Software

Ascensos, a European customer management outsourcer is partnering with IRIS Audio Technologies, provider of the AI-powered voice isolation app, IRIS Clarity. IRIS Clarity’s technology helps to eliminate distracting background noise on customer service calls, benefitting both customers and agents. It will be deployed by Ascensos across its contact centers.

According to John Devlin, Co-Founder & CEO of Ascensos, “Background noise has always been a frustration for both advisors and customers on customer service calls, as they rarely take place in a controlled environment. Providing our colleagues with the right tools to be effective in their role has always been a critical consideration for us. Our advisors want to do a great job in helping to deliver the right outcomes for customers quickly, and anything that makes that easier will have a positive impact on customer and employee satisfaction, as well as benefiting the long-term mental health and wellbeing of our staff.”

Avaya Announces Partnership with Uniphore

Avaya has partnered with Uniphore, bringing Uniphore’s conversational AI and automation functionalities to customers across the Middle East and African region. The functionality will be added to the Avaya OneCloud CCaaS platform, which supports customer connection across chat, video, voice, and messaging.

Uniphore’s X platform integrates conversational AI and automation and combines natural language processing (NLP), robotic process automation (RPA), and automatic speech recognition (ASR), including the Arabic language, emotion AI, and knowledge AI. Employee productivity and efficiency can be improved by guiding agents in real-time with in-call alerts, next best action, and reducing the work involved in after-call summarization.

“In today’s uncertain world, consumers want brands to address their needs quickly and efficiently; this makes the customer experience more important than ever,” says Kennedy Pereira, VP, CCaaS Ecosystem, Global Alliances and Partnerships at Uniphore. “We are excited to partner with Avaya to enhance CX, better understand customer insights to achieve superior business outcomes, improve employee performances, and lower customer costs.”

“With Avaya OneCloud CCaaS, we make it easy to connect customers, agents, and back-office staff with the insights they need to deliver great experiences. And by adding the power of Uniphore’s AI and automation tools to the platform, we’re able to magnify the effects of these capabilities,” says Ahmad Dorra, Customer Experience Solutions Sales Leader – Middle East, Africa & Turkey, Avaya.

Balto Integrates its Real-Time Guidance with Five9

Balto has announced that its AI-powered Real Time Guidance is now available on the Five9 CX Marketplace, allowing businesses access via the Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center.

“Five9’s investment in AI technologies and user experience over the last five years has made an undeniable impact on the contact center space. Balto is proud to partner with Five9 to put agent experience, easy-to-use interfaces, and best-in-class systems at the forefront of the modern contact center,” says Marc Bernstein, Balto CEO.

The Real-Time Guidance platform can be used by both agents and managers, guiding agents in real time with the use of smart checklists, dynamic prompts, notifications, and leaderboards. Balto can also provide Real-Time Coaching, allowing managers to support their agents in the moment, and Real-Time QA, which automatically scores 100% of calls to stop missteps so an agent can improve moving forward.

“Great customer experiences cannot happen without first looking at the agent experience,” says James Southworth, Senior Director, Partner AI Strategies at Five9. “Providing agents with the tools they need to easily navigate customer interactions is paramount to contact center success. We are excited to offer our customers Balto’s real-time guidance solutions to empower agents to have excellent conversations that drive bottom-line impact on each call.”

Omantel Works with Spitch and Datalytics to Launch Virtual Assistants

Oman-based telecommunications provider Omantel, Spitch, a provider of conversational AI solutions, and Datalyticx, an Oman-based startup, are launching Virtual Assistants to improve customer support and efficiencies in Omantel contact centers. The companies will be developing an Arabic-speaking Omnichannel Virtual Agent, unique to the Omani and broader Middle East market. 

Spitch ensures that customers do not have to repeat requests when moving between channels, and customers can still connect with an Omantel agent live at any time. The virtual assistants can communicate with Omantel’s backend system in real time, assuring information is accurate. There is also a quality check functionality that is provided by Datalyticx, that supports better understanding of customer sentiment.

“We have developed AI models that are able to understand most of the Arabic dialects spoken throughout the MENA region, with particularly high accuracy in Omani dialects. We are delighted to partner with Spitch.ai and jointly provide Omantel’s contact center users with great customer experience improvements,” says Ahmed Al Balushi, CEO of Datalyticx.

“Engaging with Omantel and Datalyticx on this strategic initiative will result in a better customer experience and greater flexibility in the contact center thanks to automated handling of omnichannel interactions. Spitch is thrilled about this partnership,” comments Piergiorgio Vittori, International Managing Director at Spitch.ai. “The Middle East is a strategic market for Spitch, and we are honored to be part of such a great project.”

“Omantel is on a mission to provide unparalleled communication solutions and this partnership will enable our customers and employees to be on the forefront of Conversational AI and the benefits it provides,” notes Aladdin Abdullah Hassan Baitfadhil, Chief Commercial Officer at Omantel.

OzoneTel Launches Contact Center Platform of WhatsApp

Ozonetel, an omnichannel customer communication platform provider, has introduced a full-featured CCaaS platform on WhatsApp. This platform will allow companies to set up complete contact center operations using WhatsApp. According to OzoneTel, this could drive down operations costs by over 75%, and those using it could expect to increase the number of customer engagements that an agent can manage by 5x. The product has all the typical contact center features including virtual numbers, automatic call distribution, interactive chat response systems, bots, and more. Organizations can choose a combination of bots, chat agents, and voice agents to support their customers.

Chaitanya Chokkareddy, Chief Product Officer, Ozonetel, says, “Customer demand for rich two-way conversations has increased exponentially over the past few years. Ozonetel’s CCaaS platform on WhatsApp will effectively address the advanced messaging needs of businesses and their customers. This is powered by Ozonetel’s CloudAgent platform that handles over 2 billion conversations a year and powers 100,000+ contact center agents. We are excited to introduce a whole new dimension to contact center communication and management.”