Genesys CX17: Genesys Unveils the G-NINE Innovation Framework
INDIANAPOLIS — This week, at its CX17 user conference at the the Indy Convention Center, Genesys unveiled G-NINE, an innovation framework for its Customer Experience Platform, which includes capabilities such as Smart App Automation, Asynchronous Messaging, Next Generation Engagement, and “Blended” artificial intelligence (AI), among other areas.
“One of biggest trends in the industry today is around automation,” said Paul Segre, Genesys’ CEO, to the roughly 2,000 attendees of his Tuesday morning keynote. “AI is maturing rapidly, but it’s not yet mature enough for most customer experience applications, and we’ve seen some pretty famous things that went wrong in the AI space. What we believe then, is that for a transition—and the transition will be long—there’s going to be blended AI, where AI collaborates with other things. The idea is that AI is going to integrate with directed dialogue systems, which we have, machine learning systems, which we have, and knowledge.” But most importantly, Segre said, it will work with humans. “You can think of AI as automation, but that automation needs the handoff to humans for the hard stuff, [and] also the stuff where you need that human touch.”
Companies are likely to have hundreds of billions of contacts with their customers every year, Segre pointed out. “So even if we are tremendously successful with artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and automation—even if we can automate 80 or 90 percent of those interactions, there are still tens of billions of journeys that require the human touch,” Segre said. “Those are typically most impactful contacts for driving [Net Promoter Scores], for helping your brand, and for accelerating or closing sales.”
People are still much better at closing sales than bots, for instance, and will be for some time to come, Segre noted. Similarly, they are better at dealing with emotional situations, and this comes into play particularly in industries such as healthcare, where companies are often dealing with sensitive patient information.
G-NINE is designed to help companies run smarter and more efficient businesses, as it allows them to manage their customers’ journeys across channels through functionality and services equipped with “deep cerebral power, the finesse of the human touch, and integrated capabilities,” the vendor stated in its press release.
Merijn Te Booij, chief marketing officer at Genesys, told CRM magazine last Friday that the G-NINE innovations will drive each aspect of the company’s CX portfolio strategy, touching the PureCloud, PureConnect, and PureEngage suites. These three bundles, built as a result of Genesys’s acquisition of Interactive Intelligence late last year, are designed to power customer experiences for organizations of all sizes, who are either working in the cloud or on-premises. (PureCloud is geared towards smaller companies, typically those who operate on a cloud-only basis; PureConnect, a solution for mid-market to large organizations, is offered both on-premises and in the cloud; and PureEngage is best suited for larger companies who are hoping to scale.)
Among the innovations packaged in G-NINE to start with is the Smart App Automation platform, which includes more than 80 predefined micro-applications for digital and voice self-service, designed to drive better experiences. Also in G-NINE is the Asynchronous Messaging feature, which enables contact center agents to use the Genesys Hub to offer customer support across popular messaging channels, including Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, and WeChat. According to te Booij, Asynchronous Messaging will also likely eventually be extended to WhatsApp.
The Next Generation Engagement tools aim to extend customer interactions beyond traditional communication channels such as phone, email, and chat applications, to smart devices that are connected to the internet. By tackling the Internet of Things (IoT), the goal is to give companies the ability to determine the next best actions to take as new developments in a customer’s journey are taking place.
Te Booij counts the “Bring-Your-Own-Bot” capability as a key differentiator, as G-NINE allows companies to use software tools such as IBM’s Watson, or Salesforce’s Einstein, to enrich the CX Platform. These outside technologies can work with capabilities native to Genesys’s machine learning and AI systems to provide end users with better insight into their customers’ interactions across a variety of channels.
With the release of G-NINE also comes what Genesys has dubbed “Kate,” a personified AI system tailored specifically for customer service. Kate—a name that, in Latin, means “pure”—was designed to create positive customer experiences and is powered with micro apps and natural language understanding capabilities.
Te Booij said that all of the capabilities are currently undergoing an early adopter program and will be rolled out through 2018 and 2019. “I think that the goal that we agree upon, between the customers and Genesys and consumers, is to deliver a better, more seamless, and frictionless experience for the consumer.” This means more omnichannel capabilities and the ability to reach customers in context, regardless of their location in the landscape of touch points. “I think that’s the promise, and that’s the promise that we are delivering.”