AI agents are transforming Customer interactions.

AI and human Agent

In our recent fireside chat, we delved into the transformative potential of AI agents across multiple industries. These business areas include customer service, IT support, and internal business support. The discussion, titled “Rise of the AI Agents,” brought together industry experts across several fields. These included transportation, public sector, legal, media, and executive search. The panel explored how AI is reshaping customer and consumer interactions and discussed enhancing efficiency and driving more inclusive interactions.

Introduction to AI Agents

We kicked off the session our fireside chat by setting the scene. We highlighted the traditional challenges faced in contact centers. These include long hold times and inefficient call transfers between chat bots and human agents. Here we agreed on these and but also the importance of not just jumping on “injecting ChatGPT” into workflows, but instead discussed the advent and value of generative AI and human-like conversation across chat and AI-Voice and how these rapid technology advancements have the potential to revolutionise these experiences.

AI agents, leveraging large language models like, are now capable of understanding context, handling a wide range of queries, and providing personalized responses and we are seeing Contact Center solutions such as Cisco Webex, starting to infuse this technology to assist end-to-end in the Human-to AI, Human-to-AI-to-Human, and Human-to-Human conversation.

AI agents leverage advanced technologies like large language models (LLMs) and machine learning to provide more dynamic and context-aware interactions. AI agents can understand and generate natural language. This ability allows them to handle a wider range of queries. They also provide more personalised responses. They can learn from data and feedback, improving their performance over time without needing manual updates.

AI agents can also integrate with various data sources and systems, enabling them to provide more comprehensive and accurate information.

  • Autonomous Agents can operate entirely independently, without human intervention. They can handle multi-step tasks, make decisions based on pre-programmed logic, and adapt to new situations using advanced AI techniques like reinforcement learning. These agents are ideal for environments where human input is minimal or impractical.
  • Semi-Autonomous Agents on the other hand, still involve a “human in the loop.” While they can perform many tasks independently, they require human input for certain decisions or actions. This hybrid approach combines the efficiency of automation with the oversight of human expertise, ensuring accuracy and reliability.

The example below is a recent marketing video from Cisco introducing their new AI agent in Webex Contact Centre.

AI Agent example in Cisco Webex Contact Centre

AI Agent – Use Cases

Through the discussion, the panel agreed on several key areas in which AI assisted agents could add value.

  • Customer Support: Investing (or extending existing platform) in AI agents can help multiple lines of business better and more efficiently handle routine customer inquiries, such as changing addresses, booking or changing appointments, and freeing up human agents to work on less trivial customer requests or more complex issues. 
  • Sales Assistance: Another area discussed, was where AI can assist human agents (for example in sales or customer service), by providing real-time information and suggestions during human customer interactions, improving the chances of successful sales conversations, such as overcoming objections or asking for more technical information about a product or service.
  • Customer Service and Complaints: helping agents improve their interaction with their customers, such as making agents aware of similar problems, outages or similar calls that led to successful outcomes or helping explain something better or in a different way to their customer.
  • Training and Development: AI can be used to train new agents by simulating customer interactions and providing feedback, helping them improve their skills more quickly. This can be used for onboarding fresh staff, running different customer scenarios or reviewing previous calls for improvement
  • Sentiment Analysis: Using AI to analyse customer sentiment during interactions, allowing agents to adjust their approach and improve customer satisfaction as well as flagging to supervisors early where interaction or training may be needed.

AI Agent Value and Applications

Driving efficiency and improving satisfaction

Darren Everden (London Borough of Hillingdon) shared his insights on how local authorities are looking at utilising AI to improve resident interactions. David emphasised the importance of channel shift and transformation in the public sector, driven by funding reductions and the need for more cost-effective solutions that also improve the resident experience and resolution rate. Darren highlighted the evolution of chatbots, which can now use natural language processing to understand and respond to resident queries more effectively. He also discussed the potential of integrating AI into voice channels, enhancing accessibility and providing a more natural interaction experience making it almost impossible to differentiate from human voice. Interactions are far more natural than ever, and this continues to evolve and improve with models such as ChatGPT-4o.

