46 INTERVIEW also performs real-time sentiment analysis on conversations, helping agents to understand how their behaviour is impacting the customer experience and how they can improve the interaction. Together, these capabilities significantly enhance service quality.” Meanwhile, supervisors can use analytics to track the performance of both individual agents and the overall call centre to detect and fix issues in real time before they affect customers. “Supervisors can monitor call queues and waiting times to ensure they aren’t too long or intervene in conversations if an agent isn’t answering questions quickly, accurately or in compliance with company policy,” says Black. “This allows them to redistribute resources and prevent agents from mishandling situations. Organisations can also analyse how their team interacts with the different features of our platform to understand how to optimise their use. We’re continually updating these capabilities with the aim of establishing a virtuous cycle where we’re able to use AI-driven analytics to improve the usability of Dialogue Cloud and enhance both the agent and customer experience.” To further optimise its CCaaS offering, Anywhere365 has also integrated Azure Communication Services (ACS), Microsoft’s B2C communication platform, into Dialogue Cloud. “The APIs and software development kits in ACS open up multiple opportunities for us to improve Dialogue Cloud and create new chat, voice, video, text messaging, email and other capabilities,” says Black. “These features will enable us to deliver seamless omnichannel communications, making it easier to transfer people between different channels, depending on what is most convenient and appropriate at the time. For example, the customer might start the interaction with a voice call but receive a text message with a link to an online portal where they can resolve their issue.” Anywhere365 plans to integrate ACS across the remainder of its product portfolio and will also continue to explore how it can use AI and LLMs to further optimise the contact centre experience for both customers and agents, according to Black. “Our unified platform already provides the tools organisations need to help their call centre teams resolve customer queries more productively, efficiently and cost effectively, but conversational AI and LLMs are empowering us to fully reshape the way they operate,” he says. Black predicts that once these technologies are fully mature and embedded in CCaaS solutions, they will make virtual assistants a more attractive option than human agents for many customers. “Today, customers are still sceptical of AI-powered chatbots because they’re not yet capable of providing solutions to complex issues, but conversational AI and LLMs are unlocking new capabilities that will fundamentally change how we interact with them,” he says. “At some point, virtual assistants will probably be more knowledgeable and quicker at resolving problems than humans. They’ll also be more specialised and have human-like characteristics, so conversations will be more natural and interactive – for instance, customers may be able to interrupt them as they do now when speaking to a person. Fully autonomous bots will likely become a reality in future too. “AI and LLMs have the power to redefine B2C communications and Anywhere365 is at the forefront of this transformation, leading the way in creating the call centre of the future.” Photo: Adobe Stock/bnenin
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