No Jitter Roll: NICE Debuts Two CX-focused Products, Talkdesk Enhances Retail, Neat Centers on Audio UpdatesNo Jitter Roll: NICE Debuts Two CX-focused Products, Talkdesk Enhances Retail, Neat Centers on Audio Updates
NICE debuted a new UCaaS product and an AI-powered CX solution, Talkdesk extends generative AI into its Retail suite, Neat rolls out audio upgrades to Neat Center.
June 14, 2024
Welcome to this week’s No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. Leading off this week, we highlight: NICE's debut of 1CX, a UCaaS product, and Gen AI-powered CXone Mpower, Talkdesk's introduction of Gen AI to its Retail Experience Cloud, Neat's audio upgrades to Neat Center, Nureva's new companion app for IT admins and Zoom certification for its HDL pro series. Also, CallTower launched Teams Mobile Dials, an example of fixed-mobile convergence, and AI provider Cognigy raised $100 million in a Series C round.
NICE Launches 1CX, An All-In-One UCaaS
The cloud native customer experience platform provider launched 1CX, a new unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution priced at $5 per user per month. Paired with NICE’s CXone platform, 1CX provides voice, messaging, and video collaboration, live chat, SMS/MMS, and audio and video conferencing with standard CRM integration. 1CX delivers a software-based, open standard cloud PBX, integrated softphones and clientless web conferencing. Both hard phone and softphone capabilities are supported, and existing phone numbers can be ported or new ones created. 1CX is currently available throughout the United States with multiple customers already live. 1CX will be made available to selected territories outside of the USA in the coming months.
NICE Unveils CXone Mpower, A CX-Aware AI Offering
CXone Mpower, a new offering from NICE, unites CXone with Copilot, Autopilot and Actions to create what NICE calls a “CX-aware AI platform” new and proprietary AI. CXone Mpower provides employees with copilot and automation capabilities which delivers CX-related intelligence into their workflows.
CXone Mpower also uses reverse-prompting to enable skill transfer between humans and virtual agents. This process helps virtual agents to better understand customer intents, remember their preferences and resolve issues in ways that better resemble how a top-performing human agent might. CXone Mpower can be connected to every customer touchpoint and application within an organization and thus help recommend actions and optimize processes.
“CX leaders don’t want AI in siloes; they want it to move effortlessly through workflows and customer journeys. In 2023, 30% of customer interactions flowed back and forth between agent and AI; that’s projected to rise to 54% by 2026,” said Robin Gareiss, CEO and Principal Analyst, Metrigy. “By continuously improving AI at all touchpoints, both in real-time and historically, customer satisfaction and agent productivity will improve significantly.”
Talkdesk Rolls out Gen AI-powered CX for Retail
The AI-powered CX solution provider announced new Gen AI capabilities for its Talkdesk Retail Experience Cloud. These preconfigured Gen AI-powered use cases, available via Talkdesk Autopilot for Retail, involve automating common customer inquiries related to orders, shipments, and deliveries. For example, a customer can manage and change individual items in a larger order (without canceling the full order) and via connection with location directories, customers can receive personalized, contextual recommendations based on the best physical location for their needs.
Neat Amplifies Audio Experience with New AI-Enhanced Neat Center Capabilities
The video device company updated Neat Center, the company’s center-of-room companion device, with audio capabilities (which are part of Neat’s overall features) that track conversations and automatically shift audio to the nearest device, whether that is Neat Center or the front-of-room device.
Additionally, Neat has updated the Neat Center with audio features that are already part of Neat’s portfolio:
Deep noise suppression: Filters out sounds that are not human voices (e.g., keyboard typing or leaf blowers).
Dereverberation: Filters out and reduces audio-distorting room reflections (e.g., from walls, ceilings, objects, etc.).
Eliminating double talk so that people talking at the same time can be heard clearly and understandably.
Finally, Neat now enables hearing-impaired users to wirelessly connect their hearing aids, headphones, or neck loop transmitter and receiver to Near Bar Generation 2, Neat Bar Pro or Neat Board 50 devices.
Nureva Announces Companion App and Zoom Room Certification for HDL pro series
The audio conferencing solutions provider launched the beta release of the Nureva App, a web-based tool to enhance the setup and configuration of its HDL pro series systems and manage audio device settings. The Nureva App is accessible across PCs, tablets and mobile phones; it can be accessed through the local area network (LAN), thus eliminating the need for a continuous internet connection, software downloads or account creation.
In the app, IT managers can open the HDL410 system’s dynamic coverage map to review real-time sound event visualizations and create camera zones and turn on a new AI-enabled voice detection feature. The app also provides step-by-step installation instructions. The web-based version of the Nureva App will be available in August 2024 at no additional cost to Nureva HDL310 and HDL410 customers.
Nureva also announced that its USB HDL pro series audio systems is now certified by Zoom for a combination of audio performance and Zoom Room functionality. This includes directional audio capability, integrated call control and automatic device registration.
CallTower Launches Teams Mobile Dialer
The cloud-based communication and collaboration solutions provider launched its Teams Mobile Dialer solution. This application allows mobile phone users to make and receive calls directly from the native dialer using existing Teams numbers.
Want to know more?
For more about fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) check out this SIPPIO news blurb, this article about FMC and the evolution from E911 to NG911 compliance, as well as this article on enterprise-grade FMC solutions and this one on challenges to FMC adoption.
Cognigy Raises $100 Million in Series C Funding
The AI-first customer service automation provider raised $100 million in Series C funding. Cognigy’s funding round was led by Eurazeo Growth, with participation from existing investors Insight Partners, DTCP, DN Capital, and others. The funds will fuel Cognigy’s global expansion and enhance its research and development efforts.
This Week on No Jitter
In case you missed them, here are some of our top stories:
Zingly Emerges from Stealth Mode: The industry needs CCaaS to shift to a true CX platform where all a customer’s data is available and used to interact with them. Only then will brands understand the entire customer journey and be able to provide personal and differentiated services.
Not the Droids You Are Looking For: Generative AI is a new tool and it’s still early. So far, it hasn’t done much, and we need to adjust our expectations that it might indeed be a while until it does.
Be Mindful of AI at Work: As AI-infused tools become part of the employee experience – from hiring to scheduling to performance assessment – it’s important to assess the risks inherent in these tools.
Reserve Your Spot: Enterprise Connect AI 2024
With AI moving at a frenetic pace and IT leaders scrambling to keep up, this new 2-day event from Enterprise Connect will provide up-to-the-minute, in-depth, unbiased content with conference tracks covering CX, Productivity, and IT Management to help the Enterprise IT community leverage AI to advance the enterprise. Learn More about Enterprise Connect AI, October 1-2, 2024, Santa Clara, CA.