Inclusivity and Accessibility

Ken Dickie from Leathwaite Executive Search, discussed the role of AI in promoting and improving inclusivity and accessibility. He pointed out that AI agents are far better at being able to adapt to the needs of users with disabilities, such as dyslexia, by adjusting text spacing or providing audio responses something human only operated agents simply cannot easily do This real-time adaptability empowers individuals to engage with systems more effectively. Ken also mentioned the global reach of AI, enabling organisations to provide support in multiple languages, thus breaking down communication barriers.

Enhancing Agent Efficiency

Aidan Shanahan from Govia Thameslink Railway discussed the benefits of AI in assisting human agents. He discussed his view on where AI can provide real-time guidance and sentiment analysis, helping agents handle customer interactions more effectively. The panel here discussed the role AI as an human assistant (An Agent to the Agent) being particularly valuable in high-stress situations, such as handling complaints, where AI can suggest appropriate responses based on the customer’s tone. Aidan also highlighted the potential for AI to improve internal processes, such as IT support, by automating routine tasks and reducing response times, replacing laboreous processes with natural language requests.

Jas Bassi from Gately highlighted the potential applications of AI in the legal sector. While acknowledging the generational differences in adopting new technologies, Jas emphasized the need for a multi-channel approach that includes both human and AI interactions. He pointed out that AI can deliver efficiency gains in transactional activities, ensuring faster and more consistent service delivery. However, he also raised concerns about biases in AI training and the risk of deep fakes, underscoring the importance of maintaining a balance between automation and human oversight.

Low cost of entry and ease of Proof of Concept

Alex Taylor from Awin shared his experience with implementing AI agents internally at Awin. He mentioned that this is no longer about one off business cases and specific dictated expensive systems. He shared that he is seeing huge interest in the use of AI agents across various departments, such as InfoSec and marketing, in leveraging AI to not only automate and ease customer interactions but also going beyond this and automating processes and improving efficiency. He emphasised the importance of extending this value by connecting backend systems (which also involved in many cases minimising diserpate vendrs) and ensuring they are “compatible” to maximize their effectiveness with automation and semi-automatic interactions. He realised examples, of automatically logging tickets, providing simple answers to issues and even liaising with other systems or processes.

Finally Alex and Ken agreed that the bar to entry is much lower, with a similar approach,. bring able to serve multiple departments, handle thousands of enquiries and not only reduce the cost, but truely delivery faster, more inclusive and international support even for organisations that don’t have global offices.

Conclusion: The Value and Opportunities of AI Agents

Our fireside chat concluded that there were several key value points when it comes to the use and exploration of AI agents across customer and employee focused formal contact centers but also across more adhoc and internal communications within and across business, from website chat to internal IT support.

  • Enhanced Customer Interaction: AI agents can provide more efficient and personalized customer service, reducing wait times and improving satisfaction
  • Cost-Effective Solutions: The low cost of entry and easy of deployment (compared to the previous laborious process of programming conversational paths), enables organisations to handle a higher volume of interactions without significantly increasing costs, making it a viable option for sectors with budget constraints and most importantly without a huge development and support burden.
  • Inclusivity and Accessibility: AI agents can adapt to the needs of diverse user groups, promoting inclusivity and breaking down language barriers both with end customers and with human-agents.
  • Supporting the Human Agents: AI assists can act as a huge support for human agents by providing real-time guidance, sentiment analysis, and automating routine tasks, enhancing overall efficiency and can even help handle delicate situations, detect agent stress and suggest rest-bites and training to supervisors based on AI assisted analysis.
  • Internal Process Optimisation: Used effectively, this can extend way beyond the conversation, streamlining internal workflows, reducing response times and improving productivity across various departments.

Missed the fireside chat? Catch up on demand here

Cisco Webex One 2024 Keynote: “Experiences Amplified”

Webex One 24 Logo

The Webex One 24 opening keynote was a showcase of Cisco’s commitment to revolutionising the way organisations collaborate and connect. It highlighted several new announcements, renewed partnerships and AI innovation across their portfolio which will continue to innovate the “future of work”.

This blog summarises my key highlights from Cisco’s fifth annual Webex One event. This year’s theme focussed on the transformative power of AI and human connection. Senior Cisco execs, including Aruna Ravichandran and Jeetu Patel, opened by discussing the latest AI innovations and their impact on customer and employee experiences and of course used the event to showcase new technologies and products from Cisco as well as new and extended partnerships with key vendors including Apple and Microsoft.

