Contact Centre AI

The AI-powered contact centre, part 3: Build powerful conversational AI solutions

With Power Virtual Agents and Nuance Mix on the Microsoft Digital Contact Centre Platform, organisations now have a single platform for conversational AI tooling covering the needs of every use case, from the simplest chatbot to the most complex, hyper-personalised digital experience. From No Code and Low Code to Pro Code, we look at when to choose each solution.

This post was originally published on Microsoft.com on August 24, 2022.

To remain competitive and thrive, organisations must differentiate their brand through outstanding customer service experiences. As customer expectations and business needs continuously shift, enterprises need the agility to rapidly create, maintain, and optimise those experiences with the latest technologies, including sophisticated AI, without relying on external vendors.

What enterprises need are options that keep them in control—a choice of no-code, low-code, and pro-code AI development tools that offer the freedom to quickly build the conversational AI applications they need. After the recent launch of the Microsoft Digital Contact Centre Platform, organisations now have those options.

The right tools for the job 

Some organisations want the flexibility and agility to build their own conversational solution in-house on an end-to-end software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that is quick to deploy, monitor and tune; one that can easily be self-managed by their subject experts. For such organisations, Microsoft Power Virtual Agents and the underlying low-code Power Platform is the right choice. Power Virtual Agents solutions are used widely in many industries—from airlines to technology firms—and for a variety of use cases, from internal-facing help desk solutions to external-facing chatbots across multiple channels and languages.

Some examples of Power Virtual Agents users include:

  • A municipal government with 1.4 million citizens using Power Virtual Agents and Microsoft Teams to empower subject matter experts to easily address employee queries
  • A sports and events organisation using Dynamics 365 and Power Virtual Agents to scale their contact centre with a 97 percent resolution rate.
  • A financial institution using Power Virtual Agents and Dynamics 365 to enable text and voice enabled bots to serve customers banking needs.
Figure 1: Power Virtual Agents intuitive graphical interface showing the conversational flow design and topic navigation.

For large enterprises that need a custom-built natural language model or those with sophisticated IVR omnichannel needs, Nuance Mix is the right choice. Such organisations can also call on Nuance Professional Services teams at any stage of their project, drawing on deep expertise in developing, deploying, tuning, and optimising custom-built conversational AI applications. Omnichannel IVRs and chatbots built using Mix by Nuance Professional Services are widely used by large enterprises, including Fortune 100 companies, from large telcos to major retailers across the world in multiple languages.

Some examples of Nuance Mix users include:

  • A large airline putting Nuance Mix at the centre of its VA and IVR omnichannel strategy to add transactional self-service functionalities
  • A 5G mobile network operator using Nuance Mix to create a customer care VA that enables its customers to resolve issues by simply speaking or typing
  • A recognised leader in clinical communication and workflow solutions using Nuance Mix to enable care teams to communicate and collaborate in real-time
Figure 2: In Mix.dialog, call flow designers build on core components that can orchestrate mixed‑initiative dialogs.

Shaping the future of the contact centre together

Regardless of which solution organisations begin with, the Digital Contact Centre Platform will provide interoperability between them. As we continue to bring Mix and Power Virtual Agents closer together on the Digital Contact Centre Platform, their strengths will make powerful conversational AI solutions even easier and faster to build. And as ever, our commitment to protecting your current investments is thanks to backward compatibility and a clear, disruption-free migration path to any future solutions.

Next steps

In the final article in this series, we will turn our attention to biometrics and fraud prevention in the digital contact centre. In the meantime, learn more about how to create engaging, personalised digital experiences, and achieve superior self-service voice support with the Microsoft Digital Contact Centre Platform.

The Microsoft Digital Contact Centre Platform

Discover how Nuance, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Teams could shape the future of your contact centre.

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Tony Lorentzen

About Tony Lorentzen

Tony has more than 25 years of experience in the technology sector, spending the last 17 with Nuance where he is currently the SVP of Intelligent Engagement Solutions within the Enterprise Division. Before that he served as the leader of several teams at Nuance including Sales Engineering, Business Consulting, and Product Management. A proven leader in working with the cross-functional teams, Tony blends his in-depth knowledge of business management, technology and vertical domain expertise to bring Nuance’s solutions to the Enterprise market, partnering with customers to ensure implementations drive true ROI. Prior to Nuance, Tony spent time at Lucent and Verizon where he led teams that applied the latest technologies to solve complex business issues for large enterprises. Tony received a B.S. from Villanova University and a MBA from Dowling College.