Spring Brings New Cloud Contact Center ReleasesSpring Brings New Cloud Contact Center Releases

8x8, Clarity, inContact, and Talkdesk spruce up with new features and functionality, including enhanced analytics and improved integrations.

I had originally planned this post as an Enterprise Connect cloud contact center wrap-up, but the spring equinox (despite the six inches of snow here in New Hampshire), has caused me to look at this cluster of announcements through a new lens. My tardiness also allows me to add news that didn't appear until this week, from a cloud contact center relative newcomer, Talkdesk.

8x8
8x8's show activity started early with recognition earned by its next-generation Virtual Contact Center (VCC) platform as a Best of Enterprise Connect finalist. A critical component of the offering is VCC Customer Journey Analytics, which allows an agent to see how a customer has interacted with the 8x8 solution, from self-service through agent contact (see below). Customer Journey Analytics, in beta today, will be available in June as part of the VCC Premier package.

8x8 VCC Customer Journey Analytics

Clarity
At Enterprise Connect, Clarity announced it has developed a new integration that allows businesses to manage customer communications from Facebook Messenger via the Clarity Connect contact center, which works natively with Skype for Business. Businesses can add Messenger as a new channel to connect with customers and route, queue, and manage them along with other interaction types to an integrated agent desktop.

Carlson Wagonlit Travel, which requested development of the feature in Clarity Connect, is currently testing it. Allowing customers to use Facebook Messenger to reach the contact center supports the increasing preference within most age groups for messaging over other communication modes.

inContact
inContact this month announced release 16.1 of its Customer Interaction Cloud solution. Highlights of the release include a new thin-client, HTML5-powered agent interface called MAX, short for My Agent eXperience. inContact brought in Frog Design to assist with the user interface design. Some may recall that Unify used Frog early in the process of designing Project Ansible, now Circuit.

A second noteworthy component of the release is what inContact refers to as building a future-proof global foundation for its application. Starting with the 16.1 release, select portions of the company's cloud infrastructure will leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources. Not only will AWS provide additional elastic scalability, but also allow easier future expansion into new global markets, inContact said.

Talkdesk
Talkdesk is a relatively new kid on the cloud contact center block, more from the perspective of name recognition than time and relevance in the market. Talkdesk was "born" out of a contest that Twilio ran in 2011 with a laptop as a prize. Company founders presented at a Twilio user conference, and that same day received funding by venture capitalist firm 500 Startups as part of its third batch of 500 companies. Since then, Talkdesk has raised $24 million, with additional investments from Storm Ventures, DFJ, and Salesforce. Yes, Salesforce.

Talkdesk describes its solution as one with which "companies can create, set up and scale a cloud-based call center quickly and integrate with business tools already in use" -- hence its unabashedly simple tag line: "Create a Call Center in 5 Minutes." Talkdesk promises no hardware, no coding, and one-click integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, Desk.com, and others. (Having seen it, I know "one click" may not be quite accurate, but no more than five is the case.)

This week, Talkdesk ups the ante by taking its reporting capabilities (arguably the most important attribute of the contact center solution) to a new level with Talkdesk Live. Supervisors and agents with appropriate permissions will be able to access real-time insights on key performance indicators such as wait times, abandonment rates, current call queues, and agent statuses.

Talkdesk Live

Headquartered in the heart of downtown San Francisco, Talkdesk has an enviable list of high-tech customers, including DropBox, Box, DoorDash, and Edmunds.com. With pricing at $55 per month for a bevy of features, expect to hear more about Talkdesk in the coming months... as the cloud contact center price war begins?

Follow Sheila McGee-Smith on Twitter and Google+!
@McGeeSmith
Sheila McGee-Smith on Google+