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Top Contact Center Stories of 2017Top Contact Center Stories of 2017

A look at the groundswell of activity around artificial intelligence, and more

Sheila McGee-Smith

January 3, 2018

12 Slides
Top Contact Center Stories of 2017

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Artificial Intelligence Groundswell If you had to choose a subject that emerged as a unifying theme across the contact center market in 2017, you'd have to go with artificial intelligence (AI). Certainly, AI has been a topic of discussion before now. IBM, which first brought its Watson AI platform to attention when it played Jeopardy against human champions, announced the Watson API in 2013 to allow other software developers to use Watson AI. Similarly, Salesforce announced its Einstein AI platform in 2016. In 2017, however, we saw a groundswell -- multiple contact center software vendors announcing, incorporating, trialing, and sometimes delivering chat bot, predictive routing, and other types of machine learning and natural language understanding (NLU). In the slides that follow we'll discuss some of these developments as well as other significant changes that occurred in the past 12 months.

A look at the groundswell of activity around artificial intelligence, and more

About the Author

Sheila McGee-Smith

Sheila McGee-Smith, who founded McGee-Smith Analytics in 2001, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant focused on the contact center and enterprise communications markets. She has a proven track record of accomplishment in new product development, competitive assessment, market research, and sales strategies for communications solutions and services.

McGee-Smith Analytics works with companies ranging in size from the Fortune 100 to start-ups, examining the competitive environment for communications products and services. Sheila's expertise includes product assessment, sales force training, and content creation for white papers, eBooks, and webinars. Her professional accomplishments include authoring multi-client market research studies in the areas of contact centers, enterprise telephony, data networking, and the wireless market. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, user group and sales meetings, as well as an oft-quoted authority on news and trends in the communications market.

Sheila has spent 30 years in the communications industry, including 12 years as an industry analyst with The Pelorus Group. Early in her career, she held sales management, market research and product management positions at AT&T, Timeplex, and Dun & Bradstreet. Sheila serves as the Contact Center Track Chair for Enterprise Connect.