Cisco emphasised the integration of AI into (all) their products, the importance of secure and smart workplaces, and the future of seamless collaboration. They also introduced new technologies like the autonomous Webex AI agent and Cisco spatial meetings for Apple Vision Pro, showcasing their commitment to enhancing productivity and connectivity.

“Don’t worry about AI taking away your jobs, but worry about people who use AI effectively” | Jitu Patel

Aruna Ravichandran, Cisco’s Senior Vice President emphasised the importance of human connection and creativity in the transformative world of AI, highlighting the event’s focus on groundbreaking AI innovations and customer experience.

Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s Executive Vice President, talked about the “seismic shift in AI“, noting that while AI has brought significant momentum and pockets of impactful change, for the most, our lives have not yet materially changed. He said that he sees a dramatic change in the next decade, emphasizing the potential of agent-based technologies to redefine and reshape jobs and workflows fundamentally.

Let’s look at a few of these in more detail.

Cisco’s AI Strategy

Cisco’s AI strategy is focussed on integrating AI natively into their products, providing AI infrastructure, and ensuring AI security. Jeetu Patel talked passionately about the importance of AI-ready data centers, modern networks and AI aware security as well as what he called “future-proof workplaces”, and resilience in operations, driven by AI and data. Cisco unveiled new AI-driven features across their Webex collaboration suite, designed to make virtual meetings more intuitive and productive. These enhancements included real-time language translation, advanced noise cancellation, and AI-powered meeting summaries, ensuring that every participant can stay engaged and informed as well as work with Apple and Microsoft integration and connectivity.

Building Future Proofed Workspaces

Cisco talked about the importance of seamless integration across various platforms. They said they are introducing new APIs and partnerships that will better enable Webex and their meeting spaces technologies to integrate more effortlessly with other tools and applications, providing a unified and streamlined user experience, including with Microsoft Teams. Cisco aims to continue to raise the standard of what the workplace with secure campus and branch networking, smart building technology, workplace security, and seamless collaboration should look like something they see themselves having a unique industry advantage of.

“Our goal is to make every meeting as productive and engaging as possible, no matter where you are in the world.” | Jeetu Patel | Cisco VP

Cisco said the focus is on creating productive, automated, and secure environments for employees to work from anywhere. Cisco also showcases its advancements in spatial meetings, emphasizing the importance of human connection in AI-driven interactions – with a differentiated focus on creating immersive and engaging meeting experiences that feel as intimate and effective as in-person interactions.

Autonomous Agents in Webex Contact Centre

Cisco also introduced their upcoming autonomous Webex AI agent, designed to enhance self-service in contact centers. This AI agent combines conversational intelligence with generative AI and integrates with back-office systems to deliver personalized outcomes, reducing the need for human agents. The demo showed some advanced autonomous (AI Agents) enhancing customer self-service – combining conversational AI with generative AI along with integrates with back-office systems and processes like HR and Finance.

Extended Partnerships

Cisco discussed extended partnerships with both Apple and Microsoft, emphasizing their collaborative efforts to enhance technology and user experience and to meet customers where they are. These partnerships emphasize Cisco’s commitment to interoperability and enhancing user experiences across different (in some cases, competitive) platforms.

Cisco said that their Cisco Room devices for Microsoft Teams have become the fastest-growing Microsoft Teams Room solution in the world with over 3,000 customers now leveraging Cisco technology to power their Microsoft Teams investment.

Cisco’s long-term relationship with Apple was discussed and references made to Cisco technology being integral to Apple’s product development. The keynote highlighted the collaboration between the two including the development of the Apple Vision Pro, which integrates Cisco’s Webex for immersive 3D meetings

An AI powered Sustainable Future

High on the agenda was Cisco’s commitment to sustainability which was a key theme through the keynote. Cisco introduced new features aimed at reducing the environmental impact of virtual meetings, such as energy-efficient data centres and tools to measure and offset carbon footprints.


Did you attend Webex One or watch it remotely, what did you find of interest and what did you hope you’d see but didn’t?

Webex Contact Center now certified for Microsoft Teams

Bread with Teams and Cisco Logo

Webex Contact Center is an Enterprise Class CCaaS solution that enables skill-based routing of inbound “call centre” type calls and is designed to provide a seamless end-to-end customer service experience across voice, chat, email, and social media channels.

The big news this week is that Cisco Webex Contact Centre has just received office Microsoft Teams certification.

This is great for organisations, Microsoft, Cisco, and solution partners.

