AI is transforming the contact center, but intelligent engagement solutions deliver much more value when they're unified on a single platform. Discover how the Nuance intelligent omnichannel engagement platform gives customers better experiences, contact center leaders better performance, and agents better support.
Every day, organizations find new ways to use AI to deliver better business outcomes. Intelligent technologies now power every aspect of the enterprise—including the contact center. In many cases, customer engagement AI tools are deployed as point solutions, but their true value is only revealed when they cover every moment of the customer journey, in every channel.
For over 25 years, Nuance has innovated and optimized AI solutions to create a unified omnichannel engagement platform that delivers value for three key stakeholder groups: customers, customer experience eecutives, contact center leaders, and agents.
What’s more, now that Microsoft and Nuance have joined forces, the combined value of our platform has multiplied. Microsoft brings the global scale of its cloud infrastructure, market-leading productivity and collaboration tools, and AI capabilities for every aspect of the enterprise. And Nuance brings CRM-agnostic contact center AI and solutions, built on proven technology honed over decades of conversational AI leadership.
Give customers intelligent experiences
Customers demand fast answers to their questions and rapid issue resolution. They want simple, convenient, easy-to-complete transactions—without having to speak to anyone. And they expect seamless, personalized, friction-free engagements on their terms.
An intelligent engagement platform meets all these expectations, regardless of how customers choose to engage with your brand:
- Self-service becomes more efficient and effective, with virtual assistants in digital channels and conversational IVR handling inquiries; from inquiries to automating transactions and purchases.
- Customers get the convenience of engaging through their preferred messaging channels and having asynchronous conversations that fit around their schedules.
- Agents are supported by an AI-powered coach, with real-time guidance to reduce average handle time and increase first contact resolution rates.
- Advanced behavioral targeting launches live chat sessions and offers customers relevant information and assistance at just the right moment in their journey.
- Biometric security eliminates the friction of authentication.
- Hyper-personalization, based on a complete view of customer interactions across every channel, makes customers feel known and valued.
Boost contact center performance
Ask a contact center leader what their number one goal is, and the answer is likely to be, “An efficient contact center that costs less to run that drives revenue.” But achieving these efficiency gains and cost savings isn’t simple, especially when you also need to increase CSAT scores and cope with a severe workforce shortage.
With an intelligent engagement platform supporting every channel, however, it’s possible to leave these challenges behind:
- More effective self-service options in phone and digital channels increase containment, reducing inbound volumes for the contact center while giving customers the flexibility in choice of channel.
- Intelligent voice-to-digital solutions deflect more calls by directing customers to digital channels where they can get faster resolutions.
- Automated proactive engagement tools send customers motivations and updates—and allow them to respond in the same channel—reducing the need for customers to call.
- When live assistance is needed, the intelligent IVR or virtual assistant passes on the full context of the conversation, so agents can hit the ground running.
- AI also supports agents during customer interactions, offering relevant information, product and offer recommendations, best-practice guidance, and compliance reminders.
- With the same AI platform underpinning every engagement, you can analyze 100% of customer interactions to monitor and report on performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
Empower agents to work smarter
Contact center agents have very demanding jobs, and it is vital that they have support and tools that make their working days easier and more satisfying. It is especially important with agents working from home some or all the time, away from the supervision and support they would have in the contact center.
An intelligent engagement platform should be able to automate at least 80% of customer interactions. The remaining 20% will be complex cases or high-value interactions that require human agents’ empathy, creativity, and problem-solving skills—and a unified AI platform can help here too:
- Intelligent self-service applications hand over relevant customer information, recent interaction history, and the full context of the conversation.
- Biometric authentication removes the need to verify customer identities, so agents can get straight on with resolving the case.
- Agent desktops are connected to data from other internal applications—like CRM, order management, and billing systems—so agents don’t need to juggle numerous apps to get to a resolution.
- With AI monitoring every interaction, post-call wrap-up can be automated, saving agents from mundane admin and letting them move on to the next customer.
- The same AI that powers the engagement platform can also coach agents, giving them real-time information and guidance, so new agents can ramp up faster, and every agent can feel more supported and confident.
Expert help whenever you need it
Having a great platform is essential, but so is having the expertise and experience to make the most of it.
Our professional services teams plan, deliver, support, and optimize intelligent engagement platforms for thousands of organizations worldwide. They’re experts in experience design, data science, AI, systems integration, workforce optimization—and most importantly, conversational design. That expertise is what allows us to create intelligent experiences that span channels and deliver the right outcomes.
Whenever I talk to Nuance customers, one of the things that always strikes me is how much they value their partnerships with our professional services teams.
“The project development and launch was one of the best planned and executed I’ve seen. Our partnership with Nuance has allowed American Airlines to offer callers an industry-leading IVR and CTI platform designed to deliver cost savings for the airline while improving our customer experience.”
Tim Lindemann, Vice President Reservations and Customer Planning, American Airlines
Industry expertise makes the difference
The global reach of our technology and the deep industry expertise of our teams help us develop and deploy industry-specific solutions that meet the unique needs of numerous industries. Organizations in consumer-focused industries combine Nuance’s intelligent engagement solutions to create a platform for delivering superior CX, lower costs, and higher revenue.
For example, Banco Macro—a leading Argentinian bank—uses Nuance Virtual Assistant and Nuance Live Assist on its website and on WhatsApp to provide automated, conversational service and seamless transitions between the VA and live agents. Currently, the VA handles 130,000 engagements a month, and the bank is now expanding its Nuance solutions across other channels, including Facebook, Instagram, and its mobile app.
Many leading telcos rely on Nuance’s intelligent engagement solutions to help them offer superior customer experiences. Over the course of our 17-year partnership with one of the world’s largest telcos, we’ve helped it lead the industry on CX by creating effortless experiences no matter which channel its customers choose. By combining multiple Nuance solutions, the telco has reduced costs while improving the customer experience.
“Working with Nuance has done much more than just reduce customer engagement costs. It’s enabled us to connect with our customers in new ways and offer them a seamless service they can’t find anywhere else.”
Customer experience team member, leading global telco
Major retailers also choose Nuance to help them create more intelligent customer engagements. A top three global retailer combines several Nuance solutions to offer 24/7 self-service and support its agents with next-best-action recommendations, connecting automated and human-assisted support so that customers get a great experience at every touchpoint.
A combination of industry expertise and technology know-how means we can quickly create solutions that meet urgent needs. For example, when HMRC—the UK’s tax authority—needed to quickly rollout four COVID-19 support schemes, it used Nuance intelligent engagement solutions in its digital channels to support millions of transactions, with seamless transfers to one of its 18,000 live agents when required.
Whatever industry you’re in, having a unified platform for creating intelligent customer journeys across channels can be a powerful differentiator. We’re proud of what our customers have achieved with our technology and our partnerships, and we’re excited to help them build the AI-powered contact centers of the future. We will continue to expand and include additional Microsoft assets to continue to drive business outcomes, expanding our reach to include a broader set of AI capabilities and process automation. The future is exciting.
