INTERVIEW
CONTINUED
Angus added that the first question 8x8 asks is “What are you trying to achieve?” before working out how to generate the solution. He also added that, from a market perspective, we’re going to see many more, in his words, “strategic alignments”. “It’s going to get super competitive. Every other day, there’s a new AI organisation specialising in a particular area of work that companies like 8x8 have to compete with on a regular basis. “If we look at market trends, that’s not a surprise. Salesforce has attacked the AI agent, but we’re not entirely sure how successful it’s been. Depending on which report you will read, it’s great; others will tell you that they still need physical agents. “That’s the way it’s going to go. We’re going to get far more digital virtual agents than we will human agents, but alongside a human as opposed to in place of them.” Human After All The idea that artificial intelligence is going to push humans out of the contact centre was one that Angus was sure to
put down. “We’re not going to do away with the human inside the contact centre or inside the organisation. “The AI agent needs to be someone that can take away the heavy lifting, someone that can remove mundane tasks, and ultimately needs to solve a real problem, not just a bot for bot sake. “But we’re not seeing huge amounts of downturn in physical agents in our customers today. That doesn’t mean it won’t get there eventually, depending on how advanced the technology becomes and how much it costs. “That’s something which we’ll probably yet to see. But we’re certainly seeing more and more customers wanting to streamline complex but mundane tasks with Authentic AI.”
That's the way it's going to go. We're going to get far more digital virtual agents than we will human agents, but alongside a human as opposed to in place of them.
Meeting Customers While the work continues on a
completely automated contact centre, the customer experience is treated as one of the most important parts of the communication stack. Skipping past the usual statistics about
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