Great for Organisations

The Webex Contact Center Integration for Microsoft Teams combines rich omni-channel customer engagement capabilities with Microsoft Teams to break down barriers between contact center agents and the enterprise.

Whilst the CCaaS space in Teams is already quite well served by other vendors such as Luware, Anywhere 365, and Enghouse, Cisco Webex Contact Centre is a true Enterprise Class Contact Centre, trusted by many of the world largest enterprise organisations including EasyJet for example.

Some organisations who have been keen to fully embrace the potential of Microsoft Teams have often found themselves compromising on alternative “certified” CCaaS platforms. They can now have the best of both in a fully supported environment.

Great for Microsoft

In short this helps them protect their install base, since Microsoft certainly does not want to see their competition like Zoom, RingCentral, or Google muscle into their accounts base on the strength of their CCaaS offerings. By working with Cisco (as they are also doing in the Meeting Room space) they can now work more strategically together since Cisco and Microsoft already share around 90% of the same customer base.!

  • Adds a truly enterprise class CCaaS platform into the Teams ecosystem
  • Will further strengthen the partnership and collaboration between Microsoft and Cisco, the two leading technology companies that offer complementary solutions increasing the overall value proposition to their shared customer base.
  • Helps Microsoft expands the market reach of Microsoft Teams, which is already boasts more than with 280 million monthly users without (less) fear of losing market share to Cisco.
  • For organisations who require the best CCaaS solutions without compromising or mixing their collaboration and productivity tools, they leverage Cisco Webex Contact Centre without disrupting the flow of work for loyal Teams users with a seamless and integrated CCaaS solution from Cisco.

Great for Cisco

For Cisco this enables them to compete less and instead offer enterprise CCaaS services to their existing customer base who have been migrating or plan to migrate their UC platform to Microsoft Teams. Rather than risk losing out on the Contact Centre solution, Cisco can now meet their customers on their “turf“, providing the Contact Centre and CX solutions their customers need on their collaboration and productivity platform of choice whether that is Webex or Microsoft Teams.

Great for Microsoft and Cisco Partners

OK, so a little plug here for Cisilion (my employer), but for us (and therefore for me personally) I am excited about this because this brings an immense opportunity for Cisilion to leverage our unique position in our Cisco and Microsoft partnerships expertise and capability which will hugely benefit the services and solutions we can deliver to our clients.

  • As a Microsoft Teams specialist partner and Cisco Master Collaboration partner in the we are now empowered to deliver the best in enterprise CCaaS solutions to our customers alongside their choice of wider collaboration and productivity tools whether that is Cisco CUCM, Cisco Webex, or Microsoft Teams.
  • It helps us to attract and retain customers who are looking for a seamless and reliable customer service experience across multiple channels without having to shift partner due to technology choice changes.
  • It enables us to strengthen our deep partnerships and experience with enterprise class calling, meetings, platform and contact centres solutions across the two leading trusted technology providers.
  • Extends our ability to provide end-to-end design, implementation, integration, support and manged services across Cisco and Microsoft Collaboration solutions.
  • Enables us to provide cost and operational efficiencies both internally and to our customers.

Cisco Webex Contact Centre for Teams

The key outcomes that Webex CCaaS provides when integrated with Teams includes:

  • For the first time, brings a Unified calling platform between Cisco Webex Contact Centre and the organisations Microsoft Teams environment.
  • Allows for improved cross-function collaboration, knowledge sharing, and Customer Experience reporting among agents, supervisors, and other Teams users.
  • Advanced intelligent skill-based routing and queuing, which means customers can reach the right agent faster and more efficiently.
  • Providing a full and seamless customer service experience across voice, chat, email, and social media channels.
  • Delivers the core functionalities that high-performing multi-disciplined customer service teams require, such as call recording, voicemail, auto attendant, intelligent AI powered chat services, call back and rich social media integration.
  • Includes next-generation end-to-end Cisco security for Enterprise Class data protection and privacy in combination with that provided across the Microsoft 365 Security suite.
  • Brings exceptional management and supervisory controls and actional insights over “customer call handling”, with features like call analytics, call quality management, sentiment analysis, call control and full customer Lifecycle management.

Find out more

For more information about the announcement please see the following links.

Microsoft Announcement

Cisco Webex Contact Centre

ISE 2023 — Is Teams on Cisco Rooms just the beginning?

With ISE 23 kicking off this week in Barcelona, the UC world will no doubt be excited to see the developments, fruition and live demos of Cisco tech running Microsoft Teams.

This is significant for several reasons. Of course, Microsoft can run Webex, Zoom, RingCentral, and others from within Teams and many of the Teams hardware from Yealink, Poly, Logi etc can also run both Zoom and Teams on the same hard hardware, but this requires a reboot of the hardware causing a less than slick experience.

Is Cisco Rooms on Teams the beginning of a bigger plan?

What Cisco and Microsoft have done differently is that with this partnership, Cisco devices will not only run Webex or Teams, but the Cisco Meeting room kit will be able to do this seemlessly without a reboot

Cisco Room Kit running Microsoft Team

It will be interesting to see if any other Annoucements this week suggest that other Teams & Zoom meeting room kit will be lookimg to do the same!

Why is this significant?

The big questions is why would Microsoft find value in this after all Microsoft now has close to 300 million monthly active users and is the clear leader in is this space which it continues to innovate with new services and revenue streams expected from the recent launch of Teams Room Pro and Teams Premium.

According to analysts, Cisco and Microsoft share close to 90 percent of the same customers. Not necessarily in the collaboration space but across the board. Where that is Cisco’s networking business or Call Manager or Webex, Security or indeed their Contact Contact centre (which is soon to be certified for Teams.)

Most organisations like the idea of a smaller number of vendors to work with and if they can standardise on Cisco and Microsoft for their meeting room technology (since Microsoft don’t make the hardware for their Teams Rooms), this could be a big advantage.

For Cisco, this also means that they don’t loose the hardware and maintainance on their room systems should their Webex customer base decide to move partly or in full to Microsoft Teams.

For Microsoft, I think this also means bringing Cisco in as more of an advocacy – protecting both their install bases from their joint competition in this collaboration and voice space – Zoom, Google and RingCentral…vendors both Cisco and Microsoft do not want to see penetrate or weave into their account base.

Is this really about CPaaS?

Cisco is betting heavily on the success of its redefined Contact Centre solution Webex Contact Centre which could become a real significant player in the CCaaS space for Teams users and not just Webex customers.

Since the partnership was announced at Ignite, just before Xmas, much of Cisco messaging has been around  adding value to Teams rather than replacing it (though Cisco hope of course customers will still invest in Webex). The focus of much of the marketing is around making the user experience on Teams better by using Cisco technology.

Elevate your Microsoft Teams Rooms experience with Cisco devices”.

Here’s where CPaaS comes in. This partnership with Microsoft is also a great opportunity for Cisco to leverage its broader UC portfolio to add their Webex Contact Center natively into Team, attacking the plethora and crowded market of Teams certified contact centres such as Luware, Anywhere 365 and Enghouse.

Organisations with Teams, looking to replace their contact centre solutions are continually looking at Teams Certified solutions.

The Cisco Webex Contact Centre is already a  highly-regarded CCaaS solution, soon to be certified by Microsoft for Teams (maybe as soon as this week?).

Cisco Webex CC on Garner Magic Quadrant 2022

Cisco and Microsoft – Better together?

Only time will tell.. If the plan plays off Cisco should certainly be able to capitalise on market growth and their reputation and proven success in the CCaaS space. If they can secure Webex as the CPaaS of choice for Teams, this could significantly reverse the declining marketshare that Cisco has been suffering of late.

This will also help Microsoft block their other completion and prevent players like Zoom getting into their accounts. Together Cisco and Microsoft should be able to protect their join customer base making it harder for other UC vendors to eat their share.

Who might loose out to this partnership?

The Teams Room space is already well served by flexible, innovate solutions from the likes of Yealink, Poly, Neat and Logitech etc. For Teams organizations already invested in these brands, I see them sticking, but customers moving from Cisco to Teams now have the ability to reduce cost, maintain ‘brand’ and leverage thier investment and partnership with Cisco with less disruption, upheaval and change.

The CPaaS providers that develop Teams certified contact centres may be most worried by this partnership, since Cisco will now able to compete in their space which, whilst already crowded, lacks many true enterprise grade solutions like Cisco have.

What is Microsoft Digital Contact Centre Platform all about?

Microsoft and Nuance Contact Centre

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of the digital contact center has grown more vital for organisations to managing the increasing expectations of customer experience and excellence. Microsoft have had many of the core building blocks of a contact center platform for while with products like Dynamics 365 Customer Service, which was very focused on the support agent and customer experience … but it didn’t provide the actual engagement channels – which required third party services.

Despite the increasing importance of contact centers however, Microsoft had truly developed or built their own “true contact center” capability despite their prime competition in the UC&C space (namely Zoom and Cisco) have had Contact Centre in their UC&C portfolio.

Until now that is…

At Microsoft Inspire (Microsoft’s annual global partner conference), Microsoft unveiled their new Digital Contact Centre Platform which combines Dynamics 365, Nuance, Teams, Power Platform, and Azure to form a new modern contact centre solution that aims to engage customers through a blend of voice, video, and other digital engagement channels and plays to their strength and breadth of their “platform strategy approach”.

“In today’s digital world, brand reputation is synonymous with customer experience, including the quality of customer care. Consumers expect effortless, consistent, and secure experiences across any point of contact they choose—in fact, their brand perception and customer loyalty depend on it. With the stakes this high, companies need a comprehensive yet flexible solution to modernise their customer care experience. We are thrilled to introduce the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, an open, extensible, and collaborative contact centre solution designed to deliver seamless customer journeys.”

Charles Lamanna | CVP | Business Applications and Platform | Microsoft

Great….so what is it?

Despite Microsoft adding support for Teams voice channels into Dynamics 365 last year, it’s really their acquisition of AI-based communications giant Nuance in March which has allowed them to take the next step into developing their own fully fledged Digital Contact Centre solution not only adding the omni channel experience, but also providing support agents with everything from recommended responses to live sentiment analysis across all channels.

Microsoft describe their new Digital Contact Centre Platform, as an open, extensible, and collaborative contact centre solution designed to deliver seamless customer journeys. The platform brings together a comprehensive yet flexible solution for contact centres, delivering best-in-class AI that powers self-service experiences, live customer engagements, collaborative agent experiences, business process automation, advanced telephony, and fraud prevention capabilities.

Microsoft say that “the real USP in their offering is that by leveraging their core suites of platform, enables organisation to capture additional customer information that might otherwise fall through the cracks” | Pete Daderko | Director of Teams Product Marketing.

The viewpoint is that since Microsoft already over 250 million people using Teams as their primary work tool, then “It’s really only natural that organisations would want to take the productivity or collaboration platform that they’re already using and use it to better serve customers.

MSFT Digital Contact Centre is built on Teams, Dynamics, Power Platform and Nuance.

With the combination of Teams telecommunications infrastructure, Dynamics 365 customer agent experience and Nuance AI, Microsoft believes it is uniquely placed to be able to address the three main pillars of a contact center – Infrastructure, agent experience and true conversational, contextual based AI.

The Competition

This is an interesting one. Microsoft of course aren’t the only vendor to take this approach. After the failed FiveNine acquisition last year, Zoom later went on to Solvvy to bolster their own AI capabilities into their contact centre solution.

Still, Microsoft knows it won’t replace every customer’s contact center. Recognizing that very few customers will switch their entire tech stacks to Microsoft overnight, the company plans to play nice with others (for now).

Microsoft, despite the extent of their cloud platforms have always touting the open ecosystem approach to bolstering “gaps” or “specialist” areas in their portfolio – with contact centre being a big example. They have continually addressed the answer to the question of “when will Microsoft build its own native contact centre” around the extensive integrations with leading contact centre providers such as Genesys, Avaya, NICE inContact and others. As Microsoft move into the next stage of their own development, they say that “When we called it the digital contact center platform, we called it that very deliberately — the platform piece — because we think integrations and interoperability and being open is so key“.

“Nuance has a rich history and legacy of connecting to really any kind of CRM, or any contact center infrastructure or contact center as a service provider,” is a key part of that open platform strategy”

Charles Lamanna | CVP | Business Apps and Platform | Microsoft

Summary

This is a big investment space and with cloud penetration still generally low across the legacy contact center industry, which still relies on a single mode / voice, on-premises infrastructure and limited connectivity to CRM and other LOB apps, there’s tremendous opportunity for Microsoft and their partners to help its customers move from on-premises to the cloud. It will just have to beat out the likes of Zoom, Salesforce, and others with a longer history in the market.

What do you think – please leave your answers in the comments.